Ratals ERP is what a growing business eventually needs when Commerce alone can no longer answer the questions that matter - real accounting instead of order totals, purchasing that accounts for lead times and vendor terms, inventory valuation, fixed asset management, and financial records that can stand up to an audit.
Ratals ERP runs on the same data architecture as Ratals CMS and Ratals Commerce. There's no export, no migration, and no separate system to configure - the customer, the order, and the product you're already working with are the exact same records ERP builds on. Enabling ERP doesn't connect another application to your store or ask you to rebuild what you've already configured. It sits directly on top of the products, customers, orders, and settings already in place, extending what you've already built instead of replacing it.
As your business operates, Ratals ERP continuously transforms day-to-day operational activity into accurate financial records, allowing accounting to become a natural result of running the business rather than a separate process performed afterward.
This guide walks through every major component of Ratals ERP in the order you would typically configure it, explaining how each feature works and how it connects to the data you've already built in the CMS and Commerce levels.
Table of Contents for Ratals ERP:
Ratals ERP is built around five connected business functions that growing companies eventually need - accounting, purchasing, inventory valuation, fixed asset management, and financial reporting. Because every function operates on the same data already created in Commerce, operational activity automatically becomes accounting activity, eliminating duplicate entry, reconciliation, and synchronization between disconnected systems.
Every order, refund, and payment processed in Commerce posts directly to the general ledger - there's no export step and no separate bookkeeping application to keep in sync. Revenue, tax liability, customer payments, and cost of goods sold are recorded from the same transaction the moment it occurs, so your financial records reflect what actually happened in the business rather than a batch import processed hours later.
Purchasing in Ratals ERP is built around real vendor relationships, not just reorder points. Lead times, payment terms, minimum order quantities, and vendor pricing are stored with each vendor record, allowing purchase orders to be created using the actual constraints your business operates under. Because purchasing and inventory share the same data, receiving inventory updates stock quantities immediately without requiring manual reconciliation or secondary imports.
Ratals ERP tracks inventory value using the costing method your business operates on - FIFO, LIFO, or weighted average - recalculating inventory value as stock moves rather than relying on periodic estimates. Because inventory valuation is built on the same products, purchasing, and sales data used throughout the platform, the inventory asset shown on your balance sheet always reflects the inventory your business actually owns.
Fixed assets - including equipment, vehicles, property, and other long-term business assets - are tracked with acquisition cost, depreciation schedules, accumulated depreciation, and current book value inside the same platform your business already uses. Depreciation is recorded automatically according to the schedule you define, allowing asset values to flow directly into your financial statements without maintaining separate spreadsheets.
Because accounting, purchasing, inventory, and fixed assets all share one data model, financial reports are built directly from live transactional data instead of reconciliations between multiple systems. Whether you're reviewing the general ledger, a balance sheet, or an audit trail, every transaction can be traced back to the exact order, payment, purchase order, receiving transaction, or vendor invoice that created it.
Unlike traditional ERP software, Ratals ERP isn't installed beside your ecommerce platform - it extends it. The products, customers, orders, inventory, and settings you already created in Commerce become the accounting and operational records ERP works from. There are no duplicate databases, synchronization services, or nightly imports because the entire platform already shares the same underlying data model.
Every capability in this guide - accounting, purchasing, inventory valuation, fixed asset management, and financial reporting - is built directly into Ratals ERP. There's no marketplace to browse, no third-party modules to evaluate, and no per-feature add-ons to purchase separately. What you read in this guide is what you get, fully integrated and working together from day one.
That matters beyond convenience. Features built by different vendors, on different release schedules, rarely share the same assumptions about how a customer, an order, or a cost should be represented. Businesses often spend as much time reconciling numbers between disconnected applications as they do running the business itself. Because every part of Ratals ERP is built on one data model by one development team, that reconciliation work simply doesn't exist. Ecommerce, purchasing, inventory, and accounting aren't synchronized after the fact - they're already looking at the same data.
Before recording accounting transactions, Ratals ERP allows you to configure several global accounting settings that determine how inventory costs, landed costs, profit margins, and tax exemption behavior operate throughout the platform. These settings establish the default accounting behavior for your business and are typically configured once during implementation.
Because these settings affect how future accounting activity is processed, they should be reviewed carefully before your business begins processing purchase orders, inventory receipts, and customer orders. Most businesses rarely need to change these settings once operations are underway.
Select the inventory costing method your business uses for financial reporting. Ratals ERP supports FIFO (First-In, First-Out), LIFO (Last-In, First-Out), and Weighted Average Cost. The selected method determines how inventory assets are consumed when products are sold and how Cost of Goods Sold is calculated on future transactions. Changing this setting affects only future inventory depletion and does not recalculate historical sales.
Choose how bill lines that contribute to inventory acquisition costs - such as freight, duties, brokerage fees, insurance, and other landed costs - are distributed across inventory received on future Purchase Orders. Ratals ERP supports allocation by Cost, Unit Quantity, Weight, and Volume, allowing businesses to select the method that best reflects how those acquisition costs should be assigned. When bill lines are allocated to one or more Purchase Orders, Ratals ERP uses the selected method to distribute those costs across the inventory assets created by each Purchase Order. Changes to this setting affect only future inventory receipts and do not modify inventory that has already been received.
This setting controls how profit margin is displayed on individual ecommerce orders within the administration area. When enabled, shipping revenue is included when calculating the displayed profit and margin for an order. When disabled, shipping revenue is excluded from those calculations. This setting is provided as a management reporting preference only and does not affect your accounting records, financial statements, inventory valuation, or Cost of Goods Sold calculations.
This setting determines whether customers are allowed to indicate that they are tax exempt during checkout or when adding or editing a shipping address. When enabled, customers can identify themselves as tax exempt. When disabled, the tax exemption option is hidden entirely, requiring taxes or VAT to be calculated on every order without allowing customers to override the setting during checkout.
If your business uses Avalara for automated tax calculation, this setting will allow Ratals Commerce to calculate sales tax and VAT through your Avalara account during checkout. When disabled, taxes are calculated using the tax rules configured in the Ratals Commerce Sales Tax section.
Coming Soon: Avalara integration is currently under development. This setting has been included in preparation for the upcoming integration and is not yet active.
These settings define how accounting behaves across the platform, allowing inventory valuation, landed cost allocation, profitability reporting, and tax calculation to remain consistent as your business grows. Once configured, the remaining accounting features throughout Ratals ERP build upon these same settings automatically.
The Chart of Accounts is the foundation of every accounting system. Before a business can record revenue, pay a vendor, receive inventory, or produce a financial statement, it must first define the accounts that every transaction will affect. Every journal entry, purchase order, customer payment, inventory adjustment, and depreciation entry ultimately posts to one or more accounts within this structure. Because of this, the Chart of Accounts becomes the framework that organizes the financial history of the entire business.
Ratals ERP includes a fully customizable Chart of Accounts designed to support businesses as they grow. Whether your organization requires a straightforward account structure or a more detailed chart with hundreds of accounts, the system allows you to organize your accounting records around the way your business actually operates rather than forcing you into a predefined template.
Each account contains more than simply an account number and description. Every account is assigned a classification that determines where it appears throughout the accounting system. Asset, liability, equity, revenue, expense, and contra accounts all behave differently, allowing Ratals ERP to automatically organize transactions into the correct financial statements as activity is recorded.
Because every accounting feature references this same Chart of Accounts, information remains consistent throughout the platform. Customer payments, vendor invoices, purchase orders, inventory receipts, journal entries, depreciation, and every other accounting transaction all reference the same accounts, creating one continuous financial record instead of separate records that must later be reconciled.
Many businesses that grow from ecommerce into accounting discover they now have two separate systems to maintain. Orders are processed in one application, exported into accounting software, and then adjusted again to reconcile inventory, payments, taxes, and purchasing. Every export introduces another opportunity for information to become inconsistent.
