Your godown
The bill is the only document that takes sellable stock out, and it takes from the oldest load first. Void it and exactly those loads come back, with their own costs still on them.
Part of Netolyst DMS
Invoicing software for distributors
Your bill is not a print-out of something that already happened. It is the document that takes the goods off your shelf, puts the money on the shop’s khata and writes your accounts. Netolyst DMS makes that bill in one save, with the batch, the rate, the tax and the scheme already correct.
- A posted bill is finalThere is no edit button and no quiet change. To correct a bill you void it and make a fresh one, and both stay on your record.
- Each batch prints as its own lineWith its own batch code, its own expiry date and its own rate, because that is exactly what the shop is handed.
- Every rupee is worked out for youPrice, tax, scheme and discount. Your counter types quantities. It does not type figures, so it cannot type a wrong one.
- Bill from more than one firmEach firm keeps its own NTN, its own invoice letters, its own number series and its own logo on the printed page.
Invoicing comes with Netolyst DMS. It is not sold separately.
Everything on this page is part of Netolyst DMS — the same system that holds your godown, keeps the shop khata and writes your accounts. There is no billing-only version to buy. A bill in a distribution house is not a document about a sale: it is what takes the carton off your shelf, what the khata is debited by, and what your accounts are written from, all in one save.
If you want to see the whole business and not only the bill, start with the full list of what it does and come back here for the invoicing detail.
What it is
The one document that moves your goods.
An order can hold stock. Only a bill moves it. One bill does five things at once: it takes the carton off your shelf, puts the money on the shop’s khata, decides the scheme, charges the tax and writes its own accounting entry.
Most billing programs treat the invoice as paperwork. Somebody sells the goods, and afterwards somebody prints a document about it. In a distribution house that gap is where the month goes wrong: the godown says one thing, the khata says another, and the paper in the shop’s hand says a third.
Here the bill is the event itself. Nothing leaves your godown without one, and nothing lands on a shop’s khata without one. Once it is saved, it either all happened or none of it did. There is no half-posted bill for somebody to find later.
This page is about the document itself. Which load the bill takes from, and what that carton cost you, is covered under batch-wise inventory management. The route, the order behind the bill and the company schemes it applies are covered under sales management.
- This is not a shop till receipt
- A till sells one piece at one fixed price to whoever is standing there. Your bill goes to a named shop, at a price set on the batch, usually on khata, with a company scheme on top of it.
- This is not a record of a sale already made
- Until the bill is posted, nothing has left your godown. The bill is what moves it. So a bill nobody made is stock you still have, not stock you have lost track of.
- This is not a general accounting invoice
- An accounting package bills a product at one price. You bill a batch, at the price that batch carries, with its own expiry date on the line. Two loads of the same product are not the same goods.
The problem
What goes wrong when the bill is put together by hand.
Most distributors bill on a program that knows quantities and prices and nothing else. The batch, the tax, the scheme and the firm are all carried in somebody’s head. Here is what that costs.
A bill is corrected by opening it again
A figure somebody has already acted on quietly becomes a different figure. The shop is holding the old paper, your munshi is reading the new one, and nothing on the record says a change was ever made.
One printed line, two different lots
The shop is handed two batch codes and two expiry dates, and the bill shows one merged line. Nobody at either end can check what was actually delivered, and a return three weeks later is an argument.
Tax is worked out at the counter
A clerk does the sales tax on a calculator while a shopkeeper waits. One wrong figure travels into the bill, the khata, the month and the return you file.
Free goods all look the same
A 12+1 that the company letter promised and a carton your counter man gave as a favour print identically. At the end of the month you cannot separate what the company owes you from what you simply gave away.
Withholding is treated as a discount
A registered buyer keeps back part of the sales tax and deposits it himself. Somebody reduces the bill to make the khata agree, and your sales figure shrinks by money that was never a discount.
Two firms, one bill book
The house runs two tax entities and one series of numbers. Which firm issued which bill is settled from memory at filing time, and one number can end up on two papers.
One save
Six things happen the moment you save a bill.
You choose the shop and type the quantities. One save does all of this, and it either all happens or none of it does. There is no second screen to remember afterwards.
- 01
The goods leave your godown
Stock comes off the godown you billed from, taken from the oldest load first. This is the only document in the system that can do it.
