Expenses and Distribution

This is where the import stops being paperwork and starts being money. Every invoice that lands on the shipment — the supplier's own invoice, the shipping line's, the insurer's, the customs declaration, the clearance agent's bill, the bank's commission — is entered on a Fixed Asset Expense Document, and each one is immediately split across the machines listed on the proforma invoice.

You can raise as many expense documents on one credit as you like, and in practice you raise one per invoice as it arrives, over weeks. The split happens per document, per line, and the results accumulate on the credit until the cost document collects them.

The line everyone forgets

The supplier's goods value goes on an expense document like every other cost. The proforma invoice's 500,000 is a distribution base; it capitalises nothing on its own. Omit the goods line and the two presses will be capitalised at freight and customs only.

First, the expense item

Before any of this works you need a small master file for each kind of expense you will charge: customs duty, ocean freight, marine insurance, clearance fees, bank commission, inland haulage — and the goods value itself. That file is the Expense item (بند مصروف), and it sits in the same menu folder as the letter of credit, at Assets › Fixed Asset Letter of Credits › Expense item. It is a shared file: the supply-chain letter-of-credit chain uses the very same records for imported goods, so a site that imports both stock and machinery keeps one catalogue of expense items and two sets of document books.

An expense item is a tiny record and only a handful of its fields matter for imported assets:

Field	What to put in it
Code, Name (Arabic), Name (English)	FREIGHT — الشحن / Ocean freight
Distribution on items — required	how this cost is spread over the machines. The whole point of the file; see the table below
Account	the account the cost is debited to — normally a single "assets under letters of credit" holding account shared by every expense item. It must be a detailed account: an account that carries a subsidiary type is rejected when you save
Tax Plan	if the expense is taxed, the plan that supplies the percentages
Do Not Affect On Cost	tick it for a cost that is booked but must not be folded into the machines' value — a demurrage penalty, a fine. The entry still reaches the ledger; the cost document simply ignores it
Currency	optional, a convenience default

Al-Waha's catalogue for this import is four records, all pointing their Account at 13910 Assets under letters of credit:

Code	Name	Distribution
GOODS	قيمة البضاعة / Goods value	Distribute on value
FREIGHT	الشحن / Ocean freight	Distribute on value
CUSTOMS	الجمارك / Customs duty	Distribute on value
CLEAR	التخليص / Clearance fees	Manual

The expense item's account is the debit; the credit is chosen on the document

The expense item supplies the account the cost is debited to. Who is credited — the supplier, the bank, the customs agent, a specific account — is chosen on each expense-document line, not here. Unlike the supply-chain purchase documents, the fixed-asset chain does not copy any credit-side setting down from the expense item onto the line, so the line is where that decision is made and the only place it takes effect.

The distribution rules

Distribution on items is the field that makes an expense item worth having. It decides what the cost is proportional to:

Distribution	Arabic label	Spread in proportion to	Use it for
Distribute on value	توزيع على القيم	each line's total price on the proforma invoice	the goods value, customs duty, insurance, bank commission — anything charged ad valorem. The safe default
Distribute On Weight	توزيع على الوزن	the Weight column	sea and road freight, port handling
Distribute On Volume	توزيع على الحجم	the Volume column	air freight and container space
Distribute On Area	توزيع على المساحة	the Area column	costs charged by floor or deck space
Distribute On Length	توزيع على الطول	the Length column	over-length surcharges
Distribute On Density	توزيع على الكثافة	the Density column	specialist freight tariffs quoted on density
Distribute on quantity	توزيع على الكميات	each line's quantity	a per-unit charge on a batch line
Manual	يدوي	nothing — you type the amount per machine	an invoice the supplier already itemised per machine

Two of them deserve a note.

Distribute on quantity behaves differently from what its name suggests when the proforma lines name specific assets: those lines are always quantity 1, so the cost is split equally between them regardless of size or value. That is genuinely what you want for a per-machine flat fee, and is genuinely not what you want for freight.

Manual is the escape hatch, and it is the right answer more often than people expect. When the clearance agent's bill says "Press A: 9,000, Press B: 6,000", no formula will reproduce that as faithfully as typing it.