Ratals ERP approaches accounting differently. The products, customers, orders, inventory, vendors, and accounting records all exist within the same platform. When Commerce records a sale, Purchasing receives inventory, or Accounting posts a journal entry, every transaction references the same Chart of Accounts without synchronization, duplicate databases, or nightly imports.
The Chart of Accounts serves as the foundation for every financial report produced by Ratals ERP. The General Ledger, Trial Balance, Income Statement, Balance Sheet, Cash Flow Statement, and other accounting reports all organize and summarize information using the accounts defined here. Once your Chart of Accounts has been established, the rest of the accounting system simply builds upon that structure.
For most businesses, the Chart of Accounts is configured early in the implementation process and only changes gradually over time. As your business grows, additional accounts can be added without disrupting historical financial data, allowing your reporting structure to evolve alongside the business while maintaining complete financial continuity.
For detailed instructions on creating accounts, assigning classifications, and configuring your Chart of Accounts, see the complete Chart of Accounts tutorial.
Bank Accounts provide a centralized location for managing the financial accounts your business uses for deposits, payments, transfers, and other banking activity. Each bank account created in Ratals ERP can be connected to the appropriate cash account in your Chart of Accounts, allowing banking activity and accounting records to remain aligned throughout the platform.
Because bank accounts are connected directly to your accounting structure, deposits, vendor payments, customer payments, transfers, and other cash activity can be reviewed against the transactions already recorded within Ratals ERP. This gives accounting teams a clear way to verify that the General Ledger and the bank statement remain in agreement without treating the bank as a separate source of accounting data.
Ratals ERP supports secure bank connectivity through third-party banking aggregation services, allowing businesses to connect financial institutions through a single interface. This approach provides access to a wide range of banks without requiring Ratals to maintain a separate custom integration for every financial institution.
Once a bank account has been connected, transactions from the financial institution become available within Ratals ERP for reconciliation. Deposits, withdrawals, fees, transfers, and other bank activity can then be reviewed against the accounting transactions already created through normal business operations.
Each Bank Account is associated with the appropriate cash account in your Chart of Accounts. This relationship allows Ratals ERP to compare imported banking activity with the corresponding accounting records while maintaining proper double-entry accounting principles.
For example, a checking account may be connected to the cash account used for vendor payments and customer deposits, while a savings account or secondary operating account can be connected to a different cash account. This keeps banking activity organized according to the same accounting structure used throughout the General Ledger and financial statements.
Bank reconciliation allows accounting teams to compare transactions reported by the financial institution with the accounting activity already recorded within Ratals ERP. Customer payments, vendor payments, transfers, fees, and deposits can be matched to their corresponding bank transactions, helping verify that cash activity has been recorded completely and accurately.
Rather than automatically creating accounting entries from every imported bank transaction, Ratals ERP treats the accounting system as the source of truth and uses the bank statement to confirm that those transactions cleared as expected. This preserves the integrity of the accounting records while still allowing unmatched items - such as bank fees, interest income, or previously unrecorded activity - to be reviewed and recorded through the appropriate accounting workflow.
Reconciliation helps identify missing transactions, duplicate entries, incorrect amounts, uncleared payments, and other differences between the General Ledger and the bank statement. By resolving those differences regularly, accounting teams can maintain accurate cash balances and gain greater confidence in the Balance Sheet and Cash Flow Statement.
Because Bank Accounts, customer payments, vendor payments, journal entries, and financial reports all operate from the same shared data model, Ratals ERP connects cash management directly to the rest of the accounting system. The bank confirms what occurred, while the underlying business transactions remain fully traceable from their operational source through the General Ledger and financial statements.
If you've already been using Ratals Commerce, your vendors are already configured. Ratals ERP doesn't require you to recreate vendor records or import them into a separate accounting system. Instead, ERP extends the same vendor records already used by inventory and purchasing, allowing operational and accounting information to exist together within a single record.
All of the vendor information available in Commerce - including contact information, purchasing details, lead times, and inventory relationships - continues to be used exactly as before. When ERP is enabled, additional accounting fields become available that connect each vendor directly to your Chart of Accounts, allowing purchasing transactions to automatically generate accounting entries using the correct accounts.
Each vendor can be assigned an Expense Account from your Chart of Accounts. Ratals ERP automatically lists every available expense account, allowing you to associate each vendor with the appropriate account for your accounting structure. If a vendor requires its own dedicated expense account, simply create it in your Chart of Accounts and assign it to the vendor.
Each vendor can also be assigned a Liability Account from your Chart of Accounts. Ratals ERP automatically lists every available liability account, making it easy to associate each vendor with the correct payable account. These account assignments allow purchasing and Accounts Payable transactions to be recorded against the proper liability accounts automatically as business activity occurs.
When Purchase Orders are received, posted, invoices are entered, or vendor payments are processed, Ratals ERP uses the Expense and Liability Accounts assigned to the vendor to generate the appropriate journal entries automatically. This eliminates manual account selection during daily operations while helping ensure accounting transactions remain accurate and consistent.
If you're upgrading from Ratals Commerce, your vendors are already in place. Because the same vendor records are shared between Commerce and ERP, there's no need to recreate or import them into another system. After enabling ERP, simply return to each vendor and assign the appropriate Expense Account and Liability Account from your Chart of Accounts.
Once these accounts have been assigned, Ratals ERP automatically knows which accounting accounts to use when Purchase Orders are received, posted, invoices are created, and vendor payments are processed. This one-time configuration completes the transition from Commerce to ERP while preserving all of the vendor information you've already built.
Many businesses maintain separate vendor records for purchasing and accounting, requiring information to be synchronized between inventory software and bookkeeping applications. Ratals ERP eliminates that duplication by extending the same vendor record already used throughout Commerce. Purchasing, inventory, Accounts Payable, and accounting all reference the same vendor information, allowing operational activity to automatically become accounting activity without duplicate data entry.
For detailed information on creating and managing vendors, see the Commerce Vendor documentation. The ERP additions simply extend those existing vendor records with the accounting information needed to automate purchasing and Accounts Payable.
Bill-To Profiles allow you to save the billing information commonly used on Purchase Orders so it doesn't have to be entered manually every time a new order is created. Whether your organization has one purchasing contact or multiple departments placing orders, Bill-To Profiles help standardize billing information while significantly reducing data entry during the purchasing process.
Each profile stores the complete billing contact, including the contact name, company name, address, phone number, email address, and other billing details. When creating a Purchase Order, simply select one of the saved Bill-To Profiles and Ratals ERP automatically populates the Purchase Order with the stored information.
Organizations often send Purchase Orders to the same accounting departments, purchasing contacts, or branch offices repeatedly. Bill-To Profiles eliminate the need to remember or re-enter this information for every Purchase Order, allowing purchasing staff to create orders more quickly while reducing typing mistakes and inconsistent billing information.
When a Bill-To Profile is selected, Ratals ERP copies the profile information directly into the Purchase Order. The Purchase Order stores its own snapshot of that information rather than maintaining a live reference to the profile. If the Bill-To Profile is updated later - for example, if the contact person changes, the company relocates, or a phone number is updated - previously created Purchase Orders continue displaying the original billing information that existed when they were issued.
This approach preserves the historical accuracy of every Purchase Order while allowing Bill-To Profiles to evolve over time without affecting past purchasing records.
Bill-To Profiles are designed to simplify repetitive purchasing tasks. By creating reusable billing templates once, purchasing staff can generate new Purchase Orders more efficiently while ensuring billing information remains consistent across the organization. Combined with Vendors, Purchase Orders, and the Chart of Accounts, Bill-To Profiles help streamline the purchasing workflow without sacrificing accuracy.
Purchasing is more than simply sending an order to a vendor. Every purchase begins as a request for inventory, continues through receiving the shipment, and ultimately becomes part of your company's financial records. Ratals ERP manages this entire workflow within a single platform, allowing purchasing, inventory, and accounting to work from the same information without duplicate entry, exports, or reconciliation between separate systems.
