Preferences
Preferences decide how Fiscal posts your documents: which accounts it uses, how stock and batches are handled, how documents are cancelled and how many decimal places amounts have.
Open Settings›Preference. Change what you need and click Save at the bottom. You need the Modify right on Preference to save.
Decide these before you go live. A change applies to documents saved after it. Documents that were already posted are not reposted, so changing an account or a rule halfway through a year makes the figures harder to compare.
Default accounts
When a document doesn't name an account, Fiscal posts to these. A new company already has them filled in from the standard chart of accounts. Check them, and change them only if your accountant uses different accounts.
| Account | Used for |
|---|---|
| Accounts Receivable | What customers owe, from credit invoices. |
| Accounts Payable | What you owe vendors, from bills. |
| Default Income | Sales of items that have no income account of their own. |
| Default COGS | The cost of goods sold, when stock leaves on a sale. |
| Default Asset Account | The inventory (stock) value. |
| Inter Branch Clearing Account | Balances between branches, for example when stock moves from one branch to another. |
| Goods Received Not Invoiced Account | Goods received from a vendor before the bill arrives. |
| Uncategorized Expenses / Income | Amounts that couldn't be matched to a more specific account. |
| Excess Payment Income | Customer overpayments that are not kept as a credit for the customer. |
| Round Off Account | The small round-off amounts on invoices and bills (see below). |
| Discount Allowed / Discount Received | Discounts you give to customers and receive from vendors. |
| Inventory Usage | Stock used inside the business (inventory usage documents). |
| Currency Exchange Gain/Loss | Exchange differences on foreign-currency payments. |
| PDC Receivable / PDC Payable | Post-dated cheques received and issued, until they are cleared. |
| Retention Payable / Receivable | Amounts held back on contracts until the work is accepted. |
| Undeposited Funds | Payments received that haven't been deposited in the bank yet. |
| Opening Balance Equity | The other side of the opening balances you enter. |
Business rules
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Enable Round Off | Adds a Round Off box to invoices, bills, credit notes and vendor credits, so you can round the total, for example from 1,149.97 to 1,150.00. The difference is posted to the Round Off Account. Under Round Off Box choose Auto fill round off (user can change) to have Fiscal suggest the amount, or Start at zero (user enters if needed). |
| Allow Negative Stock | Lets documents take out more stock than the warehouse has. Leave it off to have Fiscal stop a sale or transfer when there isn't enough stock. |
| Allow Multiple Warehouses in a Transaction (same branch) | Lets the lines of one invoice come from different warehouses of the same branch. When it is off, the whole invoice uses one warehouse. |
| Allow Posting Materials With Zero Cost | Lets you build an assembly even when some of its components have no cost yet. When it is off, Fiscal asks you to cost them first. |
| Auto Allocate Payments to Invoices / Bills (oldest first) | When you enter a customer or vendor payment, Fiscal applies it to the oldest open invoices or bills first. You can still change the allocation by hand. |
Language
Enable Arabic Language (on the Business Rules tab) lets your users work in Arabic and puts the English / Arabic switch on the top bar. See Arabic and English.
When a document is cancelled
Choose what happens to the journal entry of a document that is cancelled:
- Post a reversing journal entry: the original entry stays, and a second entry with the opposite amounts is added. The history shows both. Most accountants prefer this.
- Delete the journal entry: the entry is removed, as if the document had never been posted.
Dispatch Center
The Dispatch Center lets the warehouse track which goods have been picked and sent out for each document. Turn on Enable Dispatch Center, choose the documents it applies to (Invoices, Delivery Notes and Vendor Credits, the returns to vendors) and, if you like, a Dispatch Start Date: only documents from that date are tracked. Left empty, it starts today.
Batch allocation
For items tracked by batch (for example with expiry dates), these settings decide which batches stock is taken from when it leaves a warehouse.
| Setting | Options |
|---|---|
| Batch Allocation (stock out) | Manual: the user picks the batches on every line. Auto at save: batches the user picked are used first, and Fiscal picks the rest when the document is saved. Auto, filled in on screen: Fiscal shows the suggested batches on the line before saving, and the user can change them. |
| Allocation Rule | FEFO: the batch that expires first goes out first. Best for food and medicine. FIFO: the batch received first goes out first. |
| Skip Expired Batches in Automatic Allocation | Fiscal never picks an expired batch on its own. |
| Minimum Shelf Life for Sales | The number of days a batch must still have before it expires to be picked for a sale. 0 turns this off. |
| Auto-create Batch on Stock In | When stock comes in without a batch number, Fiscal creates one. |
The rule, the expired-batch and the shelf-life settings apply whenever Fiscal picks batches, including the rest of a line the user only partly picked. Batches the user picks by hand are always used as picked.
Inventory costing
Costing Method (company default) decides how the cost of the goods you sell is worked out:
- Moving weighted average: each purchase is averaged with the stock you already have.
- FIFO (first in, first out): goods are costed at the price of the oldest stock first.
This is the default for all items. An item can use a different method, set on the item itself.
Numbering and precision
Under Decimal Precision set how many decimal places are shown and stored:
- Amount Decimal Places: for money. Saudi Arabia and the UAE usually use 2, Bahrain and Kuwait 3.
- Quantity Decimal Places: for quantities, for example 3 if you sell by the kilogram.
- Rate Decimal Places: for unit prices and rates.
Totals and VAT are rounded to the amount decimal places when a document is saved. Document numbers are set per voucher type: see Voucher types and numbering.