Complete End-User Workflow & Operations Guide

A wholesale business has two interconnected sides:

• The physical side: What products are physically on your warehouse shelves, what is currently on delivery trucks, and what has been promised to customers.
• The financial side: What your balance sheet shows for inventory value, what you owe your suppliers, and what your customers owe you.

KariVast bridges these two sides with a shared document trail. Warehouse staff enter counts and scan barcodes at the dock; the back office reviews matched bills and reconciles payments. Nobody has to re-type packing slips or guess what arrived off a truck weeks ago.

The purchasing cycle covers everything from supplier quotes to dock receiving, invoice matching, payment, and returns.

Instead of manually typing long supplier price lists or quote PDFs on Monday morning, open Purchase Orders and select Scan Quote. The side-by-side workspace extracts line items, quantities, and prices from the vendor's PDF and matches them against your internal product catalog. Review the mappings, make any necessary adjustments, and generate a Purchase Order.

Purchase orders start in Draft status. Once reviewed and submitted, the order moves to Confirmed, alerting warehouse staff that an inbound shipment is expected.

When the truck unloads, staff open the order under Purchase Orders and select Receive Order.

• Partial Deliveries: If you ordered 100 units but only 60 arrived, enter 60 in the received quantity. The purchase order moves to Partially Received, and the remaining 40 units remain clearly tracked on backorder.
• Damaged Goods: If 5 of those 60 units are crushed or defective:
• Option A (Reject at dock): Accept only the 55 intact units into sellable bins and note the 5 rejected units in the receipt notes.
• Option B (Quarantine for inspection): If custody must be kept for return to vendor, place the 5 damaged units into a designated Quarantine Bin. These units are tracked on-site but will never show as available to sell to customers.
• Batch and Serial Tracking: If products require lots or serials, staff scan the batch numbers or unique unit serials directly at the receiving dock.

Receiving goods generates an official Goods Receipt document (RC-xxxxx). Your financial books automatically record:

• Increase to Inventory Asset: The value of the accepted goods hits your balance sheet.
• Accrued Liability (Goods Received Not Invoiced): A clearing liability account reflects that goods arrived before the supplier's final bill.

When the supplier's paper or email invoice arrives weeks later:

1. 1
   Open Supplier Bills and select New Supplier Bill, linking it to the purchase order.
2. 2
   KariVast automatically checks three records against each other:

• What was ordered on the Purchase Order.
• What physically arrived on the Goods Receipt.
• What the vendor billed on the Supplier Bill.

1. 1
   If the supplier bills for 100 units when only 55 good units were accepted, the system flags the discrepancy immediately. Accounts payable can either pay only for the 55 units received or issue a Supplier Debit Note to record the supplier credit.

When the bill is approved, open Supplier Payments, select the bill, and apply payment via bank transfer, check, or cash. This clears the payable liability and updates your bank balance.

The sales cycle manages customer orders from quote to fulfillment, invoicing, and returns.

When a customer places an order:

1. 1
   Create a Sales Order in Sales Orders.
2. 2
   Once confirmed, KariVast immediately reserves the ordered quantities:

• On Hand: Total physical inventory in the building.
• Reserved: Stock committed to existing, unfulfilled sales orders.
• Available to Sell: The true uncommitted stock ready for new customers.

1. 1
   Reserving inventory ensures your team never accidentally promises the same box of goods to two different customers.

1. 1
   Warehouse pickers open Fulfillments to see packing lists with exact bin locations (aisle, shelf, and bin).
2. 2
   For serialized or batch-tracked goods, staff scan the specific serial numbers or select lots to fulfill.
3. 3
   When marked as shipped:

• Inventory physically leaves the warehouse balance.
• KariVast automatically recognizes the Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) and deducts that value from your Inventory Asset.

1. 1
   Generate a Sales Invoice directly from the fulfillment.
2. 2
   Posting the invoice recognizes Sales Revenue and adds the customer balance to Accounts Receivable.
3. 3
   When the customer pays, open Customer Payments to record the funds and clear the invoice to Paid.