Because Purchase Orders are fully integrated with inventory, vendors, bills, and accounting, every stage of the purchasing process builds on the one before it. Quantities ordered become quantities received, received inventory becomes inventory assets, and posted transactions become permanent accounting records - all while maintaining complete traceability throughout the system.
Purchase Orders are created directly from your vendor records using the products and inventory already maintained within Ratals ERP. Vendor pricing, payment terms, lead times, and product information are immediately available while building the order, reducing duplicate data entry and helping ensure purchasing decisions are based on current business information.
Purchase Orders remain editable while they are being prepared, allowing quantities, pricing, products, shipping estimates, and other purchasing details to be updated before inventory is received and the transaction is committed to accounting. Once completed, the Purchase Order becomes the official purchasing document sent to your vendor. Throughout its lifecycle, Ratals tracks the status of each order, allowing your purchasing team to know what has been ordered, what is still outstanding, and what inventory is expected to arrive.
When inventory arrives, Purchase Orders move into the receiving process. Rather than manually adjusting inventory quantities, Ratals ERP allows you to receive products directly against the Purchase Order, recording exactly what was delivered by the vendor.
Partial shipments, backorders, damaged items, and quantity differences can all be handled during receiving, ensuring inventory accurately reflects what your business physically received rather than simply what was originally ordered. Inventory quantities are updated immediately, allowing products to become available for sales, manufacturing, or additional operations as soon as they are received.
Vendor bills are entered within Accounts Payable as independent accounting documents rather than being assigned entirely to a single Purchase Order. Each bill line is assigned to the appropriate account within your Chart of Accounts, and bill lines that contribute to inventory value can also be allocated to one or more Purchase Orders.
This line-level allocation allows Ratals ERP to handle real-world vendor invoices accurately. A single freight, brokerage, duty, insurance, or other landed-cost charge may apply to one Purchase Order or be divided across several Purchase Orders without changing the way the vendor presented the original bill. Ratals ERP preserves the original bill line while recording the internal allocations needed to determine how much of that cost belongs to each Purchase Order.
Costs allocated to a Purchase Order are then distributed across the inventory received on that order using your selected landed-cost method, such as purchase cost, unit quantity, weight, or volume. Bill lines unrelated to inventory remain assigned directly to their designated expense or other accounting accounts without affecting inventory value.
Receiving inventory increases physical stock, but it doesn't complete the accounting process. Before a Purchase Order can be posted, the inventory received against it must be reviewed and any bill-line allocations that contribute to its final inventory value must be completed. This allows Ratals ERP to calculate inventory assets using the actual acquisition costs assigned to the Purchase Order rather than relying only on estimated costs entered when the order was created.
Once the Purchase Order has been reviewed, verified, and all applicable landed-cost allocations have been completed, it can be posted to accounting. Posting finalizes the transaction by creating the appropriate journal entries, establishing inventory asset values, recording the accounting impact of the receipt, and making the transaction part of your permanent financial records.
Once a Purchase Order has been posted, it can no longer be edited directly. If corrections are required afterward, Ratals ERP records those changes through reversing or adjusting transactions rather than modifying the original Purchase Order. This preserves a complete accounting history while maintaining full traceability from purchasing through financial reporting.
Separating receiving, bill entry, landed-cost allocation, and posting provides an additional level of financial control. Inventory can be received and made available for operations while accounting reviews vendor invoices, verifies allocated costs, and confirms the final inventory value before committing the transaction to the General Ledger. This workflow helps maintain accurate inventory while preserving the integrity of your financial statements.
Many businesses manage purchasing across multiple applications - creating Purchase Orders in one system, updating inventory in another, and entering vendor bills into separate accounting software. Every handoff creates more work and increases the chance for information to become inconsistent.
Ratals ERP approaches purchasing differently. Creating the Purchase Order, receiving inventory, entering vendor bills, allocating applicable bill lines, establishing inventory assets, and posting accounting transactions all occur within the same platform using the same underlying data. Purchasing doesn't end when inventory arrives - it becomes part of one continuous operational and financial record that connects purchasing, inventory, Accounts Payable, and accounting together.
Managing purchasing as one connected workflow reduces duplicate work, improves inventory accuracy, and ensures financial records reflect what actually happened. Instead of purchasing, inventory, landed-cost allocation, and accounting becoming separate processes managed by different systems, Ratals ERP keeps them connected from the moment inventory is ordered until the transaction appears on your financial statements.
For detailed instructions on creating Purchase Orders, receiving inventory, entering vendor bills, allocating bill lines, posting transactions to accounting, and understanding the purchasing workflow, see the complete Purchase Orders tutorial.
Accounts Payable manages the money your business owes to vendors. Whether you're purchasing inventory through a Purchase Order or recording a normal operating expense such as rent, utilities, insurance, or professional services, Bills provide the central record used to track vendor obligations, payment status, and the accounting impact of each purchase.
Because Accounts Payable is built directly into Ratals ERP, bills, vendor payments, Purchase Orders, inventory assets, and your financial statements all work from the same data. Vendor liabilities are recorded automatically while giving your accounting team complete visibility into outstanding balances and upcoming payment obligations.
The Accounts Payable Dashboard provides a real-time overview of your outstanding vendor obligations. Bills are summarized by aging periods - including current, 7-day, 14-day, 21-day, 30-day, and additional due intervals - allowing accounting staff to quickly identify which invoices require attention. This dashboard provides an immediate snapshot of upcoming cash requirements while helping prioritize vendor payments before invoices become overdue.
Bills record the invoices your business receives from vendors. Every bill stores the vendor, invoice number, due date, payment status, and one or more bill lines. Each bill line is assigned to the appropriate account within your Chart of Accounts, ensuring every charge is recorded correctly within your accounting records.
For inventory purchases, bill lines that contribute to inventory value - such as freight, duties, brokerage fees, insurance, or other landed costs - can be allocated to one or more Purchase Orders. This allows Ratals ERP to preserve the vendor's invoice exactly as received while internally distributing those costs across the appropriate Purchase Orders for accurate inventory valuation. Bill lines that do not contribute to inventory remain assigned directly to their designated accounting accounts without affecting inventory assets.
Because allocations occur at the bill-line level rather than the bill level, a single freight charge can be divided across multiple Purchase Orders when necessary. This mirrors real-world vendor invoices while providing the flexibility needed to calculate landed costs accurately.
For non-inventory expenses, bills can simply be entered without allocating any bill lines to Purchase Orders, allowing your accounting team to manage every vendor invoice from one centralized location.
Bills remain editable while they are being prepared. Once a bill has been posted to accounting, it becomes part of the permanent accounting record and can no longer be edited directly. If corrections are required after posting, Ratals ERP records those corrections as new accounting transactions rather than modifying the original bill, preserving a complete audit trail throughout the Accounts Payable process.
Once a bill is ready to be paid, payments are recorded directly against that bill. Ratals ERP stores the payment amount, payment date, payment method, reference number, and the bill being paid, allowing every payment to remain connected to the original vendor invoice.
The Vendor Payments listing provides a searchable and sortable history of every payment entered into the system. Because vendor payments become part of your accounting records, posted payments cannot be edited directly. If a payment was entered incorrectly, Ratals ERP allows the payment to be cancelled, automatically reversing the associated accounting activity while preserving the original transaction. A corrected payment can then be recorded as a new transaction, ensuring every change remains part of the permanent accounting history.
Accounts Payable brings together vendor invoices, bill-line allocations, payments, Purchase Orders, and accounting into one continuous workflow. Bill lines that contribute to inventory value become part of landed-cost calculations, while every other bill line is posted directly to its assigned accounting account. Because every bill and payment is recorded within the same shared data model, Ratals ERP automatically keeps vendor liabilities, inventory assets, journal entries, and financial statements synchronized as day-to-day business operations occur.