- 02
Each batch becomes its own line
Twenty pieces off two lots print as two lines, each carrying its own batch code, its own expiry date and its own rate.
- 03
The company scheme is applied again
On the bill’s own date, not the order’s. A scheme that ended yesterday does not appear, and one that started this morning does.
- 04
Taxes and discounts are calculated
Per line, from the switches on each product and the discount you entered. Your counter does no arithmetic at all.
- 05
The shop’s khata is debited
What the shop will actually hand over, which is not always the bill’s total. Cash taken at the counter is written as a real receipt against the bill.
- 06
Your accounts write themselves
The bill posts its own double-entry journal as it saves. Nobody types a sales voucher, and nothing waits for a night job.
Your godown, the shop’s khata and your accounts are never brought up to date by hand after a bill. They are brought up to date by the bill. Where those goods came from is covered under the stock ledger, where the money goes is the shop khata, and the entry the bill writes by itself is explained under accounting.
Corrections
A posted bill can never be quietly changed.
There is no draft you can alter and no edit button anywhere. Once a bill is posted it stays as it was posted. When one is wrong, you void it and make a fresh bill, and your record keeps both.
- Voiding puts everything backThe goods return to the exact batches the bill took them from, and the shop’s khata is credited the full amount. Nothing is left half undone for somebody to find next month.
- A void always carries a reasonSo your record says why it happened, not only that something happened. Six months later that reason is the whole difference between a mistake and a suspicion.
- The new bill is prefilled from the old oneSame shop, same lines, new number. Each line’s own discount comes back with it. A discount you had put on the whole bill does not, because it was already spread across those lines.
- The original never leaves your recordNothing here is deleted. A bill cannot be made to disappear by anybody, at any level, which is the point of doing it this way.
- A bill with returns against it cannot be voidedGoods that came back to you are a different matter from a sale that never happened. The return is already its own document, and it already settled part of that bill.
Voiding also releases the money that bill had absorbed from the shop’s payments, and that money spreads again over whatever is still open. How a payment spreads across unpaid bills is explained under the shop khata.
Bill lines
One line you type can print as two.
Twenty pieces coming off two lots are two lines on the bill. Each line carries its own batch code, its own expiry date and its own rate. You typed one line; the shop is handed two, because two is what is in the carton.
- The rate comes off the batchEvery load carries the trade price you entered when it arrived. A load bought cheap and a load bought dear keep their own prices, and a bill that mixes them says so.
- The oldest load goes out firstStock is picked oldest received first, which is how this trade works. Expiry is kept on every load, and expired stock can never go onto a bill at all.
- The split never changes what the shop paysYour clerk types twenty pieces and sees the same total whether those pieces came off one lot or three. The split is about what is printed, not about the money.
- The expiry date is on the lineThe shopkeeper can read that date on the carton in front of him. A bill that does not carry it is a bill he cannot check.
This is the single biggest difference between a distributor’s bill and a shop’s bill. You are not selling a product. You are selling a particular load of it, at the price that load carries.
Where a load gets its cost, its price and its expiry date in the first place is covered under batches.
Bill taxes
Three taxes on a bill, and you decide what each product carries.
A bill can charge sales tax, advance tax and further tax, in the order they print. Each one is a switch on the product: on or off, percent or a fixed amount, one value. GST is not a fourth tax. It is the everyday name for sales tax, and there is one levy here rather than two.
| Levy | How you set it | How it charges |
|---|---|---|
| Sales tax | A switch on each product. Percent or a fixed amount, and one value. | A percent is charged on the line after its discount. This is the levy most people in the market call GST. |
| Advance tax | A switch on each product. Percent or a fixed amount, and one value. | Charged and printed after sales tax, in its own column, so your buyer reads the bill in the order he expects. |
| Further tax | A switch on each product. Percent or a fixed amount, and one value. | Charged and printed last. Switch it off on the products it does not apply to and it never appears. |
- No tax rate is written into this softwareRates change with every Finance Act. A rate baked into a program goes out of date and is believed anyway. You set what your products carry, and you change it the day it changes.
- A fixed amount is charged onceOne flat charge per product per bill, never per piece. Ten pieces of a product carrying a fixed amount are charged that amount once, which is what a fixed amount means.
