Submitting to Accounting
Once an invoice has been reviewed and its line items matched, you can submit it straight to your accounting platform (Xero, QuickBooks, or Sage) as a supplier bill. Brikly carries across the supplier, totals, VAT, account codes, and (optionally) the original document, so your bookkeeper does not have to key it in again.
You will find the Submit to Accounting panel near the bottom of the invoice detail page, once your accounting integration is connected.
Submission settings
Select the settings (gear) icon on the panel to choose how the bill is built. There are two ways to send the line detail.
Send Individual Line Items (recommended)
This is the default. Each invoice line becomes its own line on the bill, with its own description, account code, and VAT rate. Choose this when you want:
- Better tracking of ingredient costs and supplier performance
- Detailed profit and loss analysis by ingredient category
- Brikly's AI to keep learning your account-code preferences
Grouped by category and VAT rate
If you untick Send Individual Line Items, Brikly groups the invoice into one bill line per account code and VAT rate. In practice this totals your ingredients, then your consumables, and splits each by VAT rate, the way many bookkeepers enter an invoice manually. Lines that were set aside, such as a delivery charge or a piece of equipment, group under their own account codes alongside them.
Each grouped line is named from your accounting chart of accounts, for example Cost of Goods Sold (12 items) and Packaging (4 items). Because the lines are split by VAT rate, a mixed-rate delivery (some zero-rated food, some standard-rated cleaning) is reported with the correct VAT on each line.
Choose this when your bookkeeper prefers a tidy, summarised bill rather than every individual line.
The choice only changes how the detail is grouped on the bill. The supplier, invoice total, and VAT total are the same either way.
Expense invoices do not show the line-items setting here. Their grouping is controlled from the Expense Line Items section instead, where you can combine the bill into one line per VAT rate with your own description - remembered per supplier. Multi-site operators can also split an expense bill by location - the combined bill then keeps one line per site as well.
Locations on the bill
If your accounting platform tracks locations (Xero tracking categories, QuickBooks classes and departments), Brikly applies the invoice's location to the bill using the mapping in your accounting settings. On expense invoices, lines assigned to different sites each carry their own site's tracking, so one bill can split its costs correctly across locations.
One platform-specific note: QuickBooks departments apply to a whole bill, not to individual lines. A bill whose lines span more than one site is sent without a department (the per-line classes still carry the split); a bill that belongs to a single site keeps its department as normal.
Choosing a site at submission
If you run more than one site and an invoice has no site assigned when you submit it (or mark it complete), Brikly asks once: which site is this invoice for? Pick a site and the invoice is assigned before the bill is sent, or carry on without one - leaving an invoice unassigned is always allowed, and you can set the site later from the invoice page.
The prompt only appears when the question is worth asking:
- Single-site businesses never see it - invoices are assigned to your only site automatically when they arrive, whether uploaded, emailed in, or captured on a phone.
- A split expense bill is not asked - if every line already carries its own site, the bill has no single site to assign.
- More than one accounting organisation connected - here the site decides which organisation's books receive the bill, so the bill cannot be sent unassigned and the prompt asks you to pick a site before submitting.
Attach original invoice PDF
When ticked, the original invoice document is attached to the bill in your accounting platform, so the source is always one click away. This is independent of the line-item choice above, so a grouped bill can still carry the full original document.
Skipped and deleted lines
Skipping a line item only tells Brikly not to match it to an ingredient or consumable and not to record a price for it. Skipped lines are still included on the accounting bill, so the bill always reconciles to the real invoice total. If you do not want a line on the bill at all, delete the line item before submitting.
Brikly sets some lines aside for you: delivery and other charges it has learned, credit and return lines on a credit note, and Equipment (not stock) lines such as a pair of scissors or a mop bucket. These behave exactly like a line you skipped yourself. They stay on the bill, they still need an account code like any billed line, and they are never costed or stocked.
When line items don't add up
The bill sent to your accounting platform totals the line items, not the printed invoice total. If the two disagree - usually because a delivery charge or a line was missed during extraction - the bill would not match the bank payment when your bookkeeper reconciles it.
Brikly checks this for you:
- An amber warning appears on the invoice (and in the submission panel) showing the difference, with an Add the missing line shortcut to fix it in one step - see Adding a missing line or charge.
- If you submit anyway - from the invoice page or the quick submit button on the list - Brikly asks you to confirm first. You stay in control: the mismatch never blocks submission outright.
A difference that is explained by unapplied discounts shows as an informational note instead - applying the discounts brings the totals back in line.
When the difference is the VAT
There is one exception to "never blocks". If the difference matches the VAT shown on the invoice and no line has a VAT rate set - the classic shape is a phone or utility bill that prints VAT only in its totals box - adding a line would double-count the tax, and submitting would send the bill across zero-rated and short by the VAT amount. So instead:
- The warning names the real cause and points you at the line VAT rates, not a missing line.
- Where one rate explains the whole difference, an Apply VAT to all lines button fixes it in one click and carries straight on with your submission.
- Until the rates are set, the invoice cannot be submitted - this is the only totals mismatch that blocks, because the resulting bill would be wrong in a way that cannot be corrected from Brikly afterwards.
Most bills of this shape never reach the warning at all: where the invoice arithmetic proves every line is standard-rated, Brikly fills the rate in automatically during processing - see When VAT appears only in the totals box.
Before you can submit
All line items must be matched or skipped, and any price changes must be reviewed, before an invoice can be submitted. If issues remain, you can still send the bill as a draft for your bookkeeper to finish in the accounting platform.
Expense invoices submit through the same panel - their lines are set aside from matching automatically, and every line needs an account code before the bill can be sent.
If no accounting integration is connected, the panel is replaced with a simple Mark as Complete action instead.
Credit notes
Credit notes use the same panel but submit differently, because they are not bills:
- Xero - submitting creates a real supplier credit note in Xero as a draft, unallocated, with the original document PDF attached. You (or your accountant) approve it in Xero and apply it against the relevant bill - Brikly never approves or allocates documents in your ledger.
- Sage and QuickBooks - credit note submission is not available yet. Brikly tells you to record the credit note directly in that platform, and you can use Mark as Complete so it stops showing as outstanding.
A confirmed classification is required before a credit note can be sent - see Credit Notes for the full flow.