Customer Credit Limits allow you to control how much Accounts Receivable a customer can accumulate before additional credit sales are restricted. Rather than relying on employees to manually monitor outstanding balances, Ratals ERP automatically checks each customer's available credit before allowing new orders to be charged to their account.
Each customer can be assigned an individual credit limit based on your business relationship and payment terms. Once configured, Ratals ERP continuously monitors the customer's outstanding Accounts Receivable balance, helping ensure new purchases remain within the approved credit amount.
Setting a credit limit is simple. Search for an existing customer, enter their approved credit amount, and save the record. Once configured, Ratals ERP continuously tracks the customer's available Accounts Receivable balance and uses that limit whenever purchases are made using the Customer Credit payment method.
To allow customers to purchase on account, enable the Customer Credit payment method within your Ratals Commerce Gateway Settings. Once enabled, approved customers will see Customer Credit as an available payment option during checkout, allowing them to place orders without making an immediate payment.
When a customer selects Customer Credit, Ratals ERP automatically checks the customer's available credit before the order is completed. If the order would exceed the approved credit limit, checkout is stopped and the customer is notified that their available credit has been exceeded. This allows customer credit policies to be enforced consistently whether orders are entered by your sales staff or placed directly through your ecommerce website.
Whether an order is entered by a salesperson in the administration area or placed online by the customer while logged into their account, Ratals ERP automatically validates the customer's available credit before allowing the order to be completed. If the new order would cause the customer's outstanding Accounts Receivable balance to exceed their approved credit limit, the order is blocked and the customer is informed that the credit limit has been exceeded.
This automatic validation eliminates the need for employees to manually review outstanding customer balances before approving credit sales. Ratals ERP enforces your credit policies automatically while allowing approved customers to continue purchasing on account without delaying the ordering process.
Customer Credit Limits help businesses balance customer convenience with financial control. Approved customers can continue purchasing on account through both the administration area and your ecommerce website, while Ratals ERP ensures credit policies are enforced consistently across every sales channel. This reduces financial risk, helps protect cash flow, and gives accounting teams confidence that outstanding receivables remain within approved limits.
Accounts Receivable manages the money customers owe your business. Whether invoices are generated from ecommerce orders using the Customer Credit payment method or entered manually for services and other customer charges, Ratals ERP tracks outstanding balances, customer payments, and the accounting impact of every receivable from invoice creation through final payment.
Because Accounts Receivable is built directly into Ratals ERP, customer invoices, payments, sales orders, and financial statements all operate from the same data. Customer balances remain continuously updated, allowing your accounting team to monitor outstanding receivables while automatically recording the appropriate accounting transactions as payments are received.
The Accounts Receivable Dashboard provides a real-time overview of outstanding customer balances. Invoices are grouped by aging periods - including current, 7-day, 14-day, 21-day, 30-day, and additional overdue intervals - allowing your accounting team to quickly identify overdue accounts and prioritize collection efforts. The dashboard provides an immediate snapshot of expected incoming cash while highlighting customers that require follow-up.
Invoices represent the amounts owed by customers for products or services your business has provided. Invoices are generated automatically from ecommerce orders placed using the Customer Credit payment method or can be entered manually when billing customers outside the normal ecommerce workflow.
Every invoice records the customer, invoice number, invoice date, due date, payment status, and detailed line items. Because invoices remain connected to customer accounts and the Chart of Accounts, Ratals ERP automatically records the appropriate Accounts Receivable transactions while keeping customer balances synchronized throughout the system.
Invoices remain editable while they are being prepared. Once an invoice has been posted to accounting, it becomes part of the permanent accounting record and can no longer be edited directly. If corrections are required after posting, Ratals ERP records those corrections as new accounting transactions rather than modifying the original invoice, preserving a complete audit trail throughout the Accounts Receivable process.
Customer payments can be linked directly to one or more outstanding invoices, allowing Ratals ERP to accurately track which invoices have been paid and which balances remain outstanding. Partial payments, multiple invoice payments, and other common payment scenarios are all supported while preserving a complete payment history for every customer account.
Maintaining this relationship between invoices and payments gives accounting staff complete visibility into each customer's payment history while ensuring outstanding Accounts Receivable balances remain accurate.
Every payment received from a customer is recorded within the Customer Payments area. Payments can be searched, sorted, and reviewed, providing a complete history of customer payment activity across the business. Because payments become part of your accounting records, posted payments cannot be edited directly.
If a payment was entered incorrectly, Ratals ERP allows the payment to be cancelled, automatically reversing the associated accounting activity while preserving the original transaction. A corrected payment can then be recorded as a new transaction, ensuring every change remains part of the permanent accounting history rather than replacing the original record.
Because payments remain connected to both the customer and the invoices they satisfy, Ratals ERP maintains a complete audit trail while automatically updating customer balances and accounting records.
When a payment is received, Ratals ERP records the payment amount, payment date, payment method, reference number, and the invoice or invoices being paid. Recording payments immediately updates the customer's outstanding Accounts Receivable balance while automatically generating the appropriate accounting transactions within the General Ledger.
Customer Statements provide a consolidated view of each customer's account activity, including invoices, payments, credits, adjustments, and current outstanding balances. Statements can be used internally to review customer account history or provided directly to customers to communicate their current balance and recent account activity.
Because statements are generated directly from the same invoices and payments recorded throughout Ratals ERP, they always reflect the customer's current account status without requiring manual reconciliation.
Accounts Receivable completes the customer side of the accounting cycle. Orders generate invoices, invoices establish customer balances, payments reduce those balances, and customer statements summarize account activity over time. Because every invoice and payment is recorded within the same shared data model, Ratals ERP automatically keeps customer balances, journal entries, and financial statements synchronized as your business operates. Operational activity naturally becomes accounting activity, eliminating duplicate entry while providing complete visibility into the money owed to your business.
Inventory is more than a quantity on a shelf - it's a financial asset owned by your business. Every time inventory is purchased, Ratals ERP records not only how many units were received, but also what those units actually cost the business to acquire. Those values become the inventory assets that eventually determine your Balance Sheet, Cost of Goods Sold, and overall profitability.
Unlike systems that treat inventory as a single running total, Ratals ERP tracks inventory in individual asset layers. Each posted Purchase Order creates inventory asset records that preserve the quantity received, acquisition date, vendor information, and financial value of that inventory. These asset records remain attached to the inventory until the products are eventually sold.
The actual cost of inventory is rarely limited to the vendor's purchase price. Freight charges, import duties, brokerage fees, insurance, and other acquisition costs all contribute to what it truly costs to place inventory on your shelves. Ratals ERP allows individual bill lines representing these additional acquisition costs to be allocated directly to one or more Purchase Orders, allowing inventory assets to reflect the complete acquisition cost rather than only the original purchase price.
Because allocations occur at the bill-line level, the original vendor invoice remains unchanged while Ratals ERP internally distributes applicable costs across the appropriate Purchase Orders. A single freight charge, for example, can be allocated across multiple Purchase Orders when necessary, ensuring inventory valuation accurately reflects the actual costs incurred to acquire the inventory.
Landed costs can be distributed across inventory using multiple allocation methods, including by unit quantity, purchase cost, shipping weight, or physical volume. This allows businesses to choose the allocation method that most accurately represents how costs should be assigned across the products being received.
When a Purchase Order is posted, Ratals ERP combines the inventory purchase cost with any applicable bill-line allocations to establish the final value of each inventory asset layer. These values become the inventory assets shown on your Balance Sheet and provide the cost information later used when calculating Cost of Goods Sold. Because inventory assets remain connected to the original Purchase Order, receiving transaction, and allocated acquisition costs, every unit sold can ultimately be traced back to the purchases and expenses that brought it into inventory.