- A percent is charged on the netGross less the line’s discount is the net, and the tax rides the net. One rule for every line on every bill, so nothing depends on who typed it.
- A free line carries no taxA line given at zero is not taxed and takes no discount. What you gave away stays visible as a giveaway instead of turning into a taxable sale.
payable amount = grand total − sales tax withheld
Where a registered buyer keeps back part of the sales tax and deposits it himself, that is his decision about paying, not a levy on your bill. So it never moves the grand total. The payable amount is what his khata is debited, and on every bill nobody withheld on, the two figures are the same number. The khata itself, and how it is settled, is covered under customer ledger.
Price warnings
A warning before a rate goes too low.
A price is your business, not the software’s. So neither warning blocks the bill. Both of them judge what the shop actually pays, which means a discount cannot be used to slip a line under them.
| Warning | When it fires | Who sees it |
|---|---|---|
| Below the batch’s trade price | The line is priced under the selling price that particular load carries. | Everybody at the counter, in red. Nobody sets a rate below yours by accident. |
| Below what the carton cost you | The line is priced under the real cost of that load, with bilty and labour already inside it. | Only staff who hold the cost permission. Your counter clerk bills all day without ever seeing a cost. |
Landed cost is what a carton really cost you after bilty and labour. It is worked out when the goods arrive, which is covered under receiving stock.
Discounts on the bill
A discount stays a discount on your bill.
Rupees you give off never go into the rate. They sit in their own column beside the gross amount, so the bill prints a real price and a real discount. At the end of the month you can still tell what you discounted from what you sold cheap.
- A line discount has its own columnRupees off one line, shown beside that line’s gross amount. Type it as rupees or as a percent, and the rupees are worked out for you.
- A discount on the whole bill is spread over the linesYou tick the lines it applies to and choose by value or equally. It is added to each line’s own discount, so the printed bill still shows one discount column per line.
- After posting, that box no longer exists as itselfNothing is stored as a whole-bill discount, because it has already become part of each line. That is also why a re-bill brings back the line discounts and not the box.
- A discount noted on an order is a rate, not rupeesBecause the quantity can still move between the shop’s door and the van. The bill’s discount box is prefilled from it, and the bill decides the final figure.
- There is no lock on discounts, on purposeA key on one door and not the other only sends the money through the other door. Everything is visible instead, in its own column, on every bill.
This section is about how a discount appears on the document. Where a discount may be given, who may ask for one from the field, and what your office does with that request are covered under discounts on the sales page.
Free goods
Free goods you can tell apart at the end of the month.
A 12+1 is written on the bill honestly: a line with a quantity, a price of zero, marked free. No tax on it and no price warning against it. And one column says who promised it.
- A scheme line and a hand free line are not the same thingA scheme line came from a company’s letter, and you can claim it. A hand free line is one your counter man gave as a favour that nobody promised. The bill keeps them apart, so the giveaway you cannot claim back finally has a number.
- Your counter man can remove a scheme line, with a reasonHe can never change its quantity. What the company’s letter promised is what the bill gives, or the line comes off with a reason beside it.
- A short shelf trims the free line instead of stopping the billIf there is not enough stock for the full free quantity, the free line is reduced and the bill still posts. Your shop still leaves with its goods.
- Free cartons come off real stockFrom the same oldest-first queue the paid cartons came from. A free carton is never created out of nothing, so your godown figure stays true after you give one away.
Entering a company’s scheme letter once, the dates that switch it on and off, and the report that counts what each scheme gave are covered under company schemes.
Firms
Bill from more than one firm, each on its own letterhead.
One distribution house commonly runs two or three firms. Each is its own tax entity, with its own NTN and STRN, its own bank accounts and its own invoice letters. They report together and file separately, and the bill knows which one it came from.
- Your invoice letters are yours to chooseThe bill is the only document here whose letters you pick. Up to eight characters, letters and numbers. You type ABC and your bills read ABC-1, because the dash is added for you.
- Two firms can never share lettersAnd letters a posted bill already carries stay reserved for good. A prefix that is out in the market on paper is never handed to a second firm later.
- Each firm numbers its own billsOne firm’s series never runs into another’s. So the number on a paper tells you which firm issued it, without anybody checking a register.