Whichever basis you pick, the column it reads has to be filled on the proforma invoice. Choosing Distribute On Weight on a shipment whose lines carry no weights leaves that cost with nothing to divide by.

The expense document

The header

Document Code and its book, Term, Issue Date, Value Date, Fiscal Period, the Letter Of Credit (required — this is what tells the document which machines to divide over), an optional Subsidiary, the document Currency and Currency Rate, five attachment slots for scans of the invoices, and a description. Picking the credit pulls its currency in.

The document's term is what tells the system how to build the accounting entry, so unlike the proforma invoice this document does need one.

The lines — the costs as invoiced

One line per invoice, or per invoice line:

Column	Notes
Expense Item — required	which kind of cost this is, and therefore how it will be spread
Expense Value — Amount, Currency, Rate, Local Amount	the invoiced amount. Each line carries its own currency and rate, so freight in euros and customs duty in local currency can sit on the same document. Leave the currency blank and the header's is used at rate 1
Item Tax 1 to 4, each a percentage and a value	filled from the expense item's tax plan and the term's
Taxes Included In Cost	the part of the tax that is capitalised rather than reclaimed
Discount 1 — percentage and value	a discount on the invoice line
the credit-side column (الجانب الدائن)	who is owed this money — see below
Subsidiary, Subsidiary account type, Account	the counterparty, when the credit side calls for a specific one
Reference 1, Reference 2, Description	the supplier's invoice number and any note

The credit-side column is the one to get right, because it is what turns "40,000 of freight" into a real liability to a real party:

Choice	Credits
Supplier Account	the supplier named on the letter of credit
Bank Account	the bank account named on the letter of credit
Customs Company Account	the customs party named on the letter of credit
Insurance Company Account	the insurance party named on the letter of credit
Specific Account	the account typed on this line
Specefic Subsidiary	the account on this line if there is one, otherwise the line's subsidiary
Current User Subsidiary	the employee record of whoever entered the document

The first four are why it is worth filling in the parties on the credit: with them set, the whole line reduces to "credit the customs company" and the system finds the rest.

Al-Waha's expense document for LC-2026-004, all in the ledger currency:

Line	Expense item	Amount	Credited to
A	GOODS Goods value	500,000	Supplier Account → Gulf Machinery Trading
B	FREIGHT Ocean freight	40,000	Specific Account → 21450 Freight payable
C	CUSTOMS Customs duty	60,000	Customs Company Account → Al-Faris Clearance
D	CLEAR Clearance fees	15,000	Customs Company Account → Al-Faris Clearance
	Total	615,000

The distribution page

The second page is where the split is set up and where the result is read back.

It carries one button, Collect Fixed assets (تجميع الأصول الثابته), and two grids.

Pressing Collect Fixed assets reads the credit's proforma invoice and, for every line whose expense item distributes manually, creates one row per machine in the Manual Lines grid — the asset type and the asset already filled in, the amount left for you. Al-Waha presses it once and gets two rows for the CLEAR line, and types 9,000 against Press A and 6,000 against Press B.

The manual amounts have to add up. Per expense item, the total of the manual rows must equal the total of the document lines using that item — 9,000 + 6,000 = 15,000. If they do not, the commit is refused and the message names the expense item and both totals.

The second grid, System Lines, is the answer: one row per machine per expense item, showing the amount, its currency and rate, and the expense value in the ledger's currency. It is read-only, because it is computed.

System Lines are produced on commit, not on save

A saved draft shows an empty System Lines grid. The distribution runs when the document is committed. That is normal and is not a sign that anything is wrong — commit the document and the grid fills.