Every inventory asset created by Ratals ERP becomes part of the permanent accounting history of the business. Once posted, inventory asset values are preserved, and any future corrections are recorded through adjusting transactions rather than modifying historical inventory records. This maintains complete traceability while ensuring financial statements continue to reflect the true cost of inventory over time.
Accurate inventory valuation leads to more accurate financial reporting. By tracking the complete acquisition cost of every inventory asset, Ratals ERP gives business owners greater confidence that inventory values, gross profit, and profitability reports reflect the true cost of doing business rather than estimates.
For detailed information on allocating freight, duties, insurance, brokerage fees, and other acquisition costs, see the complete Landed Cost tutorial.
Inventory management is about more than tracking quantities - it is also responsible for determining the financial value of every product sold. As inventory leaves your warehouse, Ratals ERP automatically determines which inventory assets are being consumed and records the corresponding Cost of Goods Sold. This ensures inventory quantities, inventory assets, and financial statements remain synchronized without requiring manual accounting adjustments.
Because inventory operates on the same data model as purchasing, sales, and accounting, every sale immediately affects both operational inventory and your financial records. Inventory quantities decrease, inventory asset values are reduced, Cost of Goods Sold is recorded, and the transaction becomes part of your permanent accounting history.
Ratals ERP supports the three most common inventory costing methods: First-In, First-Out (FIFO), Last-In, First-Out (LIFO), and Weighted Average Cost. The costing method selected for your business determines which inventory assets are consumed when products are sold and how the corresponding Cost of Goods Sold is calculated.
Because inventory assets are tracked individually, Ratals ERP can accurately determine which acquisition costs belong to each sale. Rather than relying on estimates or periodic calculations, inventory valuation occurs continuously as products move into and out of inventory.
When a customer places an order, Ratals ERP doesn't simply reduce inventory quantities - it also records the financial cost associated with that sale. The appropriate inventory assets are consumed according to your selected costing method, inventory asset balances are reduced, and Cost of Goods Sold is posted automatically. This creates accurate gross profit calculations while keeping your Balance Sheet and Income Statement synchronized.
Because every inventory transaction references the same inventory assets created during purchasing, the cost recorded for each sale reflects the actual acquisition cost of the products being sold, including any landed costs that were allocated when inventory was received.
Inventory doesn't begin when a product is sold - it begins when inventory is purchased. Ratals ERP follows inventory through its entire lifecycle, from Purchase Orders and receiving, to inventory assets, landed cost allocation, inventory valuation, Cost of Goods Sold, and ultimately your financial statements. Every stage builds upon the previous one using the same underlying data, creating one continuous inventory and financial record across the entire business.
Knowing exactly what inventory costs isn't just an accounting requirement - it directly affects pricing decisions, profitability, and long-term planning. By calculating inventory value continuously as products move through the business, Ratals ERP helps ensure every sale reflects its true financial impact.
For a detailed explanation of how Ratals ERP calculates inventory value and Cost of Goods Sold using FIFO, LIFO, and Weighted Average costing methods, see the complete Cost of Goods Sold tutorial.
No accounting system can assume every transaction follows a perfect path. Inventory can become damaged, customer balances may become uncollectible, vendors may issue credits, and accounting corrections occasionally become necessary. Adjustments & Write-offs provide a controlled way to record these exceptions while preserving accurate financial records and a complete audit trail.
Rather than deleting or modifying historical transactions, Ratals ERP follows one of the core accounting principles used throughout the platform: accounting history should remain permanent. Corrections are recorded as new accounting events instead of changing the original transaction, allowing businesses to maintain complete visibility into what changed, when it changed, and why the adjustment was necessary.
Inventory occasionally requires adjustments for damaged products, shrinkage, physical inventory counts, spoilage, expired inventory, or other operational events. Ratals ERP allows authorized users to record these adjustments while automatically updating inventory quantities, inventory asset balances, and the appropriate accounting records.
Rather than modifying historical inventory receipts or Purchase Orders, Ratals ERP creates adjustment transactions that preserve the original inventory history while clearly documenting every correction. This provides complete traceability from the original inventory receipt through the adjustment that followed.
Adjustments & Write-offs also support customer write-offs, vendor credits, bad debt, accounting corrections, and other financial adjustments that occur during normal business operations. These events are recorded as independent accounting transactions while maintaining their relationships to customers, vendors, invoices, payments, Purchase Orders, and the General Ledger.
By recording adjustments as new accounting activity rather than altering existing records, Ratals ERP preserves the complete financial history of every transaction while ensuring customer balances, vendor balances, inventory values, and financial statements remain accurate.
Every adjustment becomes part of the permanent accounting history instead of replacing or deleting an existing transaction. This gives accountants and auditors complete visibility into every correction while preserving the original business activity exactly as it occurred. Financial reports remain accurate, and every adjustment can be traced back to both the original transaction and the correction that followed.
Adjustments & Write-offs reinforce the same accounting philosophy used throughout Ratals ERP: operational activity automatically becomes accounting activity, and every correction becomes a new accounting transaction rather than rewriting accounting history. Working together with Journal Entries, the General Ledger, Financial Statements, Period Closing, and Audit Logs, these tools help preserve complete traceability while ensuring financial records remain accurate, auditable, and transparent over time.
Journal entries are the foundation of every accounting system. Every posted financial transaction ultimately becomes a journal entry, recording the accounts affected, the debits and credits involved, and the financial impact on the business. From that point forward, every accounting report - including the General Ledger, Trial Balance, Income Statement, Balance Sheet, and Cash Flow Statement - is built from those journal entries. Without them, accurate financial reporting simply wouldn't exist.
Ratals ERP automatically generates the vast majority of journal entries as normal business activities occur. Customer orders, payments, refunds, Purchase Orders, inventory receipts, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, depreciation, and many other accounting events create balanced journal entries in real time without manual bookkeeping. Because Ratals ERP records operational activity as accounting activity, the day-to-day work of running your business continuously builds your financial records automatically.
Ratals ERP follows standard double-entry accounting principles, ensuring every debit is matched by an equal credit. As transactions move through Commerce and ERP, the appropriate journal entries are created automatically using the Chart of Accounts you've already configured. This not only keeps your books balanced, but also eliminates many of the manual accounting tasks that businesses often perform after daily operations have already taken place.
Because journal entries are created directly from operational activity, accounting always reflects what actually happened within the business. Inventory adjustments, customer payments, vendor invoices, Purchase Orders, landed costs, and asset depreciation all become part of one continuous financial record instead of separate accounting processes that require reconciliation later.
While most journal entries are created automatically, Ratals ERP also supports manual journal entries for transactions that occur outside normal operational workflows. Adjusting entries, owner contributions and distributions, year-end adjustments, correcting entries, and other accounting events can all be recorded manually while maintaining the same audit trail and reporting consistency as system-generated transactions.
Manual journal entries begin in a draft state, allowing accountants to review and modify them before they are posted. Once a journal entry has been posted, it becomes part of the permanent accounting record and can no longer be edited directly. This preserves the integrity of the General Ledger while ensuring accounting history is never rewritten.
If a posted journal entry was created in error, Ratals ERP provides a Reverse action that automatically creates an equal and opposite journal entry, reversing the financial impact of the original transaction while preserving the complete accounting history. If the accounting period remains open, a corrected journal entry can then be recorded with the proper accounts and amounts. If the accounting period has already been closed, corrections are recorded as adjusting journal entries within the next available accounting period rather than modifying historical records.
Manual journal entries can also be linked to related records such as customers, vendors, Purchase Orders, inventory, and other business objects, preserving complete traceability throughout the accounting system. This allows accountants to make necessary adjustments without breaking the relationship between operational data and financial reporting.
Journal entries don't exist in isolation. Every posted entry immediately becomes part of the General Ledger, contributes to the Trial Balance, and ultimately appears within your financial statements. Because the entire accounting system is built upon journal entries, every report in Ratals ERP can be traced back to the individual transactions that created it, providing complete transparency for audits, financial reviews, and day-to-day bookkeeping.
