Accounting Module Guide

The Accounting module is the financial backbone of Vendra. It handles every money movement in your business — customer invoices, supplier bills, payments, bank reconciliation, tax reporting and the full chart of accounts. Because it is integrated with POS, inventory, sales and purchase, most journal entries are created automatically without anyone having to do manual bookkeeping.

Vendra includes country-specific accounting localizations for more than 90 countries. Kenya's localization (l10n_ke) pre-configures the chart of accounts, sets up 16% standard VAT, and generates a VAT report formatted for Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) filing.

Chart of accounts and country localizations

The chart of accounts is the structured list of all financial accounts used to record business transactions. Every account has a code, a name, an account type (asset, liability, equity, income or expense) and a default tax. In Vendra the chart of accounts is found at Accounting → Configuration → Chart of Accounts.

For Kenya, the l10n_ke localization is pre-installed. This means the standard accounts — trade receivables, trade payables, VAT payable, VAT recoverable, retained earnings and so on — are already in place when you activate the module. You can add custom accounts for items specific to your business without altering the base structure.

Creating customer invoices — the full lifecycle

Customer invoices follow a clear lifecycle from draft to paid. Understanding each stage prevents errors and ensures your ledger reflects the correct state of every transaction.

Draft

Go to Accounting → Customers → Invoices and click New. Select the customer, set the invoice date and payment terms, then add product or service lines with quantities, prices and taxes. At this stage the invoice is editable and has not yet been posted to the general ledger. Nothing has hit the accounts yet. Save and review before posting.

Posted (sent)

Click Confirm to post the invoice. At this point Vendra creates the accounting entries — debit accounts receivable, credit sales revenue, credit VAT payable. The invoice is now locked against edits. Click Send & Print to email the invoice to the customer with a PDF attachment. The invoice status shows as Posted.

Partial payment

If the customer pays part of the invoice, register the payment from the invoice. Vendra records the partial payment and shows the remaining outstanding balance. The invoice status shows In Payment or Partial.

Paid

When the full amount is received, register the final payment. Vendra matches the payment to the invoice and marks it Paid. The accounts receivable balance for that invoice clears to zero.

Vendor bills

Vendor bills are the mirror of customer invoices. When a supplier sends you an invoice, go to Accounting → Vendors → Bills and click New. Select the vendor, enter the bill date and the supplier's reference number, then add the product or service lines. Confirm the bill to post it. Vendra debits the expense or asset account and credits accounts payable.

If the bill matches a purchase order, open the purchase order and click Create Bill. The lines are pre-filled from the PO, reducing data entry and ensuring the billed amounts match what was ordered and received.

Credit notes

A credit note reverses all or part of a posted invoice. On the customer side, you create a credit note when a customer returns goods or when you agreed to reduce the invoice amount after issuing it. On the vendor side, you record a vendor credit note when a supplier acknowledges a return or issues a discount after billing you.

To create a customer credit note, open the original posted invoice and click Add Credit Note. Choose whether to reverse the full invoice or a specific amount. Confirm the credit note and apply it against the original invoice or leave it as an open credit for future invoices.

Payment registration

Payments are recorded in Accounting → Customers → Payments (for incoming) or Accounting → Vendors → Payments (for outgoing). Each payment record specifies the journal (Bank, Cash, M-Pesa), the amount, the date and the partner. Payments are matched against open invoices — either automatically when amounts and partners align, or manually by selecting the invoice to match.

Bank reconciliation — step by step

Bank reconciliation matches the transactions in your accounting module against the statement from your bank, confirming that every receipt and payment is recorded correctly.

• Go to Accounting → Accounting → Bank Statements
• Click Import to upload a CSV or OFX file from your bank, or click New to enter lines manually
• Vendra automatically suggests matches between statement lines and open invoices or payments based on amount, date and partner name
• Review each suggested match — click Match to confirm, or use the manual search to find the correct document
• For statement lines with no match (bank charges, unrecorded receipts), create a new journal entry directly from the reconciliation screen
• Once all lines are processed, click Mark as Reconciled to close the statement

Reconciliation models in Accounting → Configuration → Reconciliation Models let you build rules that automatically match common transaction types — for example, automatically matching any line from a specific bank reference to a particular expense account.

Tax configuration — VAT and GST by country

Taxes in Vendra are configured at Accounting → Configuration → Taxes. Each tax record has a name, a rate or fixed amount, a tax type (sale or purchase), account mappings for the tax debit/credit entries, and a tax group for display on documents.

For Kenya, the standard VAT rate is 16%. The l10n_ke localization pre-configures this along with the tax accounts required for KRA reporting. Taxes can be price-inclusive (tax is included in the displayed price) or price-exclusive (tax is added on top). You set this per product or per tax rule.

Fiscal positions let you apply different tax rules for specific customer or vendor groups — for example, zero-rating exports or applying a different tax regime for VAT-exempt organizations. Assign a fiscal position to a customer record and Vendra will automatically remap taxes on every invoice for that customer.

Profit and Loss, Balance Sheet, Trial Balance

Vendra's financial reports are in Accounting → Reporting.

Profit and Loss (P&L)

Shows total revenue, cost of goods sold, gross profit, operating expenses and net profit for a selected period. Filter by company, journal or account tags. Compare two periods side by side to track performance over time.

Balance Sheet

A snapshot of assets, liabilities and equity at a specific date. Assets (current and non-current) on one side, liabilities and equity on the other. The two sides must balance — if they do not, it indicates unposted transactions or misconfigured accounts.

Trial Balance

Lists every account with its total debit and credit movements for the period and the closing balance. Total debits must equal total credits. Use this for audit checks and to verify that no accounts are unexpectedly out of balance.

Journal entries from POS and inventory

One of the most significant time-savers in Vendra is that POS sessions and inventory movements create accounting entries automatically. When a cashier closes a POS session, Vendra posts:

• Cash sales to the cash journal (debit cash, credit sales revenue and VAT payable)
• M-Pesa sales to the M-Pesa payment journal
• Card sales to the card journal
• Cost of goods sold entries if inventory is tracked with average cost or FIFO valuation

When goods are received from a supplier (inventory receipt), Vendra creates a stock valuation entry. When goods are delivered to a customer via a sales order, the inventory valuation is reduced and the cost of goods sold is recorded. None of this requires manual journal entries.

Multi-currency

Vendra supports multi-currency transactions. The base currency for Kenya is Kenyan Shilling (KES). You can activate additional currencies — USD, EUR, GBP and others — in Accounting → Configuration → Currencies. Exchange rates can be updated manually or fetched automatically from external rate providers.

When you create an invoice in a foreign currency, Vendra records the transaction in both the foreign currency and the base currency. If the exchange rate changes between the invoice date and the payment date, Vendra automatically calculates and posts the foreign exchange gain or loss to the appropriate account.

Fiscal year closing

At the end of the financial year, you lock the period to prevent any further entries. In Accounting → Configuration → Settings, set the Lock Date to the last day of the fiscal year. No user can post entries with a date before the lock date unless they have administrator rights.

The closing process involves running the Trial Balance and P&L to confirm all accounts balance, then posting the year-end closing entry that transfers the net profit or loss from the income and expense accounts into retained earnings. After locking the period, begin the new fiscal year with opening balances carried forward from the closing balance sheet.