- The firm on the bill is the firm as it was that dayChange your address or your bank next year and the bill your shop is holding does not change. What was printed and what is on your record stay the same document.
- Reading another firm’s bills is its own permissionYour staff see the firms they are assigned to, which is the same scope that decides who may bill from which firm. The office roles who genuinely work across the whole house get a separate key.
Printing
Print your bill on A4, with your own logo on it.
Nothing to install on each machine and nothing to set up per counter. The bill opens as an A4 page and your browser turns it into a PDF you can send on WhatsApp or keep.
- Each firm’s own logo travels with its billsSo a bill from your second firm looks like it came from your second firm, without anybody choosing a template at print time.
- A sales return prints as its own noteNot as a changed bill. What went out and what came back are two documents, and the shop can hold both of them side by side.
- The same A4 page is the file you sendThere is no separate export step and no second layout that prints differently from what you saw on screen.
Khata statements, goods receipts, the credit list and the whole report pack print the same way. They are listed on the full list of what Netolyst DMS does.
Cash at the counter
Take the money at the counter, on the same bill.
A bill can record that money was taken when it was entered, in part or in full, instead of leaving every rupee to be chased later. What is written is a real receipt against that bill, not a note beside it.
- Three named rows, not a guessAll on khata, part cash and part khata, or full cash. Whoever makes the bill says which one it was, at the moment he knows.
- A cash-only shop closes the credit rowsNot because your clerk decided it in the middle of a sale, but because that shop’s own page says so. Nobody at the counter can talk their way past it.
- Your khata shows two rows, never one netted rowThe bill going on, and the money coming off. You can always read what was billed and what was paid, instead of one figure that hides both.
The bottom of the bill shows what was handed over and what the shop still owes. That is the figure your salesman sees on his phone the next time he stands at that door.
Receipts taken later, advances, cheques, credit limits and how one round payment spreads over unpaid bills are the shop khata, covered under customer ledger. This screen is from the running product, captured on a demonstration business, so the figures and names in it are demonstration data.
Who sold it
Every bill can name who sold it and who carried it.
The person who types a bill is very often not the person whose sale it is. So the bill records both, and it records them in the way that makes them useful afterwards.
- The salesman on the bill is a real userNot a typed name. So “what did Ali sell this month” is a filter over real bills, instead of a search over three different spellings of Ali.
- It is optional, because a walk-in belongs to nobodyThe bill does not force a name onto a sale that has none. An empty field is an honest answer, and a wrong name is not.
- Who carried the goods is written beside itAs plain text. It tells you who to ask when a shop says a carton is short. There is nothing else behind that field, and the limits below say so.
FBR e-invoicing
FBR e-invoicing is not connected yet.
This is the first thing a serious Pakistani buyer asks, so here is the plain answer before you spend an hour on a demonstration.
There is no live FBR link in this software today. No IRN, no QR code on the bill, and no date we are willing to commit to. No integrator has been chosen either.
What exists is one setting on each product, recording which products the link will apply to on the day it is built. That setting does nothing else. Nothing is transmitted anywhere, and no number comes back.
In the meantime your bill charges and prints tax on our own invoice, at the values you set on your products. Nobody should buy this today expecting e-invoicing to be live by a particular date.
Connected
What one bill does to the rest of your business.
A bill in a distribution house is never only a piece of paper. The same document moves your godown, moves the shop’s balance and writes your accounts, at the moment you save it. These are the four places it lands.
The shop’s khata
The khata is debited what the shop will actually hand over, which is not always the bill’s total. Cash taken at the counter is written as a receipt against that same bill.
Your accounts
The bill posts its own double-entry journal in the same save. Nobody types a sales voucher, and your profit takes its cost from the very batches the bill sold.
Company schemes
The free line on the bill is decided by the scheme letter’s own dates. When a shop returns those cartons, the free goods are taken back, so you never claim one that came home.
Each of those four has its own page: inventory management, the customer ledger, accounting and company schemes.
Protection
Eight billing mistakes the system will not let you make.
Software does not stop mistakes by showing a warning. It stops them by making the wrong thing impossible. These eight are built into how a bill works here.
A bill changed after somebody acted on it
A posted bill cannot be edited by anybody. The correction is a void with a reason and a fresh bill, and both of them stay on your record for good.
