Setting up an accounts receivable workflow with Rutter
Introduction
Rutter API enables you to handle all of the common workflows needed to handle invoices and other receivables for your customers.
- Connect to a business entity’s accounting system using Rutter Link. See Getting Started for more info on creating your first connection.
- Create or link the business entity’s Accounts used for logging Invoices and Invoice Payments.
- Create Invoices and link Customers, asset Accounts, Items, and Tracking Categories (Classes, Locations, and Departments).
- Upload Attachments to your logged Invoices.
- Create and link Invoice Payments and Invoice Credit Memos to Customers and unpaid Invoices.
Create a Connection
Embed Rutter Link into your application and walk through an end to end business authentication flow in order to create a new Connection. This Connection represents the business accounting system and contains an access_token used to read and write data for that instance.
See our Getting Started guide for more information on creating your first Connection.
Create or link the invoice receivables account and cash account
When logging invoices, every invoice must push into an account reflecting the receivable asset. This is an Account of category = 'asset' and account_type = 'accounts_receivable'.
When logging invoice payments, every invoice payment credits the accounts receivable account linked to the invoice and debits the business entity’s cash account.
Usually companies contain an existing accounts receivable account in their chart of accounts for you to link to, although sometimes you may want to create an AR account to reflect invoices that you process only. The GET /accounts and POST /accounts APIs let you link existing accounts or create new ones if they don’t exist.
Creating a detailed invoice
The POST /invoices API lets you create an invoice. There are a couple of important required and optional components:
Debit Account
This is the account being debited in the invoice. This is an Account of category = 'liability' and account_type = 'accounts_receivable'.
Customer
This is the customer linked to the bill. The GET /customers and POST /customers APIs let you create and link customers as you log invoices.
Items
Every invoice contains multiple items (either goods or services) that were sold as part of the invoice, each of which credit certain accounts depending on what comprises their cost of goods sold. The GET /items API lets you fetch all items in the business entity’s catalog.
Uploading an attachment to a logged invoice
POST /attachments lets you upload the invoice in PDF or image format and attach it to the logged invoice.
Creating and applying invoice payments and invoice credit memos
To create and link invoice payments and invoice credit memos, you can use POST /invoice_payments and POST /invoice_credit_memos. An Invoice Payment debits an accounts receivable account and credits an asset account. A Invoice Credit Memo can be created with POST /invoice_credit_memos and is attached to a Customer. The invoice credit memo can be created and immediately applied to an invoice, or created unapplied.