The by-value calculation, line by line

Here is the whole of Al-Waha's shipment worked out. The formula is the same every time:

                        the expense line's local amount  ×  this machine's base
share of one machine  =  ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────
                            the total of that base over all proforma lines

The base comes from the proforma invoice, which lists Press A at 300,000 and Press B at 200,000, so for a value-based expense item:

• Press A's share of everything = 300,000 ÷ 500,000 = 0.60
• Press B's share of everything = 200,000 ÷ 500,000 = 0.40

Line A — Goods value, 500,000, distributed on value

• Press A: 500,000 × 300,000 ÷ 500,000 = 300,000
• Press B: 500,000 × 200,000 ÷ 500,000 = 200,000

Line B — Ocean freight, 40,000, distributed on value

• Press A: 40,000 × 0.60 = 24,000
• Press B: 40,000 × 0.40 = 16,000

Line C — Customs duty, 60,000, distributed on value

• Press A: 60,000 × 0.60 = 36,000
• Press B: 60,000 × 0.40 = 24,000

Line D — Clearance fees, 15,000, distributed manually

Not calculated at all — taken straight from the Manual Lines grid:

• Press A: 9,000
• Press B: 6,000

Eight system lines, and the totals per machine:

Expense item	PRS-0001 Press A	PRS-0002 Press B	Line total
Goods value	300,000	200,000	500,000
Ocean freight	24,000	16,000	40,000
Customs duty	36,000	24,000	60,000
Clearance fees	9,000	6,000	15,000
Landed cost	369,000	246,000	615,000

Those two totals, 369,000 and 246,000, are what the cost document will write onto the presses.

When the shares do not divide evenly

Each share is rounded to the number of decimal places the line's currency uses, and rounded shares rarely add back up to the invoice exactly. The system does not leave the difference lying around: it compares the sum of the distributed shares against the expense line's own amount and puts the whole difference on the first system line of that expense line.

Al-Waha's shipment splits cleanly at every amount, so nothing shows. Change the clearance fee to 15,000.05 and split it evenly between two identical machines, and it does:

• each machine's raw share is 15,000.05 × 0.5 = 7,500.025, which rounds to 7,500.03;
• the two rounded shares sum to 15,000.06 — one unit more than was invoiced;
• the difference, −0.01, is applied to the first line, leaving 7,500.02 and 7,500.03.

Total distributed: 15,000.05, exactly the invoice. This is worth knowing when you read the System Lines grid and one machine's share looks a fraction off the percentage you expected. The distribution always ties back to the invoice to the last decimal, and the first machine on the list absorbs the remainder.

What reaches the ledger

The expense document posts. One debit-and-credit pair per system line — that is, per machine per expense item — plus any tax and discount lines the term configures:

	Account	Debit	Credit
Dr	13910 Assets under letters of credit — the GOODS item's account	500,000
Dr	13910 Assets under letters of credit — FREIGHT	40,000
Dr	13910 Assets under letters of credit — CUSTOMS	60,000
Dr	13910 Assets under letters of credit — CLEAR	15,000
Cr	Gulf Machinery Trading		500,000
Cr	21450 Freight payable		40,000
Cr	Al-Faris Clearance (60,000 + 15,000)		75,000
		615,000	615,000

The debits sit in the holding account, waiting. Nothing has touched a press yet — as far as the asset register is concerned, PRS-0001 and PRS-0002 are still empty records in their initial state. The cost document is what moves 615,000 out of the holding account and onto the machines.

Each line is booked at its own currency and rate, so a euro freight invoice and a local-currency customs bill on the same document each convert at the rate on their own line. The entry is created as a business request processed in the background: the document saves instantly, and a failed entry is retried from the Business Requests list view rather than re-keyed.

What stops an expense document committing

It is refused when	Because
the credit has no proforma invoice	there is nothing to distribute over
the details grid is empty	there is nothing to distribute
a line has no expense value	the same
an expense item distributes on value and the proforma total is zero	there is nothing to divide by
an expense item is set to Manual and the Manual Lines grid has no rows for it	the amounts were never typed
the manual rows for an expense item do not add up to the document lines using that item	the split would not equal the invoice
the credit is already closed	the import has been capitalised; cancel the cost document first

An expense document belonging to a closed credit also cannot be deleted, for the same reason: its figures are already inside somebody's asset cost.

Cancelling a committed expense document reverses its ledger entry and clears its distributed lines, which removes those costs from anything the cost document recalculates afterwards.

Next: The Cost Document.