Selling to trade customers on account at the counter
How a factory shop or trade counter charges a till sale to a trade account in Achekam, with the credit limit and hold checked and overrides recorded.
By Achekam · · 4 min read · For Manufacturing businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
It is a Friday afternoon at the factory's trade counter. A contractor the business has dealt with for years needs fittings for a job on Monday and asks for them "on the account". The cashier knows the face but not the balance. Saying no loses a customer; saying yes and writing it on a slip means the sale may never reach the debtors' ledger, and the account that was already over its limit goes further over.
The counter needs a way to sell on account that is as quick as a cash sale but still respects the credit decisions the business has made. In Achekam, that is what a till sale charged to a trade customer's account does.
What you need in place
Two add-ons work together here:
- Point of Sale, which gives the business a till under Commerce & POS. A business without it neither sees the till nor can use it, because the server refuses its till requests.
- Wholesale, which is where trade customers are created, each with a credit limit, terms and a hold. The same add-on keeps price lists with quantity breaks for dealers, described in trade price lists, dealer credit and waybills.
The cashier is whoever is signed in to the till. There is no cashier PIN, so each person at the counter should sign in as themselves.
Charging the sale to the trade account
The cashier rings up the goods as usual and chooses to charge the sale to the trade customer's account instead of taking payment. Achekam then does two things in the same step.
First, it writes a receivables invoice for the customer. The sale does not stay inside the till system; it becomes an invoice on the customer's account, alongside anything they bought through dispatch or were invoiced for by the office.
Second, the till posts a balanced journal. Every till sale that reaches the server does this, with each payment method going to its own account. For a sale on account, the debit goes to trade debtors (account 1200), with revenue (4000) and output VAT (2150) on the other side, and cost of sales posted against inventory (1300) at the product's cost price.
Holds and credit limits, and overrides with a reason
Before an account sale goes through, Achekam checks the customer's hold and credit limit. An account on hold, or a sale that would take the balance past the limit, is stopped.
A supervisor or manager can override that check, but only by giving a reason. That is the right balance for a trade counter: the long-standing contractor with a cheque in the post can still be served, but somebody senior has taken the decision and written down why.
Make the override a managed exception rather than a habit:
- Decide which supervisors and managers may override, and tell the counter staff who they are.
- Agree what counts as a good reason, for example a confirmed payment not yet in the bank, or a director's instruction for a key account.
- Once a week, review every override against what the customer has since paid.
- If the same account is overridden again and again, revisit its limit or its terms rather than carrying on overriding.
Stock leaves from the counter's location
The goods leave stock in the same step as the sale, from the location the till was opened at. If the factory shop sits in front of the main store, open the till at the location the goods physically come from, so the stock figures stay true.
If a sale would take a product's quantity negative, Achekam refuses it unless the business has chosen to allow negative stock. Refusal is usually the safer setting: a negative quantity at the counter is a sign that something was received or moved without being recorded.
Following the account after the sale
An account sale is only half the job; the other half is getting paid. Because the sale became a receivables invoice, the account appears in the age analysis with everything else the customer owes. Achekam ages receivables into 0-30, 31-60, 61-90, 91-120 and over 120 days, with overdue totals. ACCA's article on accounts receivable management explains how a business monitors what customers owe with an aged analysis and how it can speed up collection.
Two habits make the most of it:
- Statements. Achekam produces a customer statement of account as a PDF that can be e-mailed, and the screen says whether it was sent. Because each counter sale became an invoice, it shows on the statement like any other invoice.
- Watch the older columns. An account moving into the older columns is the signal to consider a hold, before the next Friday-afternoon request arrives. The same weekly routine that freight businesses use is set out in shipper accounts that drift past their terms.
A short checklist for the counter
- Every trade customer who may buy at the counter exists on the Wholesale screen, with a limit, terms and the right hold status.
- Each cashier signs in as themselves.
- Tills are opened at the location the goods come from.
- Counter staff know who can override and that a reason is required.
- Overrides are reviewed weekly, and statements go out monthly.
Returns deserve the same discipline. A supervisor or manager can refund all or part of a till sale with a reason, as its own document linked to the original sale, and the goods go back into stock. Using that route, rather than a handwritten credit slip, puts the goods back into stock in the system and leaves a record linked to the original sale.
Selling on account at the counter will always involve trust. The point of doing it through the till is that the trust is recorded: the invoice exists, the limit was checked, and any exception carries a reason someone senior gave.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