For most businesses, journal entries happen behind the scenes. Automating them reduces manual bookkeeping, minimizes posting errors, and allows accountants to spend less time recording transactions and more time reviewing the financial health of the business. When manual corrections are required, reversing entries preserve a complete accounting history while ensuring financial records remain accurate and fully auditable.
For detailed information on creating manual journal entries, understanding debit and credit rules, linking transactions, posting entries, and working with automated journal entries, see the complete Journal Entries tutorial.
Once journal entries have been created, the General Ledger organizes them into a format that's useful for reviewing your business's financial activity. Rather than displaying transactions chronologically as journal entries are entered, the General Ledger groups every debit and credit by account, allowing you to review the complete history and running balance of each account within your Chart of Accounts. It becomes the central record accountants use to understand where money came from, where it went, and how every account reached its current balance.
Because Ratals ERP records operational activity as accounting activity, the General Ledger is generated automatically from live transactional data. Customer orders, payments, Purchase Orders, inventory receipts, landed costs, depreciation, manual journal entries, and every other accounting event immediately become part of the ledger without exports, imports, synchronization, or separate accounting processes.
The General Ledger displays transactions by account instead of by transaction. Each account within your Chart of Accounts maintains its own running history, allowing you to quickly review beginning balances, debits, credits, and ending balances for any period. This provides a clear picture of how every balance was built over time while preserving complete visibility into the transactions that created it.
Flexible date ranges allow you to review activity for any accounting period while automatically calculating beginning and ending balances outside the selected date range. Whether you're reviewing a single day, month-end activity, quarterly financials, or several years of history, the General Ledger presents the information in a consistent and easy-to-follow format.
Every transaction displayed in the General Ledger can be traced back to the business activity that created it. Rather than simply displaying debits and credits, Ratals ERP maintains the relationship between accounting records and the operational records behind them. Customer orders, vendor invoices, Purchase Orders, inventory transactions, customer payments, fixed assets, and manual journal entries all remain connected to their source, providing complete traceability throughout the accounting system.
This level of visibility makes research significantly easier. Instead of searching through multiple applications to understand why a balance changed, accountants can follow each transaction directly back to the operational event that generated the journal entry.
The General Ledger serves as the primary source for every financial report produced by Ratals ERP. The Trial Balance verifies that all accounts remain in balance, while the Income Statement, Balance Sheet, Cash Flow Statement, and other financial reports summarize the activity recorded within the ledger. Because every report is generated from the same underlying journal entries, financial reporting remains accurate, consistent, and fully auditable across the entire platform.
When every balance can be traced back to the transaction that created it, researching accounting questions becomes significantly faster. Instead of comparing reports from multiple systems, accountants can follow every transaction through one continuous financial record.
For detailed information on navigating the General Ledger, understanding account balances, working with date ranges, and reviewing transaction history, see the complete General Ledger tutorial.
Once journal entries have been recorded and organized within the General Ledger, the next step in the accounting cycle is the Trial Balance. The Trial Balance summarizes the ending balance of every account in your Chart of Accounts, providing a quick way to verify that total debits equal total credits before preparing financial statements. It serves as an important validation point, helping accountants confirm that transactions have been recorded consistently and that the books remain in balance.
Because Ratals ERP records operational activity as accounting activity, the Trial Balance is generated automatically from the same live accounting data that powers the rest of the system. Every customer order, payment, Purchase Order, inventory transaction, depreciation entry, and journal entry contributes to the report as business occurs, eliminating separate accounting preparation before financial reporting.
The primary purpose of the Trial Balance is to verify the mathematical integrity of your accounting records. By listing every account and its current balance, Ratals ERP allows accountants to quickly confirm that total debits and total credits remain equal before financial statements are reviewed or published. While a balanced Trial Balance doesn't guarantee every transaction was recorded correctly, it provides an essential checkpoint within the accounting cycle that helps identify posting errors before financial reporting begins.
Because the report is generated directly from the General Ledger, every balance can be traced back to the journal entries and operational transactions that created it. This makes researching discrepancies significantly easier while preserving complete visibility into the financial history of every account.
The Trial Balance represents the transition between recording accounting activity and presenting financial information. Once account balances have been verified, Ratals ERP uses those same balances to generate the Income Statement, Balance Sheet, Statement of Owner's Equity, Cash Flow Statement, and other financial reports. Because every report is built from the same verified accounting data, financial statements remain accurate, consistent, and fully traceable back to the underlying journal entries.
Verifying that your books remain in balance before preparing financial statements provides confidence that the accounting process is working as intended. It allows accountants to identify potential issues earlier, reducing the time spent researching discrepancies during month-end and year-end closing.
For detailed information on reading the Trial Balance, understanding account balances, and verifying your accounting records, see the complete Trial Balance tutorial.
The Income Statement, often referred to as the Profit and Loss (P&L) Statement, summarizes your business's financial performance over a specific period of time. Rather than showing what your business owns or owes, the Income Statement answers one of the most important questions every business owner asks: Was the business profitable? By comparing revenue against the expenses required to generate that revenue, Ratals ERP provides a clear picture of your company's operating performance.
Because Ratals ERP records operational activity as accounting activity, the Income Statement is generated automatically from your day-to-day business operations. Every sale, purchase, inventory adjustment, depreciation entry, and accounting transaction contributes to the report in real time, eliminating spreadsheets, exports, and manual calculations while keeping financial reporting continuously up to date.
The Income Statement organizes financial activity into meaningful categories such as revenue, Cost of Goods Sold, operating expenses, and net income. This allows business owners and accountants to quickly understand where revenue is being generated, how much it costs to operate the business, and whether the company is producing a profit during the selected reporting period.
Because Cost of Goods Sold is calculated from the same inventory assets created during purchasing, gross profit reflects the actual cost of inventory sold rather than estimated costs or manually adjusted values. Operating expenses, depreciation, and other accounting activity are also included automatically, providing a complete view of business performance.
The Income Statement isn't maintained separately from the rest of your accounting records. It is generated directly from the revenue and expense accounts contained within your General Ledger. Every customer order, payment, vendor invoice, inventory transaction, and journal entry ultimately contributes to the figures presented on the report, ensuring the financial statements always reflect the same underlying accounting data.
Because Ratals ERP shares one data model across Commerce and ERP, operational activity immediately becomes financial information. As orders are processed and expenses are recorded, the Income Statement updates naturally as part of your normal business operations without requiring separate accounting workflows.
The Income Statement does more than report whether your business made money - it helps explain why. By reviewing revenue trends, gross profit, operating expenses, and net income over different reporting periods, business owners can identify opportunities to improve profitability, reduce expenses, and make more informed operational decisions. Because every number can be traced back to the transactions that created it, Ratals ERP provides confidence that financial decisions are based on accurate and current information.
Understanding profitability is essential for making informed business decisions. By presenting revenue and expenses from the same live operational data, Ratals ERP gives business owners confidence that the numbers they're reviewing accurately reflect how the business is performing.
For detailed information on reading the Income Statement, understanding each section of the report, and interpreting profitability, see the complete Income Statement tutorial.
The Statement of Owner's Equity explains how the owner's financial interest in the business changes over a reporting period. While the Income Statement measures profitability and the Balance Sheet reports what the business owns and owes, the Statement of Owner's Equity bridges the two by showing how profits, losses, owner contributions, and owner withdrawals affect the overall value of the business.
Because Ratals ERP records operational activity as accounting activity, the Statement of Owner's Equity is generated automatically from the same accounting records used throughout the platform. Owner contributions, distributions, net income, and other equity transactions flow directly into the report without separate calculations or manual adjustments.
Every business experiences changes in owner equity over time. Additional investments increase equity, owner withdrawals reduce it, and net income or losses from normal business operations flow into retained earnings. The Statement of Owner's Equity summarizes these changes, allowing business owners to clearly understand how the value of their ownership has changed during the selected reporting period.
