Point invoice lines at a sales account

This example uses the draft invoice for Client Workshops created in Bill time on an invoice.

Accounts come from your accounting system, not from Monument

A sales account is one of your own chart of accounts, Xero calls it a revenue or sales account, MYOB calls it an income account, QuickBooks doesn't expose a chart of accounts on invoice lines at all, so Monument shows you its Products and Services items instead, each one already tied to an income account on QuickBooks' side. Whichever system you're on, you can't type a new one into Monument. Accounts and items are imported from your connection, kept in step by refreshing, and picked from a list, never created by hand.

That's deliberate: a sales account has to exist in your books before anything can post to it, so there's nothing sensible for a manually created one to do.

Import your accounts

1. 1

   Open Settings and go to Invoices & accounting. In Accounting, choose the office tab if the practice has several offices.

2. 2

   In Sales accounts, click Add sales accounts. Choose the accounts you use from your provider, then click Import selected.

3. 3

   Click Make default on an imported account. The Default badge shows the account new lines will use.

Connecting discovers the available accounts but does not import the full list. Refresh from your provider updates already imported accounts and archives those missing from the provider. Use Add sales accounts to import additional accounts.

When you click Make default, Monument offers to apply it to draft lines that have no sales account yet. Choose Apply or Skip. Lines with a chosen account and issued invoices are not changed. No prompt appears when no lines are affected.

Set a project's default

1. 1

   Open the project and go to its Info tab, then click Edit.

2. 2

   Find Default sales account and pick the account new lines on this project should post to.

3. 3

   Save.

The dropdown shows the effective account by name. Leave it untouched to keep following the connection's default. Selecting any account stores that exact choice for the project, even if it is the account already displayed.

Pick a sales account on one line

1. 1

   Open an invoice and click into a line to open its sidebar.

2. 2

   Find the Sales account field and search for the account this particular line should post to.

The field shows the effective account name. Choosing another account stores it on this line only. For example, Riverside Apartments can use Consulting Revenue by default while one line uses Reimbursed Expenses.

What happens when nothing is picked

Nothing is required at any level. A line with no pick of its own falls through to its project's default, which falls through to the connection's own default sales account, set with Make default in the office’s Sales accounts list. Only if none of those three is set does the line sync without an account at all, letting your accounting system apply whatever it would normally use.

Offices with more than one connection

Once a firm has more than one office, each with its own accounting connection, a project's sales accounts follow whichever connection its office actually uses. The line and project pickers only ever show accounts from that one connection, an account imported for a different office's books simply isn't offered. See Run multiple offices in one workspace for how a project ends up assigned to an office in the first place.

Troubleshooting

• The Sales account field isn't showing on a line. It only appears once an accounting connection is resolved for the invoice, through its project's office or the organisation-wide connection. No connection means nothing to pick from.
• An account is missing from the picker. Open Accounting for the office, click Add sales accounts, choose the missing account and click Import selected. Use Refresh from your provider to update names on accounts already imported.
• A line shows an account marked as unavailable. Either it's been archived on the provider's side since it was picked, or the project's office now resolves to a different connection than the one that account belongs to. Pick a replacement from the current list.

Where this fits next

Sales accounts are one half of what a line posts to your books, Set tax codes on invoice lines covers the other. Both feed Sync billing to your accounting system, which is where either one actually reaches Xero, QuickBooks or MYOB.