Commerce overview
How the Commerce page takes you from catalog to quote, order, invoice and payment, plus expenses, contracts and the ledger.
Commerce is where your organization handles the money side of selling. You keep a catalog of what you sell, send quotes, turn accepted quotes into orders, invoice customers and record their payments. Next to that flow sit expenses, customer contracts and a simple double-entry ledger. Everything is on one page, one tab per record type.
From quote to cash#
The main flow follows a sale from first price to money received:
- Catalog: add the products and services you sell, each with a SKU and a default price.
- Quote: price the work for a customer with line items, send it, and mark it accepted or rejected.
- Order: raise an order from an accepted quote. The customer and every line are copied across, and you confirm and fulfil it.
- Invoice: bill the customer. Issue the invoice to make it owed, with a default due date 30 days out.
- Payment: record the money received and allocate it to invoices, which marks them partially paid or paid.
Three tools stand on their own, outside that flow:
- Expenses: costs people paid on the organization’s behalf, approved and then marked reimbursed.
- Contracts: customer agreements, from draft through signature to expired, terminated or renewed.
- Ledger: a chart of accounts and balanced debit/credit postings.
Each step is a separate action
Documents don’t flow into each other automatically. An accepted quote doesn’t create an order by itself, an order doesn’t create an invoice, and none of these post to the ledger. Each step is a deliberate action by someone with the right permission.
Finding Commerce#
Select Commerce in the sidebar. The page has eight tabs, in this order:
| Tab | What it holds |
|---|---|
| Quotes | Priced offers to customers. Opens by default. Each quote has its own page. |
| Orders | Orders raised from accepted quotes. Each order has its own page. |
| Invoices | What customers owe, with paid and due amounts. |
| Payments | Money received, and where it has been allocated. |
| Expenses | Expense claims and their approval status. |
| Contracts | Customer agreements and their status. |
| Ledger | Accounts and posted transactions. |
| Products | The catalog quotes and invoices draw from. |
A new organization starts with every tab empty. Each tab shows a short explanation and, if you can create records, either a form under the list or a New… button.
Who can use it#
Permissions
finance.readfinance.createfinance.approvefinance.refundfinance.read.| Permission | What it allows | Default roles |
|---|---|---|
finance.read | Open Commerce and see every tab. | Owner, Admin, Member, Viewer |
finance.create | Add products. Create and progress quotes, orders, invoices and contracts. Record and allocate payments. Record and submit expenses. | Owner, Admin, Member |
finance.approve | Approve, reject and reimburse expenses. Create ledger accounts and post transactions. | Owner, Admin |
finance.refund | Refund a recorded payment. | Owner, Admin |
Guests have no access to Commerce. To change who can do what, edit roles under Roles and permissions.
How UnitX handles money#
Entering amounts#
Type amounts as ordinary decimals, such as 1250.00 or 42.5. Don’t type currency symbols or thousands separators. UnitX stores every amount exactly to the cent, so totals never pick up rounding drift.
Totals are calculated by UnitX#
On quotes, orders and invoices you enter only quantities and unit prices. UnitX works out the line totals and the document total when you save. The Preview shown in the create dialogs is an estimate, and the saved document shows the real figures. See Quotes → line items for the exact math.
Currency#
Everything you create from the Commerce page is in US dollars. Records in other currencies can be created through the API, and each record keeps its own currency. Amounts are displayed in your browser’s number format.
Document numbers#
Quotes, orders, invoices and contracts are numbered automatically from separate sequences, with the prefixes QUO-, ORD-, INV- and CON-. Numbers are never reused, and you can’t edit them.
Financial records are never deleted#
Commerce has no delete button for quotes, orders, invoices, payments, expenses, contracts or ledger transactions. You close them instead: cancel a quote or order, void an invoice, refund a payment, terminate a contract, or post a reversing ledger entry. Only products can be removed from the catalog, and past documents keep their lines even then.
How Commerce connects to the rest of UnitX#
- Customers: every quote, order, invoice, payment and contract belongs to a customer from your CRM. See Customers.
- Deals: a proposal drafted on an opportunity is the same record as a quote, so it also appears on the Quotes tab. See Opportunity proposals.
- Time tracking: approved billable time can be turned into an invoice. See Invoices → Invoice billable time.
- Your UnitX subscription isn’t part of Commerce. Commerce is what you charge your customers. What UnitX charges you is under Billing and plans.
Commerce pages#
I can’t see Commerce in the sidebar.
Your role doesn’t include finance.read. Ask an Owner or Admin to add it in Settings → Roles.
Can I see the buttons but get an error when I use them?
Buttons are shown according to your permissions. A few actions have extra rules. For example, only the author can submit an expense, and a draft invoice must be issued before payments can be allocated to it. The error message says what’s missing.
Can I filter Commerce by customer?
Not on the page. Each tab lists its records newest first, across all customers. The API can filter quotes, orders, invoices, payments and contracts by customer.
Still stuck? Search the docs with ⌘K, open Help inside UnitX, or contact support.