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Key concepts: Invoices, bills, and journal entries

Before you start clicking around the accounting module, it helps to understand three terms you'll see everywhere. They sound like accounting jargon, but they map directly to things you already do every day.

Invoices — what your customers owe you

An invoice is a bill you send to a customer. When you sell a Glock 19 Gen5 for $549.99, the invoice is the official record that says "this customer owes us $549.99."

In CloudFFL OS, invoices are usually created automatically from sales orders — you confirm the sale, deliver the product, then click Create Invoice on the sales order. You can also create invoices manually for one-off charges like repair services or range fees.

An invoice starts in Draft status. Once you review it and click Confirm, it gets a number, posts to your accounting records, and becomes official. At that point, the customer owes you money until they pay.

Vendor bills — what you owe your suppliers

A vendor bill is the flip side of an invoice — it's what your distributor or supplier is charging you. When Lipsey's ships you a case of Sig Sauer P365s and sends an invoice, you record that in CloudFFL OS as a vendor bill.

Vendor bills can be linked to purchase orders (so you can verify that what you're being charged matches what you ordered) or entered manually for expenses like rent, utilities, or alarm monitoring.

Journal entries — the record behind everything

Every financial transaction in CloudFFL OS — every invoice, every payment, every bill — creates a journal entry behind the scenes. A journal entry is the accounting record that says "money moved from here to there."

You don't need to create journal entries yourself for day-to-day operations. When you confirm an invoice, CloudFFL OS creates the journal entry automatically. When you record a payment, another journal entry is created. The system handles the double-entry bookkeeping for you.

When would you create a journal entry manually? Rarely. Manual journal entries are for adjustments your accountant might ask for — things like correcting a misposted expense, recording a loan payment, or making year-end adjustments. For normal sales, purchases, and payments, the system handles it.

How they fit together

Here's a typical cycle for selling a firearm:

  1. You create a sales order for a customer buying a S&W M&P Shield Plus for $449.99
  2. You deliver the firearm (after 4473 approval)
  3. You click Create Invoice → CloudFFL OS creates an invoice and a journal entry recording the revenue
  4. The customer pays → CloudFFL OS creates another journal entry recording the payment and marks the invoice as Paid

And for the purchasing side:

  1. You create a purchase order to RSR Group for 10 boxes of Federal 9mm at $12.99 each
  2. The shipment arrives and you receive it into inventory
  3. RSR sends you a bill → you record it as a vendor bill in CloudFFL OS (journal entry created automatically)
  4. You pay RSR → another journal entry records the outgoing payment

Think of it this way: Invoices and bills are what you see and work with. Journal entries are what happens behind the scenes to keep your books balanced. You interact with invoices and bills — your accountant looks at journal entries.

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