Purchase invoice for bussiness expenses

[johnlongland]

Good day all

I am wanting to pay a Courier for courier services rendered and was wanting use a Purchase Invoice. Error : Item field is mandatory.

I found this discussion -

How to create sales invoice without items

How about creating a service item (just leave Maintain Stock unchecked) called Time or Timesheets or something. The UOM could be hours and you should be all set. If you absolutely insist that you don’t want to use an item at all, the only way out is to use the Journal Entry document. Hope this helps. Thanks Jay

Ih this discussion there is talk of a few possible solutions to this, including the creation of an entirely new doc-type ??

This was in 2020. Has there been any progress/solutions to this ?

many thanks

[peterg]

Hi there,

The thread you’ve linked is just three weeks old. Purchase Invoices require at least one item. Is there a reason you don’t want to list what you’re paying for?

Doing it the way described here is pretty simple:

How to create sales invoice without items

Hi Luke, every Sales Invoice needs to have at least one “Item” line entry to be able to process - that is without going into customising the docType etc This does not mean however that you have to create an Item itself, as you can simply type into the “Item Name” field the name of the item/service you are billing (no need to choose an Item from the Item box). You will need to enter data into the mandatory files like Description, Unit and price etc. Using pre-created Items allows you to more e…

[Saumyaseelan_Pv]

As @peterg asked, why can’t you create a service item called " courier services" and add the same in purchase invoice. You can link the expense account also to the item if required.

[johnlongland]

Good day peterg , Saumyaseelan_Pv

Trust you are well.

Many thanks for taking the time to look at my question.

Indeed, I can achieve my goal like this. What I did was to create an item-line, and completed all the
fields by clicking on the button on the right ( on that line). ( i.e. account head etc)
I then created a line in the “Purchase taxes and charges” table and also completed the fields by
clicking on the button on the right on that line. (i.e. account head etc).

Submitted the invoice and traced the correct amounts on the ledger ( Freight charges ; VAT )

I just wanted to make sure that , with me working on V12 that there hasn’t been some changes made in this regards in V13.

Many thanks!
Best
JOhn

[peterg]

I might be misunderstanding you, but what you’re describing sounds to me like how the Purchase Invoice doctype was designed to used. No differences in this regard between v12 and v13.

[jfe]

If the cost is a business expense, an overhead, and not stock you can post as creditor without the item number with a work around. This will put the entry in the GL and then allow payment of the creditor at some point in time. A dummy stock item is not necessary.
Erpnext does not handle expenses (non stock invoices) and creditors in an easy, or similar, to many other systems.

[johnlongland]

Thank you @peterg

Then I shall continue on this way. It does work. Just need to make sure that the account heads
that I use is the correct ones.

Thanks and best
John

[johnlongland]

Thanks for taking the time @jfe

Yes I am entering the “item name”-field manually with no item number.

Thanks for your time !
Best
John