AWRA Help Center

Every item has an Item type. A Stock item is counted, moved and valued. A Service is sold and bought exactly like an item, but has no shelf quantity, no check-ins or check-outs, no reservations, no cost of goods sold, and never appears in a low-stock alert, a count or a stock report.

Creating A Service

1. Open Inventory → Items and add an item. At the top of the form, set Item type to Service.
2. The stock fields — inventory account, stock, reorder point, tracking, preferred supplier and reorder quantity — disappear. A service needs none of them.
3. Type the Selling price. A stock item’s price is worked out from its cost and markup; a service’s is the rate you charge.
4. Optionally enter a Buying price — what the service costs you to deliver. It is the default price on a purchase order and gives the sales reports a margin. Leave it blank and the margin reads n/a, never 100%.
5. Optionally choose an Income account. Empty means Sales Revenue. Use it to keep, say, consulting fees apart from product sales on the profit and loss.
6. Give it a category. New workspaces come with a Services category and a Sample Service to try.

The item list has a type filter and a Service badge, and shows “—” for a service’s stock and reorder point. A service’s page has no Stock, Adjustments or Predictive tab. Scanning a service’s barcode offers only open and print label.

Changing An Item’s Type

• Service to stock is always allowed. The item starts at zero stock.
• Stock to service is refused while the item still holds stock, has a quantity on any shelf, is on hold for a customer, sits in an unfinished count, or has serial or batch records. Clear those first.
• Item type is a governed field. If your workspace routes item master changes through approval, the change waits for an approver, and the rules above are checked again when it is applied.

Selling A Service

• Pick a service on a quote, sales order or proforma, an invoice or a recurring invoice like any item. Price lists price it the same way.
• Each line is labelled Item, Service or Custom line. A custom line — a typed description and price — is still there for a one-off charge you will never repeat; a service is the one you sell again and again at a known rate.
• No stock check stands in the way: an invoice or a POS sale of a service goes through with nothing on the shelf. Confirming a sales order never reserves or backorders a service, and a POS return never puts one back into stock.

What Posts When You Sell

• An invoice of services only books its revenue when it is issued — Cr each service’s income account, or Sales Revenue. It has no Checkout button, because there is nothing to issue from stock.
• A mixed invoice — goods and services together — books its whole revenue once, at stock checkout, exactly as an invoice of goods does. A laptop at KES 85,000 and its setup at KES 3,500 post KES 88,500 of revenue when the laptop leaves the store, not twice.
• A service never posts cost of goods sold.
• KRA eTIMS: a service line is filed under the services item classification code, 8020891800, rather than the goods code. An item can carry its own classification code, which overrides the default. See KRA eTIMS Filing.

Buying A Service

1. Services go on procurement requests, RFQs, supplier quotations and purchase orders like any item. An approved request for a service always goes to an RFQ — there is no stock to check it against.
2. Awarding a supplier’s quote updates the service’s buying price only. Your selling rate does not move because a subcontractor quoted.
3. When the work is done, open the purchase order. Services are received in the Services on this order panel, not by a check-in: enter the quantity delivered, an optional note, and press Confirm. You can confirm part of a line and the rest later, but never more than is outstanding.
4. Each confirmation books Dr Purchases, Cr Accounts payable at the price on the order — the same moment a goods receipt credits the supplier. The panel lists every confirmation with its quantity, amount, who confirmed it and the note.
5. The order is marked delivered when every line is in: goods checked in and services confirmed. Payment follows one rule on every pay screen — web, M-Pesa, Paystack and the API — every line received or confirmed. Three-way matching counts confirmations as received.

Confirming delivery uses the same permission as checking goods in, so whoever receives at the store can confirm a service. On the Android app, the purchase order screen has a Confirm services sheet.

Withholding Tax

Withholding tax is levied on fees for work, not on goods. On a supplier bill it is worked out on the service and typed lines only: a bill for KES 80,000 of cable and KES 20,000 of installation, at 3%, withholds KES 600. See Withholding Tax.

Reports, Import And Integrations

• Sales by item lists services, marked “· Service”, with a Goods and Services revenue split at the top. A service with no buying price shows its cost and margin as n/a.
• The custom report builder has an Item Type column and grouping. Stock reports, valuations, reorder suggestions, forecasts and the nightly reorder-point recalculation leave services out.
• Bulk import has an Item Type column: stock or service, blank meaning stock, so old spreadsheets still import. A service row needs no inventory account, ignores stock and reorder point, and uses the Selling Price column. An existing item keeps its type on import. Item exports carry the type.
• Global search tags a service, and the in-app assistant answers “how many do we have” for one by saying it is a service and carries no stock.
• The API and the Developer API return item_type, filter on it, and return the stock fields of a service as null.
• QuickBooks Online receives a service as a QuickBooks Service item, with income and expense accounts and no asset account.
• The Android app has the same type switch, sells a service at the till without a stock check, and keeps the type in its offline copy of your items.

Common Mistakes

• Waiting for a check-in on a service order. A service is never checked in. Confirm it on the purchase order, or the order cannot be paid.
• Trying to return a service to the supplier. A supplier return moves stock and refuses a service. Raise a debit note instead. Landed costs are spread over goods only, for the same reason.
• Typing the same service as a custom line every time. It works, but it has no saved price, no income account of its own and no history in the sales reports. Catalogue it once.
• Selling half an hour. Quantities are whole units. Sell a service in the block you charge for — a 30-minute session, a visit, a day.

Related

• Items — the item record a service is.
• Invoices — selling one.
• Purchase Orders — buying one.
• Withholding Tax — what is withheld on it.