Stock leaving your godown without a bill
The bill is the only document that takes sellable stock out. There is no other screen anywhere that can quietly remove a carton.
A printed line that does not match the carton
One typed line becomes one printed line per batch, each with its own code, expiry date and rate. A merged line is not something the system can produce.
A figure worked out wrong at the counter
Your counter types quantities. Price, tax, scheme and discount are all calculated for you, so there is no arithmetic left at the counter to get wrong.
A tax rate going stale inside the software
No statutory rate exists anywhere in this code. You set what each product carries, so the day a rate changes you change it, and nothing old is quietly believed.
A fixed tax multiplied by the quantity
A fixed amount is charged once per product per bill. Rs 5,000 fixed on ten pieces is Rs 5,000, not Rs 50,000.
Withholding changing what the bill is worth
Sales tax a registered buyer keeps back comes off what he pays, never off the bill. Your grand total and your tax total do not move.
Two firms printing the same invoice letters
Letters are unique across your firms, and letters a posted bill already carries are reserved for good. The same number can never be out in the market twice.
Limits
What this software does not do.
Here is what a bill in this software does not do. Better that you find out now than in the middle of a demonstration.
- FBR e-invoicing is not connectedThere is no live link, no IRN and no QR code on the bill. A setting on each product records which ones it will apply to when the link is built, and nothing more. No date is committed and no integrator is chosen. Tax is charged and printed on our own invoice meanwhile.
- No delivery or van salesBills are made at your office. There is no van stock, no load sheet and no app for a delivery man to bill from. A bill can record cash taken when it was made, but the trip itself is not managed here.
- Nothing sits behind the “who carried it” fieldIt is free text on the bill. It tells you who to ask when a shop queries a carton, and that is the whole of it.
- No payment gateway and no payment linkA shop cannot pay you through the software. What a bill records is money you took and wrote down, not money that moved by itself.
- No gate pass, e-way bill or transport documentThe invoice and the sales return note are the only documents here that travel with the goods.
- The bill prints in English, in rupeesUrdu shop and owner names are stored and shown, but the document itself is English. There is one currency, and it is the Pakistani rupee.
- No connection to other softwareThere is no link to any ERP or accounting package, no tax portal link and no API today. Bills leave as a PDF, and your registers leave as Excel.
Pricing and the 14-day free trial are the same for every part of the product. They are explained on the Netolyst DMS pricing page.
Terms
Words used on this page.
These are the trade words used above, in the meaning the bill gives them.
- Firm
- A tax entity inside one business, with its own NTN and STRN, its own bank accounts and its own invoice letters. One house often runs two or three.
- Invoice prefix
- The letters your firm’s bills carry. Up to eight characters, letters and numbers, unique across your firms. You type them bare and the dash is added for you.
- Invoice line
- One batch of one typed line. Twenty pieces across two lots is two invoice lines, not one.
- Trade price (TP)
- What the shop pays per carton or per piece. It is set on the batch when the goods arrive, so two loads can carry two prices.
- Landed cost
- What a carton really cost you after bilty and labour. It is what the quieter of the two price warnings is measured against.
- Bill taxes
- Sales tax, advance tax and further tax. Each is a switch on the product, percent or a fixed amount. No rate is stored in the software.
- GST
- The everyday name in this market for sales tax. It is the same levy, not an extra one.
- Sales tax withheld
- Tax a registered buyer keeps back and deposits himself. It reduces what he hands you. It does not reduce what your bill is worth.
- Payable amount
- Grand total less sales tax withheld. The only money the shop will actually hand over, and the figure its khata is debited.
- Void
- A posted bill taken back with a reason. It reverses the stock, credits the khata and leaves the original standing on your record.
- Re-bill
- A fresh bill prefilled from a voided one, carrying a new number and each line’s own discount.
- Free line
- A line with a quantity, a price of zero and a free mark. A company scheme put it there, or a person did, and one column says which.
What is invoicing software for a distribution business?
It is the part of a distributor management system that makes the bill. For a distributor that bill is not paperwork about a sale. It is the document that takes the goods off your shelf, puts the money on the shop’s khata and writes your accounting entry, all in one save. It bills batch by batch with each load’s own rate and expiry, charges the taxes your products carry, applies the company scheme and prints on your own firm’s letterhead.