Because Ratals ERP records these transactions as part of your normal accounting workflow, the report remains synchronized with every other financial statement. There is no need to maintain separate equity schedules or manually reconcile owner activity at the end of each accounting period.
The Statement of Owner's Equity is closely connected to the rest of your financial reporting. Net income calculated on the Income Statement flows into equity, while the ending equity balance becomes part of the Balance Sheet. Because every report is generated from the same underlying journal entries and General Ledger, Ratals ERP ensures that changes in owner equity remain accurate, consistent, and fully traceable throughout the accounting system.
Tracking changes in owner's equity provides valuable insight into how the business is creating long-term value. Whether profits are being reinvested or capital is being contributed or withdrawn, Ratals ERP keeps those changes visible and fully connected to the rest of your financial reporting.
For detailed information on understanding owner contributions, retained earnings, withdrawals, and interpreting the Statement of Owner's Equity, see the complete Statement of Owner's Equity tutorial.
The Balance Sheet provides a snapshot of your business's financial position at a specific point in time. Unlike the Income Statement, which measures financial performance over a period, the Balance Sheet reports what the business currently owns, what it owes, and the owner's remaining equity. Together, these three categories - assets, liabilities, and equity - provide one of the clearest views of your company's overall financial health.
Because Ratals ERP records operational activity as accounting activity, the Balance Sheet is generated automatically from your Chart of Accounts and General Ledger. Every customer payment, Purchase Order, inventory transaction, fixed asset, vendor invoice, depreciation entry, and journal entry contributes to the report as business occurs, allowing your financial position to remain continuously up to date without exports or manual reconciliation.
The Balance Sheet organizes information into three primary sections. Assets represent everything the business owns, including cash, accounts receivable, inventory, and fixed assets. Liabilities represent financial obligations such as accounts payable and outstanding loans. Owner's equity represents the remaining value of the business after liabilities have been deducted from assets.
Together, these categories provide business owners, accountants, and financial institutions with an accurate picture of the company's financial stability. Whether reviewing available working capital, monitoring inventory assets, or evaluating outstanding liabilities, the Balance Sheet serves as one of the primary reports used to understand the long-term financial health of the business.
The Balance Sheet isn't maintained separately from the rest of your accounting system. Inventory values come directly from Inventory Assets, accounts receivable reflect customer activity, accounts payable reflect vendor obligations, fixed assets include accumulated depreciation, and owner equity reflects activity recorded throughout the accounting cycle. Every balance displayed on the report is generated from the same underlying journal entries and General Ledger used across Ratals ERP.
Because Commerce and ERP operate on a single data model, operational activity immediately becomes financial information. Inventory received through Purchasing increases inventory assets. Customer orders create receivables and revenue. Vendor invoices create liabilities. Payments reduce outstanding balances. Every business activity contributes to an accurate Balance Sheet without duplicate data entry or synchronization between disconnected systems.
While the Income Statement explains how profitable the business has been, the Balance Sheet explains where the business stands today. Together with the Statement of Owner's Equity and Cash Flow Statement, it provides a complete picture of your company's financial condition, helping business owners make informed decisions about growth, financing, purchasing, and long-term planning.
A strong Balance Sheet provides more than accounting information - it helps business owners, lenders, and investors evaluate the financial stability of the company. Because every balance is built from live operational data, Ratals ERP provides confidence that financial decisions are based on accurate information rather than manually maintained reports.
For detailed information on understanding assets, liabilities, owner's equity, and interpreting the Balance Sheet, see the complete Balance Sheet tutorial.
The Cash Flow Statement explains how cash moved through your business during a specific reporting period. While a company may report a profit on its Income Statement, that doesn't necessarily mean cash increased by the same amount. Inventory purchases, customer payment timing, equipment purchases, loan payments, and other business activities all affect cash differently. The Cash Flow Statement bridges that gap by showing exactly how the business generated and used cash.
Because Ratals ERP records operational activity as accounting activity, the Cash Flow Statement is generated automatically using the indirect method from your live financial records. Beginning with net income and adjusting for non-cash transactions and changes in working capital, the report is continuously built as your business operates, eliminating spreadsheets, exports, and manual calculations.
The Cash Flow Statement organizes cash activity into three primary sections: operating activities, investing activities, and financing activities. Operating activities summarize the cash generated from normal business operations. Investing activities reflect purchases and sales of long-term assets such as equipment or property. Financing activities include transactions involving business loans, owner contributions, and owner distributions.
Viewing cash flow this way allows business owners to understand not only how much cash changed during the reporting period, but also why it changed. A profitable company may still experience declining cash because of inventory growth, capital investments, or delayed customer payments, while another business may increase cash through financing activities despite reporting lower profits.
The Cash Flow Statement isn't maintained independently of the rest of your accounting system. It is generated directly from the same journal entries, General Ledger, and financial data used throughout Ratals ERP. Inventory purchases, depreciation, accounts receivable, accounts payable, fixed assets, loans, owner equity, and every other accounting transaction contribute automatically to the report using the same underlying accounting records.
Because Commerce and ERP operate from one shared data model, normal business operations immediately become part of your financial reporting. Customer orders, vendor payments, inventory receipts, and accounting adjustments all contribute to accurate cash flow reporting without duplicate entry or reconciliation between separate systems.
The Cash Flow Statement completes the four primary financial statements used by businesses to evaluate financial performance and stability. The Income Statement explains profitability, the Statement of Owner's Equity shows changes in ownership value, the Balance Sheet reports financial position, and the Cash Flow Statement explains how cash moved throughout the business. Together, these reports provide business owners, accountants, lenders, and investors with a comprehensive understanding of the company's financial condition.
Cash flow is often one of the clearest indicators of a business's financial health. By showing where cash was generated and how it was used, Ratals ERP helps business owners plan for growth, manage liquidity, and make more informed financial decisions with confidence.
For detailed information on reading the Cash Flow Statement, understanding indirect cash flow adjustments, and interpreting operating, investing, and financing activities, see the complete Cash Flow Statement tutorial.
Collecting tax is only part of the accounting process. Businesses must also track how much tax has been collected on behalf of each government agency, prepare tax filings, and remit those funds to the appropriate tax authorities. The Tax Liability by Jurisdiction report provides a centralized view of every tax liability your business has accumulated, organized by the jurisdiction that owns the tax.
Rather than displaying one combined tax total, Ratals ERP organizes tax liabilities by state, province, county, city, VAT authority, GST authority, or other taxing jurisdiction. This gives accounting teams immediate visibility into how much is owed to each tax authority while maintaining complete traceability back to the customer orders, invoices, and accounting transactions that generated those liabilities.
Every tax collected through Ratals Commerce is automatically categorized according to the jurisdiction responsible for collecting it. Whether your business operates within a single state or across multiple countries, the report separates tax liabilities by the appropriate government agency, making filing periods and outstanding obligations significantly easier to manage.
Instead of manually filtering orders or maintaining spreadsheets to determine how much tax belongs to each jurisdiction, Ratals ERP performs that organization automatically as orders are processed.
Because taxes are calculated during checkout and recorded automatically as part of every customer order, the Tax Liability by Jurisdiction report is generated directly from the same operational data used throughout Ratals ERP. Every reported liability can be traced back to the original customer order, invoice, payment, and accounting transaction that created it.
There are no manual imports or duplicate reporting systems to maintain. As orders are processed, refunds are issued, or accounting adjustments are recorded, tax liabilities update automatically so the report always reflects the current state of your business.
Ratals ERP is designed to support a variety of transaction tax systems, including U.S. sales tax, Canadian GST and HST, European VAT, and other jurisdiction-based tax structures. Regardless of the tax model your business operates under, liabilities are organized according to the authority responsible for collecting them while preserving the underlying accounting records required for reporting and reconciliation.
