When creating Sales invoices using a computerised accounts system, there are several methods you can use  to create and record the invoice. The choice you make all depends on the amount of information you want to show on the invoice and the amount of information you want to get from the invoice for analysis in your profit and loss.

On this invoice there are €15 worth of pencils and €40 of paper.

When you are sitting in front of a computer screen and using your accounts system, it is easy to enter all the details shown above and your accounts system can then show you how many products you sold, the value of the items sold and the value of the product categories sold (pencil and paper).

But what if you have sales reps out on the road who do not have access to the accounts system? Or you prefer to use hand written dockets, because the work you do can not be easily computerised and invoiced. How will you get this information analysed to allow you to have useful financial information?

How much information do you need?

Do you need stock control? Do you need to know how many of each product you sold and at what price?

Do you need to know the analysis of sales between the categories pencil and paper.

Are you happy simply knowing that you sold €55 worth of goods.

If you use stock control and you have sales reps on the road, then you need to enter all the details from their hand written dockets into you accounts system in order to keep your stock up to date and be able to get the most detailed information possible from your accounts system. The problem for the person who must take each hand written docket and enter it into the accounts system, is that the sales reps need to write the correct stock code, product description and price on the docket, other wise you must go find all this information before you start entering anything.

If you don't use stock control you can type the description of each item, as the rep wrote it on the docket, but you still need to get the correct selling price. By entering this detail, this allows you to look back at sales invoices without the need to find the hand written docket, as all the details on the hand written docket are recorded in the computerised accounts system.

If you want to just record type of sale (pencil or paper) and the value for each category (pencil or paper) you can just enter Pencils €15, Paper €40 without the need to use the sales invoicing feature of your accounts system. You only have to use the sales batch entry part of your system, sometimes called the daybook, which only needs this minimal amount of information.

You can further reduce the amount of information by simply recording only the fact that there was a sale with a value of €55 made. No further analysis is made i.e. you don't know the value of pencils sold or paper sold as a percentage of your total sales.

This final method is best suited for bookkeeping services where clients don't require or don't request detailed information or when it may be difficult for the bookkeeper to know what each type of sale was for. Pencils and paper may be easy to identify, but other types of products may not.

When anything is copied form one type of system (hand written docket) to another system (computerised accounts system) errors can be made. The more detail required to be taken from a hand written docket, the more chance of an error. But the more information taken from hand written dockets, means better information for the business and better control over stock.

Based on the type of accounts system you have, the type of stock control system you use and the detail you require about your sales, the influence of each of these areas will help you to make a decision that best suits your business.

Whatever method you use you will still get a debtors ledger to manage your customers and what they owe you. The final value of each invoice will still be the same no matter which method you use. The big difference will be the amount of detail you can drill down to.

If you record stock items, then you can drill down to the stock level. If you put in only one line value  (sale €55) you will always have to find the hand written docket if you want the full detail of an invoice.

As technology advances, more and more accounts software allows you to give sales reps laptops and allow them to take customer orders while in front of their customer. While this sounds great in theory and many company's do use it, you must have a good computer and accounts software support department behind you, because when technology does not work, you have no information and the pen and paper may have to be pulled out again to record the sales order from your customer.

Don't rush to computerise, get your hand written system working first and then see if there is a cost  benefit in computerising you sales reps on the road.

Remember the level of detail you need will determine your choices.