Hi, I need help understanding how the accounts module works for energy broker company.
Example:
My company ABC ENERGY, find clients looking to renew energy contracts, we contact all available suppliers and get the cheapest quotes and send to the clients for them to choose one, once the client chooses they will sign the contract which is an email to ABC ENERGY who will then forward to the supplier for acceptance.
The supplier will pay us a commission on a monthly basis for each client we bring on board.
So should we add the suppliers as customers? wouldn’t this mess up our books?
I’m not sure what the answer is, but I feel like it’s a common book keeping question and the answer will be the same regardless of the software you’re using to represent it.
You’d face the same question in any accounting package. So I’d suggest speaking to a good book keeper, who should know how to handle this type of situation.
Also I wouldn’t be surprised if the answer could be found on say the Xero forums and you could take whatever the answer is and just apply it to ERPNext.
On ERPNext you cannot add a party as both a customer and a supplier. At least not yet.
Plus there two stages to your cycle: 1. Till the contract is signed by the Energy buying client; 2. After the contract is signed.
For #1, the rhythms of the process is that the energy suppliers you deal with are more like suppliers. #2: There is no doubt in the rhythms that the successful party is your customer
Plus there is the other consideration that chances are you will never buy anything from these “customers”.
So setup the same party as both a Supplier (You need that in case you want to use the ERPNext RFP process) and a Customer (so that you can receive payments and cut invoices). If you feel like it, you can add custom field in the Customer Master called something like Linked Supplier and Link it to the Supplier, so that you can build custom reports if you have to.
It won’t mess up your books because you’re basically dealing with two different records on ERPNext. But like @replaceablehead suggested, you are better off getting the opinion of a professional accountant rather than on relying on the advice of hackers like me.
Why not setup both as customers? At heart - the item is a service that you are selling to the energy suppliers - and as such not invoicing end customers… You can create a customer group called energy suppliers and another one called consumers - this way can separate the two for analytics…
ERPNext will not let you receive payments from Suppliers (via payment entry) unless there is a negative amount owed… as I recall.
Hi Dionis,
From what I can see, your’Customers’ are only the Energy Companies that would pay you a Commission, as they are the ones that you will ‘Invoice’ for payment. In this case they would not be ‘Suppliers’ as they are not supplying you directly with anything. They are supplying your Clients Directly.
Your ‘Clients’ are not actually Customers in that sense as you will not be invoicing them directly - as such you could still track them as ‘Customers’ on the ERP - but under a different Group maybe - this would allow you to use the power or ErpNext for communicating, emailing etc. and utilising the CRM and Workflows
Alternatively you could customise a new Module to handle your Clients and utilise some of the CRM functionality.
Hope I understood your question