As additional tax services such as Avalara are enabled within Ratals Commerce, those calculated taxes automatically flow into the same reporting structure, allowing businesses to maintain a single source of truth for every tax obligation.
The Tax Liability by Jurisdiction report helps accounting teams prepare tax filings without manually gathering information from multiple systems. Because the report is built directly from customer orders, accounting transactions, and payment activity already recorded within Ratals ERP, every reported balance can be verified and traced back to its source.
Like the rest of Ratals ERP, this report follows the platform's core philosophy: operational activity automatically becomes accounting activity. Taxes collected during everyday business operations flow directly into organized accounting records, allowing businesses to prepare filings with greater confidence while reducing the manual work traditionally associated with tax reporting.
Business data changes over time. Customer information is updated, vendor accounts are reassigned, accounting settings are modified, inventory values change, and financial records evolve as a business grows. Audit Logs preserve a detailed history of those changes, allowing authorized users to review exactly what changed, when it changed, who made the change, and what the value was before the update occurred.
Rather than simply recording that a record was edited, Ratals ERP monitors individual database fields whenever information is saved. When a value changes, a new audit entry is created containing the affected table, record, column, previous value, new value, user, and timestamp. This creates a complete field-level history throughout the platform instead of a general activity log that only reports that something was modified.
Every audit entry identifies the specific field that changed and preserves both versions of the data. For example, if a vendor's liability account is reassigned, the Audit Log records the original account, the newly assigned account, the user who made the change, and the exact date and time it occurred. If a customer's credit limit is increased, both the previous limit and the new approved amount remain permanently available for review.
By recording changes at the field level, Ratals ERP makes it possible to understand how a record evolved over time instead of simply knowing that it was edited. Administrators no longer have to rely on memory, screenshots, or manually maintained notes to determine what changed.
Audit Logs track changes across the entire Ratals platform, including accounting, purchasing, inventory, customers, vendors, products, settings, permissions, and other business records. Because every meaningful update is recorded in one centralized location, authorized users can quickly review the history of a record when researching discrepancies, troubleshooting issues, or preparing for an internal or external audit.
Each audit entry preserves the context surrounding the change, making it easy to identify not only what changed, but also who made the change and when it occurred. This creates accountability throughout the organization while simplifying investigations into unexpected or unauthorized modifications.
Audit Logs complement Ratals ERP's accounting architecture without replacing it. Financial transactions continue to preserve accounting history through journal entries, posted transactions, and period closing, while Audit Logs preserve the history of changes made to the operational records and configuration that support those transactions.
For example, if a vendor's default expense account changes or a customer's payment terms are updated, the Audit Log records the configuration change without altering the historical accounting transactions that were created before the modification. This separation helps preserve the integrity of your financial records while still providing complete visibility into how supporting business data has changed over time.
One of the core principles behind Ratals ERP is that important business changes should never disappear simply because a value was updated. Audit Logs provide a permanent history of meaningful changes throughout the platform, making it possible to understand how records reached their current state while supporting accountability, troubleshooting, compliance, and long-term operational visibility.
Because Audit Logs are built directly into the same shared data model as the rest of Ratals ERP, every change remains connected to the records it affects. Whether reviewing accounting settings, inventory records, customer information, or vendor data, authorized users can trace the evolution of a record with confidence that its history has been preserved.
Once financial statements have been reviewed and finalized for a month, quarter, or fiscal year, businesses need confidence that those numbers will not change unexpectedly. Period Closing allows accounting periods to be locked after they have been reviewed, preventing transactions from being added, modified, or deleted within closed accounting periods.
Rather than relying on users to remember which accounting periods have already been finalized, Ratals ERP automatically enforces period closing rules throughout the accounting system. This helps preserve the accuracy of financial statements while reducing the risk of accidental changes after reports have been distributed, taxes have been filed, or financial results have been shared with management.
Accounting periods can be closed on a monthly, quarterly, or annual basis depending on your organization's reporting requirements. Once a period has been closed, transactions dated within that accounting period can no longer be modified through normal business operations. This allows completed accounting periods to remain consistent while new business activity continues in future periods.
Because Period Closing is integrated directly with the General Ledger, Journal Entries, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, and financial reporting, every area of Ratals ERP respects the same accounting period restrictions automatically.
Financial statements represent the financial position of a business at a specific point in time. Allowing historical transactions to change after those statements have been reviewed can alter account balances unexpectedly, requiring reports to be regenerated and previously approved financial information to become unreliable.
Period Closing eliminates this risk by preventing changes to finalized accounting periods. Once a reporting period has been closed, the Income Statement, Balance Sheet, Statement of Owner's Equity, Cash Flow Statement, Trial Balance, and General Ledger continue to reflect the financial condition that existed when the period was finalized.
Ratals ERP supports two levels of accounting period protection, allowing businesses to balance operational flexibility with long-term financial integrity.
A Soft Close prevents normal users from adding, editing, or deleting transactions within the selected accounting period while still allowing authorized accounting administrators to reopen the period if additional adjustments are required. This provides flexibility during month-end and year-end closing without allowing day-to-day operational activity to modify completed accounting periods accidentally.
A Final Close permanently locks the accounting period after financial statements have been finalized. Once a period has been finally closed, historical transactions remain unchanged. Any corrections discovered afterward are recorded as adjusting journal entries within a future accounting period rather than modifying historical records. This preserves the integrity of previously issued financial statements while maintaining a complete and transparent accounting history.
Period Closing reinforces one of the core accounting principles built into Ratals ERP: accounting history should be preserved, not rewritten. Operational activity automatically becomes accounting activity, corrections become new accounting transactions, and finalized accounting periods remain a permanent record of the business as it existed at that point in time.
Working together with Journal Entries, the General Ledger, Financial Statements, Audit Logs, and Adjustments & Write-offs, Period Closing helps ensure financial records remain accurate, auditable, and trustworthy. Once a reporting period has been completed, businesses can move forward with confidence knowing the historical record remains intact while future activity continues in the next accounting period.
Ratals ERP is more than an accounting system. It's the operational layer that allows your website, ecommerce store, inventory, purchasing, customers, and financial records to operate as one connected business platform. Instead of exporting data into separate accounting software or spending time reconciling information between disconnected applications, the work your business performs each day naturally becomes the accounting records that measure it.
That philosophy has guided Ratals from the very beginning. Ratals CMS manages your content and website. Ratals Commerce manages your products, customers, inventory, and orders. Ratals ERP extends those same records into purchasing, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, inventory valuation, financial reporting, and accounting - all while continuing to operate from the same shared data model. Nothing is recreated. Nothing needs to be synchronized. Every part of the business works from the same information.
As your business grows, your software should grow with it. Ratals was designed so each product builds upon the one before it instead of replacing it. Every customer, product, vendor, order, inventory item, and accounting record remains part of the same platform, allowing your business to expand without migrating data, rebuilding processes, or learning an entirely new system.
Throughout this guide, one principle has remained consistent: operational activity automatically becomes accounting activity. Customer orders become invoices. Purchase Orders become inventory assets. Vendor bills become liabilities. Payments update customer and vendor balances. Financial statements are generated automatically from the same transactions your business creates every day. Accounting isn't a separate task performed after the work is finished - it's the natural result of running your business.
Whether you're just beginning to sell online or operating a business with complex purchasing, inventory, accounting, and financial reporting requirements, Ratals is designed to grow alongside you. Start with the capabilities your business needs today, then enable additional functionality as your business grows - all while keeping your data, workflows, and operations together on one integrated platform.
Your business grows. Your software should grow with it. That's the difference between adding another application to your business and building your business on one platform.
Your journey with Ratals begins with the free open-source CMS. Download it today, follow our installation guide and videos, and have your website running in just a few minutes. As your business grows, simply enable Ratals Commerce to sell online and Ratals ERP to add purchasing, inventory valuation, accounting, and financial reporting - all on the same platform using the same data you've already built. Ready to get started? Download Ratals CMS today.