TamilAccounting

Direct Delivery

A Direct Delivery records goods physically leaving your warehouse for a customer, without raising a Sales Order first. It reduces stock and posts the cost of the goods sold, but it does not bill the customer — the invoice is a separate step that follows.

Where to find it

Go to Sales > Deliveries > New Direct Delivery. Use it when goods go out the same day they are agreed, so raising a separate order first would be pointless paperwork.

Before you start

The customer must exist, and must have at least one branch.
The items must exist and, for stock items, be available at the location you are delivering from.
The accounting period must be open for the delivery date.
You need the SA_SALESDELIVERY permission.

Header field reference

Field	Required	Description
Customer	Yes	Who is receiving the goods. Use the `+` button to create a new customer without leaving the form.
Customer Branch	Yes	The location or division receiving the goods. Drives the default delivery address and the tax group.
Reference	Yes	The Transaction Reference that uniquely identifies this document type, generated from your pattern in Setup > Transaction Reference.
Date	Yes	The date the goods left. See Dates below.
Invoice before	No	The date by which this delivery should be invoiced.
Customer Reference	No	The customer purchase order number, if they gave you one. Maximum 25 characters.
Sales area	No	The geographical area or market segment. Used for sales analysis reporting.
Payment	No	The payment terms that will apply when this delivery is invoiced.
Price List / Sales Type	No	Which of your Sales Lists applies, for example Retail or Wholesale. It sets the prices carried onto the invoice and decides whether line prices are entered inclusive or exclusive of tax.
Deliver from Location	Yes	The warehouse the goods are issued from. Stock is reduced at this location, so getting it wrong misstates two warehouses at once.
Comments	No	Free notes, such as vehicle or driver details. These carry through onto the invoice.

Dates

Date	What it controls
Date	The date the goods left. Stock is reduced and the cost of sales is posted on this date, so it must fall in an open accounting period. It also determines the quantity on hand checked against each line.
Invoice before	The date by which the delivery should be billed. It is a reminder for your team, not a hard block.

This second date field is shared across the sales documents and relabelled to suit each one: Invoice before on a delivery, Required Delivery Date on an order, Valid until on a quotation, and Due Date on an invoice.

Branches and Departments

Branches represent separate business locations or units of the same company, giving you transactions by location, inventory and stock movements per branch, and branch-wise accounting and reporting. Enable them under Setup > Preferences > Use Branches Only.
Departments are internal divisions of the organisation, each responsible for a specific function, letting you analyse a delivery by the part of the business that generated it.

Line items

Column	Description
Item Description	The item being delivered. Type to search by code or description.
QOH	Quantity on hand at the selected location, as at the delivery date. Unlike an order, this figure matters — you are about to reduce it.
Quantity	How many units are physically going out.
Unit	The unit of measure, taken from the item record.
Price Before Tax or Price After Tax	The unit price that will be invoiced. The heading follows the selected sales type.
Discount	Line discount percentage. Defaults to the discount on the customer record.
Total	Calculated line value after discount.

Barcode Scanning

Barcode scanning adds items to a delivery by scanning the barcode printed on the product, which is faster and less error-prone than typing — particularly when picking a large consignment.

Enable it under Setup > Preferences > Use Barcode Functionality.
Once enabled, a barcode field appears on the delivery form.
Scan the product barcode and the item is added to the delivery automatically.

Insufficient Quantity Issue

The system prevents negative stock by default, to keep stock movement and accounting accurate. If the quantity you enter would drive stock below zero, the entry is blocked and you will see:

Marked items have insufficient quantities in stock as on day of delivery.

This is almost always caused by one of two things: the wrong Deliver from Location, or a delivery Date earlier than the date the stock actually arrived. Check both before assuming the stock is missing.

Allowing Negative Inventory

If your workflow genuinely requires it, enable negative stock under Setup > Preferences > Allow Negative Inventory. Deliveries will then process even when stock on hand is insufficient.

