A vendor invoice is the bill the vendor sends you for goods or services. Recording it creates an Accounts Payable entry, tracks what you owe that vendor and how it is aging — and, for goods, it can be the door the merchandise itself comes through.
Two doors lead into inventory, and they are for different situations:
- A Purchase Order is goods you ordered. You receive it, and receiving turns the order line into stock.
- A vendor invoice is the paperwork for goods that simply arrived and were sold to you — a rep who walked in with six pieces, or a shipment that never had a PO behind it.
Recording a new vendor invoice
- Go to Vendor Invoices → + New Invoice.
- Pick the vendor and save. (Everything else on the invoice hangs off the vendor, so it is the one field needed first.)
- Fill in the vendor’s Invoice Number, Invoice Date, Due Date or Terms, and Freight if they charged any.
- Add the lines — see below.
The page works like a customer invoice: the invoice’s own fields are the cards across the top, its lines and payments are below, and anything you add or edit opens in a panel from the right. There is no total to type — the invoice total is its lines plus freight, and it updates as you enter them.
Adding and editing lines
Add from Styles opens your catalog already narrowed to this vendor, so you can start from what you buy from them rather than from a search box. Tick what is on the invoice, set the quantity, and set the unit cost to what they actually charged this time — the catalog’s cost only fills it in as a starting point. Switch to All styles for anything that isn’t filed under this vendor, such as a house design you had cast.
+ Add Item is the hand-typed line, for goods that aren’t in the catalog. Give it a description, the vendor’s item number, quantity and unit cost, and set Type to Jewelry or Watch if you intend to create stock from it.
Click any line to edit it. Correcting a quantity or a cost you mistyped off the paperwork is the same panel you added it in.
Two rules apply once a line has already created stock, and the panel says so when you open it:
- The quantity can’t drop below the pieces that exist — you cannot un-make an item by typing a smaller number. Remove those items first if the line was entered in error.
- Changing the cost corrects what you owe the vendor; the pieces already created keep the cost they were made with. A piece is costed once, when it is created, so that a price you have since set by hand is never overwritten behind your back.
Creating a style from a line
A vendor’s invoice is usually where a design enters the shop for the first time. On any hand-typed line, + Create style turns it into a catalog entry: the number, description and cost are already filled in from the line, and you add the metal. There is no second number to type: the style # you give it is the number its pieces go into stock under.
The new style belongs to this vendor, its cost is what the line was billed at, and the line is linked to it, so the line can then create stock like any other.
If a style with that number already exists, JewelTrak refuses rather than making a second one — use Add from Styles to put the existing design on the invoice instead.
Creating the stock
The Stock column on each line is where the goods become inventory:
- Create N makes N items — one record per piece, tagged and priced.
- A line that is part done reads 2 of 3 made, and creating again only makes what is still outstanding.
- Once a line is finished the column links straight to the pieces it produced.
What each piece costs is the invoice’s unit price plus that line’s share of the freight, allocated across the lines by value — a $4,000 ring and a $40 chain did not cost the same to ship. The confirmation shows the exact figure before anything is created. Prices then come from your inventory multipliers, the same as everywhere else an item is made.
Because freight is spread over the lines that exist at that moment, finish entering the invoice before creating stock from it — pieces keep the cost they were created with.
A line linked to a style copies the design onto each piece: its metal, its stones and its photographs. A hand-typed Jewelry line creates the piece from what was typed on the line; a Watch line creates a watch.
Create Stock in the Line Items header does every outstanding jewelry and watch line at once.
Stones and pearls
A stone line makes one record for the whole line — three melee at 0.30 ct total are one parcel carrying 3 stones and 0.30 ct, not three records. The invoice never says what each stone in a parcel weighs, and a certified stone comes in on its own line anyway.
Because a line typed Stone could be a white diamond, a fancy or a sapphire, creating one asks which — so stone lines are created one at a time from the line, not by Create Stock. A Pearl line has nothing to choose.
Two things to know:
- A stone needs its carat weight on the line, and a pearl its quantity — that is what makes it read as in stock. Without it JewelTrak refuses rather than creating a record that is invisible in every list.
- A stone’s cost basis is the whole line’s value plus the whole of its freight share, and its per-carat cost is worked out from that.
When the goods were already received on a PO
If the invoice settles a purchase order, link it in the Purchase Order field. Once that order has put anything into inventory, creating stock from the invoice is refused — otherwise the same goods land in the case twice, each with a real cost behind them. Finish that order from the purchase order instead.
A line that has already created items cannot be removed: it is the only record of where those pieces came from and what they cost. Remove the items first if the line was entered in error.
Paying a vendor invoice
When you cut a check, send a wire, or pay by card:
- Open the vendor invoice.
- Click + Record Payment.
- Enter the amount, date, method (check, ACH, wire, card, cash) and check / reference number.
- Save.
The balance drops by the payment. At zero the invoice moves to Paid; part-paid it reads Partial.
You can also take one payment from a vendor’s Accounts Payable page and apply it across several of their open invoices.
Vendor balances and aging
The Accounts Payable page shows the open balance per vendor with aging buckets. Click a vendor to see the invoices behind that balance, apply or unapply payments, void a payment, mark one NSF, or write an invoice off.
The Vendor Performance report tracks how a vendor actually behaves over time.
Tips
- Link the invoice to its PO whenever there was one. It is what stops the same goods being created twice, and it ties the money to the receipt trail.
- Enter freight on the header rather than as a line. On the header it lands in the cost of every piece; as a line it would look like an item you could put in the case.
- Set a real Due Date — aging is computed from it.