What happens if a bill is wrong? Can I edit it?
No, and that is deliberate. You void it with a reason, which puts the goods back into the exact batches they came from and credits the shop’s khata, then you make a fresh bill that is prefilled from the old one. The original stays on your record. The alternative is a document that changed after somebody already acted on it, which is how a shop and a godown end up disagreeing.
Why did one line I typed print as two lines?
Because the pieces came off two loads, and those two loads have different batch codes, different expiry dates and often different rates. Printing them as one line would be printing something that is not in the carton. Your total does not change: your clerk sees the same amount whether the twenty pieces came off one lot or three.
Can I bill from two firms with different NTN numbers?
Yes. A firm here is a tax entity inside one business, with its own NTN and STRN, its own bank accounts, its own invoice letters and its own number series. One house commonly runs two or three, reporting together and filing separately. Each firm’s bills print with that firm’s own logo, and the firm details on a posted bill do not change later.
Does the software know the current sales tax rate?
No, and that is on purpose. No statutory rate exists anywhere in the code. Each product carries its own switches for sales tax, advance tax and further tax, on or off, percent or a fixed amount, and you set the values. A rate baked into a program goes out of date with the next Finance Act and gets believed anyway, so the software does not pretend to know one.
Is GST charged separately from sales tax?
No. GST is the everyday name in this market for sales tax. There is one levy, not two, so nothing can be charged twice by accident. The other two levies on the bill are advance tax and further tax, and each of those is its own switch on each product.
A customer withholds sales tax. How is that handled?
As what it is. He is keeping back part of the sales tax and depositing it himself under his own name, which is a decision about paying, not a levy on your bill. So your grand total and your tax total do not move. The payable amount is the grand total less the tax he withheld, and that is the figure his khata is debited. On a bill where nobody withheld anything, the two figures are the same number.
Is it integrated with FBR digital invoicing?
Not yet. There is no live connection, no IRN and no QR code on the invoice. What exists today is a setting on each product that records which products it will apply to when the link is built, and nothing more. No date is committed and no integrator is chosen. Tax is charged and printed on our own invoice in the meantime.
Can I stop a clerk from selling below rate?
The system warns and shows it in red, but it does not block, because a price is a commercial decision and a block is something people learn to route around. The warning judges what the shop actually pays, so a discount cannot be used to hide a line under it. There is a second, quieter warning when a line goes below what that carton really cost you.
Can a clerk see what a carton cost while billing?
Only if you give him that key. Cost and margin sit behind their own permissions, separate from the ability to make a bill. The below-cost warning is visible only to staff who hold the cost permission, while the below-trade-price warning is visible to everybody at the counter.
How is a discount shown on the bill?
In its own column beside the gross amount, never folded into the rate. You can type it as rupees or as a percent on a line, and the rupees are worked out for you. A discount on the whole bill is spread over the lines you tick, by value or equally, and added to each line’s own discount. Tax is then charged on the gross less the discount, on every line, on every bill.
Can I tell company free goods apart from free goods my counter gave away?
Yes, and that is the point of writing them as separate lines. A scheme line came from a company’s letter and is something you can claim. A hand free line was given as a favour and nobody promised it. One column on the bill says which is which, so at the end of the month the giveaway you cannot claim back has a number instead of a feeling.
How do bills print, and can I send one on WhatsApp?
Bills open as an A4 page that your browser turns into a PDF, so there is nothing to install on each counter machine. That PDF is a normal file you can send however you like. Each firm’s own logo travels with its bills, and a sales return prints as its own note rather than as a changed bill.
Can I buy the billing part on its own?
No. Invoicing is part of Netolyst DMS and is not sold separately, and that is a product decision rather than a pricing one. The bill is what removes your stock, the khata is what the bill debits, and the accounting entry is written in the same save. A billing program connected to nothing would make you type the same carton again somewhere else, which is the problem this product exists to remove.
Talk to us
Send us one of your bills.
Tell us what is on it. How many lines, which taxes your products carry, whether you bill from one firm or three, and what your counter still works out by hand today. Your reply will come from the engineers who built the billing screen, not from a sales desk.
Built for a Pakistani distribution house billing in rupees, holding one to four dealerships. FBR e-invoicing is not connected, and bills are made at your office rather than on a van.