If a customer returns goods:

1. 1
   Create a Customer Credit Note referencing the original invoice and delivery.
2. 2
   Quality Inspection:

• Sellable items: Restocked into primary picking bins, reversing the original Cost of Goods Sold.
• Damaged items: Routed to a quarantine bin so damaged goods cannot be accidentally resold.

1. 1
   A manager reviews and approves the credit note, reducing the customer's balance due or issuing store credit.

Organizing warehouse storage prevents lost items and speeds up order dispatch.

Warehouses can be partitioned into Zones, Shelves, and Bins. Each physical bin has its own barcode and address (for example, Aisle A, Shelf 2, Bin 04). When receiving items or picking orders, staff are guided directly to the designated bin.

• Inter-Warehouse Transfers: Moving stock between different facilities (such as Central Depot to a Retail Store) uses Stock Transfers. Stock is placed In Transit while on the road, maintaining inventory ownership on the balance sheet until the receiving facility confirms arrival.
• Intra-Warehouse Relocations: Moving items from high-pallet bulk storage down to forward picking bins uses Relocations. This updates bin locations without affecting total warehouse inventory value.

Avoid shutting down operations for weekend marathons by using Stock Takes:

1. 1
   Initiate Count: Choose a full warehouse, a specific zone, or a single bin. KariVast snapshots the current expected count.
2. 2
   Count Items: Staff count physical stock on shelves or scan barcodes.
3. 3
   Review Differences: The document moves to Review status. KariVast highlights discrepancies (system count versus counted count) and calculates the monetary impact.
4. 4
   Approve Adjustments: A manager approves the count. The system updates on-hand stock and automatically records the inventory adjustment gain or loss on your financial statements.

KariVast uses double-entry bookkeeping so your financial statements match your physical operations.

In simple inventory apps, stock is just an editable number: if someone types +10 items, the app changes the number on the screen. But nobody knows where those 10 items came from, who authorized them, or how much they cost.

In KariVast, every physical movement has an offsetting financial record:

• Stock arriving at the dock increases your Inventory Asset and increases your Unbilled Supplier Liabilities.
• Stock leaving for a customer decreases your Inventory Asset and records Cost of Goods Sold.

Because movements and accounting entries are generated together, your Balance Sheet and your Warehouse Shelves stay in complete agreement.

Older systems often fight users when correcting past errors or allow users to delete historical data, which breaks past tax returns. In KariVast:

1. 1
   Completed months are locked under Accounting Periods to protect historical tax filings.
2. 2
   To fix a past error, you do not erase history. You click Reverse or issue an adjustment in the current open period.
3. 3
   The adjustment links directly to the historical transaction, keeping your books balanced and your audit trail clean.

To protect your business from mistakes and fraud, KariVast uses Roles and Permissions to control access:

• Warehouse Receiving Staff: Can inspect and receive incoming shipments, scan barcodes, and allocate bins. They cannot create purchase orders, view supplier pricing, or edit financial accounts.
• Order Pickers: Can view pick lists and mark orders as fulfilled. They cannot issue sales invoices or change selling prices.
• Accounts Payable & Receivable: Can match supplier bills to dock receipts, issue invoices, and record payments. They cannot fabricate inventory without an official receiving slip or approved stock take.
• Managers & Controllers: Can approve orders, authorize customer credit memos, complete stock takes, and lock accounting periods.

To see these workflows in action with small test transactions, follow our step-by-step walkthroughs:

• Set up your company details in Company Setup.
• Create your first storage facility in First Warehouse.
• Walk through your first purchase cycle in First Purchase Order Walkthrough.
• Walk through your first sales cycle in First Sales Order Walkthrough.
• Need help checking a document or understanding a step while you work? Open Ask Kari from the sidebar or the Ask Kari button in the bottom-right corner.