Hey @StrataGeek
Oh, what a delight this comment is! 🤩 We absolutely love this level of detail; it really helps us help you!
There’s a lot to cover, and it sounds like you’re still getting up to speed on a few things, but I’ll give some guidance on the points that stick out to me 😊
“I’m GST registered, but many of my income will be paid against Recipient Created Tax Invoices by the report service – I’m presuming I’ll just enter those as payment/income without a correlated invoice in Solo.”
It’s always worth checking with your accountant or bookkeeper, but if you receive income that does not need a corresponding invoice in Solo, you can manually record it and categorise it.
“Software is a key requirement, and I use some from overseas (and often GST-Free), some on a subscription basis”
Is this software that you have subscribed to, or that you sell subscriptions for? It sounds like you’re wanting a recurring expenses option, which we don’t have at the moment (but it’s something that we’d definitely love to see in our idea section 😉 ). How you tackle this will depend on the level of detail you’d need, for example, you can create unpaid expenses and attach invoices to them. Expenses don’t have the copy function so you would need to create them individually, but invoices can be copied.
Then, when it’s payment time and if you have a connected bank account or a Solo Money account, Solo should suggest matching the transaction to the existing expense record, marking it as paid. If you don’t need details like a supplier or a receipt, then you can also categorise these transactions as they come through, even adding custom categories if needed.
“I’m not sure if it’s possible to create a supply “item” as it is for sales?”
Are you checking for an inventory option here? If so, that’s not a part of Solo’s features as Solo is all about keeping it lean and tight, but I know that MYOB Business Lite does have an inventory feature.
“I’m still trying to work out how to split expenses – either because of different tax treatment (e.g. no GST on stamp duty on insurance policies), or because of different line items needing to be in different categories. I’ll play with that and look around it the first time I come up against it (is the “Cash” account holding multiple expense transactions and then transferring from a bank account to that the best way? I’ve used such methods before.)”
I can’t advise exactly what to split, or whether you need to use the “Cash” account to hold transactions (that’s best left with your accountant to advise on), but what I can tell you is that splitting expenses in Solo is pretty straightforward. You’ll need to create a manual expense, and in Expense Type select Split. This will allow you to enter each line item individually and adjust the tax code and category for each item.
Here are a couple of links to ideas that have already been shared on the forum, that I think might align with what you’ve shared here
Custom date ranges for reports
Add a date field to the invoice item section <-This idea is phrased in a way that’s geared towards NDIS workers, but we know that many industries can benefit from having a date field on the invoice, so definitely add your comment and vote.
Thanks again, Sean, for absolutely epic feedback and insight! Getting to know our Solmates and helping them get the most out of Solo is the best part of the job 💜
Keep the comments and ideas coming, we love it!