Negative inventory makes stock valuation unreliable until the balance is corrected, because you are selling units the system does not believe you own. Enable it only if your business genuinely delivers ahead of goods receipt.

Custom Fields

Custom fields let you add your own inputs when the standard form does not capture something your business needs — a vehicle number, a gate pass reference, a driver name. You can create text boxes, dropdowns, radio buttons, check boxes, date pickers and amount boxes, and place them in the form header, the line items or the footer.

Enable the feature under Setup > Preferences > Show Add Custom Field on Forms.
Once enabled, an Add Fields option appears in the header and footer, and an Add Field option at the top centre of the line items section.
Remove custom fields at any time from Setup > Custom Fields.

Attachments

You can attach documents or images to the delivery — a signed delivery note, a gate pass, a photograph of the consignment, or a carrier receipt. Click the attachment or browse option in the form, select the files, and they are stored against the delivery for future reference.

Draft Option

You can save a delivery as a draft before finalising it, which is useful when picking is still in progress.

Click Draft while creating the delivery.
The delivery is saved without affecting stock and without creating any financial entries.
Find it again in the deliveries list, where it carries a Draft status.
When the goods are ready to go, open the draft and finalise it.

How to create a direct delivery

Go to Sales > Deliveries > New Direct Delivery.
Select the Customer, then the Customer Branch.
Check the Reference and set the Date the goods actually left.
Set the Deliver from Location to the warehouse the stock is leaving.
Add each item with its Quantity, checking QOH as you go, or scan barcodes if enabled.
Confirm the Delivery Address, add Comments and any Attachments.
Process the delivery, then raise the bill from Delivery to Invoice.

What happens in the background

A Direct Delivery creates a Sales Order behind the scenes and immediately delivers against it, so the document chain stays consistent even though you never saw an order. On processing, TamilAccounting:

Reduces stock at the delivery location for every stock item on the delivery.
Posts the cost of sales to the General Ledger, as set out below.
Raises no customer receivable and recognises no revenue. Those wait for the invoice.
Records how much of each line is still to be invoiced.

General Ledger

When a delivery is finalised, the system records the financial impact of stock leaving the warehouse.

Account	Effect
C.O.G.S. Account	Debited — recognises the cost of the items being delivered to the customer.
Inventory Account	Credited — reflects the reduction in physical stock as items leave the warehouse.

Service items generate no General Ledger entries at delivery. Because a service is non-physical and involves no inventory movement, there is no cost of goods sold and no stock value to adjust — the line simply waits to be invoiced.

There is one further exception. On a prepaid delivery, where the customer has already paid, the delivery also posts the sales value to revenue and to the deferred income account set in your company preferences.

Related transactions and actions

Action	What it does
Invoice	Bills the customer for the delivered goods, raising the receivable and the tax. See Delivery to Invoice.
Batch Invoice	Bills several outstanding deliveries on one invoice. See Batch Invoice for Delivery Notes.
Credit Note	Reverses a delivery that was wrong or returned, putting the stock back. See Credit Note and Sales Return.
Void	Cancels the delivery entirely, reversing the stock movement and the cost of sales postings.

Rules and limits

A delivery is a real accounting event, not a draft. Once it has posted you cannot simply edit it away — correcting it means voiding the delivery or raising a credit note.

Customer, branch, reference, date and location are all mandatory.
The delivery date must fall within an open accounting period.
Stock must be sufficient at the location and date, unless negative inventory is enabled.
An undelivered balance stays open until the delivery is fully invoiced.
If you expect to deliver in stages against an agreed order, raise a Sales Order first instead — part delivery is designed for that route.

Sales Deliveries List — find, filter and action existing deliveries
Sales Delivery View — read a delivery and its invoice history
Delivery to Invoice — the step after a delivery
Direct Sales Order — the route to take for staged deliveries
Direct Invoice — deliver and bill in a single document
Batch Invoice for Delivery Notes — bill many deliveries at once

Previous Direct Sales Order Next Customer Payment