When your CRM posts straight to your ledger
What changes when a business's CRM records quotes, invoices and revenue in its own ledger, account by account, with no second system to reconcile.
By Achekam · · 5 min read · For Running a business businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
Launching soon. The Industry CRM add-on described in this article is launching soon. This article describes it as it will work at launch.
Most growing businesses keep two versions of the truth. The sales team lives in a CRM, where deals are won, quotes are sent and customers are tracked. The accounts live somewhere else, where invoices are numbered, VAT is recorded and revenue is counted. Every month, someone tries to make the two agree.
The gap between them is where money and time disappear. A deal marked won in the CRM somehow never gets invoiced. A quote is accepted at one price and invoiced at another because someone retyped it. Revenue from very different kinds of work lands on a single sales account, so the owner cannot tell which part of the business is growing. The accountant, meanwhile, works from yet another copy.
Achekam's Industry CRM closes that gap by working inside the business's own books rather than beside them. This article explains what that changes, step by step.
One industry pack per workspace
When a business switches the Industry CRM on, it picks one of twenty industries. Each industry pack sets the words the screens use, its record types, pipelines, workflows, document requests, documents to sign, reminders, starter catalogue, ledger accounts and home-page counts.
There is one pack per workspace, and a record keeps the pack it was made under. If the business later switches to another industry, every record is kept. That matters for continuity: a change of direction does not wipe out the history of what the business sold before.
Revenue accounts arrive with the pack
Switching a pack on adds that industry's revenue accounts to the business's chart of accounts, and the pack's starter items, without prices, to its catalogue.
So the accounts reflect the trade from the first day. A contractor using the Construction pack gets Contract revenue (4370) and Variations and extras (4380). A recruitment agency using the Recruiting pack gets Placement fees (4560) and Temporary staffing revenue (4570). Neither has to design a revenue structure from scratch, and neither has to remember to add the accounts before the first sale.
If one of the codes the pack needs is already used in the chart for a different type of account, the activation is refused and the clashing account is named. The clash has to be resolved, usually by your accountant renumbering the existing account, before the pack goes on.
From an accepted quote to a draft invoice
The Industry CRM's quotation is where sales and accounts first meet. A customer accepts a quotation on a link by typing their name and ticking a box, and that acceptance drafts the invoice in receivables. The invoice is drafted from what the customer accepted, so nobody retypes it.
Several safeguards come with it. The customer's IP address and browser are kept with the acceptance. A quotation that has been sent is frozen, so it can only be changed by sending a revision. And the invoice stays a draft unless an administrator has given recorded authority for invoices to be issued at the moment of acceptance.
Once issued, the invoice behaves like any other in Achekam: it takes the next number in the business's sequence and is posted to the ledger as debtors, sales and output VAT.
Every invoice line names its account and product
With the Industry CRM, each invoice line names the revenue account and the product it sells. Revenue is therefore posted per account, line by line, rather than to one sales account for everything.
A builder invoicing a month's contract works and an agreed variation on one invoice sees each line land on its own account. An agency billing a placement fee and a week of temporary staff to the same client does too. The split that used to take a reclassification exercise at year end now happens as each invoice is issued.
Cost of sales in the same journal
The same journal that records the revenue also records cost of sales. For a business that sells products with a cost, the sale and what it cost arrive in the books together, rather than being matched up in a later adjustment. Investopedia's explainer on cost of goods sold sets out the direct costs that make up that figure and the methods used to calculate it.
Counts on the home page that nobody types
Because the CRM and the books are one system, the Industry CRM's home-page counts come from records, tasks or the ledger, and none is typed in by hand. Among them are won this month and revenue this month, and because neither is typed in, neither is a salesperson's estimate. An owner looking at the CRM home page is looking at figures worked out from the same records and books the accountant uses.
What your accountant sees
An accounting firm appointed to a business's books on Achekam works directly in the business's own ledger, with no copy made, so what is posted appears in the business's own accounting screens. Revenue posted by the Industry CRM is therefore already in front of the accountant, on the right accounts, with the invoice behind every line.
The firm can also use the Industry CRM in the business's books. Only the business's own administrator can switch it on, change industry or grant its authorities, so the business stays in charge of how its sales system is set up.
Questions to ask before you switch on
- Which industry pack fits most of what we sell?
- Do any account codes in our chart clash with the pack's revenue accounts?
- Who prices the starter items, and when?
- Should any invoice be issued at the moment a quote is accepted, and who holds that authority?
- Has our accountant seen how revenue will be split?
The choice of pack is covered in choosing an industry pack and changing it later. For two industries where the revenue split matters a great deal, see freight revenue and VAT codes and ticket and sponsorship revenue in the ledger.
Sit down with your accountant and list the kinds of revenue you want to see separately. That list is the best guide to the pack you choose.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
