Line Items

Line Items are reusable products, services, or descriptions that can be added to Estimates, Quotes, Jobs, Purchase Orders, Invoices, Supplier Invoices, Expenses, and POS Sales to speed up document creation.

Item types

When you create a line item, the Item Type controls how the item is treated across documents, stock, and the Point of Sale.

Type	Purpose
Other	A generic line entry with no special behaviour.
Product	A non-inventory product.
Service	A service (labour, time, consulting).
Subscription	A recurring product or service.
Stock	A tracked inventory product. Acqui maintains an on-hand count for these items.
Consumable	A tracked inventory input (kitchen ingredient, cleaning supply). Counts toward stock like `Stock`, but is not required to be sellable in the POS.
Composite	A product built from other stock or consumable items. Sale of a composite deducts each component’s stock by its component quantity.
Discount	A catalog adjustment that reduces a document’s total. See Discounts and surcharges.
Surcharge	A catalog adjustment that adds to a document’s total (e.g. card fee, fuel levy, convenience charge).

Discounts and surcharges

Catalog discount and surcharge items let you apply pre-defined adjustments to a document without recomputing the line-level discount on every invoice. Each adjustment item stores:

Adjustment Type — Percentage or Fixed Amount.
Rate (for percentage) or Amount (for fixed) — the value that will be applied when the item is added to a document.

When a staff member drops a discount or surcharge item onto an Estimate, Quote, Job, Purchase Order, Invoice, Supplier Invoice, Expense, or POS sale, the configured rate or amount is carried through to the document line automatically.

Percentage vs fixed

Percentage
- Discount — computed as a percentage of the document’s tax-inclusive total. Example: a 10% discount applied to an order totalling $115.00 (after 15% VAT) reduces the customer’s bill by $11.50, so the new total is $103.50. This matches what the customer expects when they see “10% off”.
- Surcharge — computed as a percentage of the post-discount pre-tax subtotal, and the surcharge line’s own taxRate is then applied. For a 10% surcharge on a $100 ex-VAT subtotal with 15% VAT, the customer sees a $10.00 ex-VAT addition plus $1.50 VAT = $11.50 added to the bill.
Fixed — the adjustment uses the stored amount directly, regardless of document size.
- Fixed discounts are interpreted as tax-inclusive (“$5.00 off” means $5.00 off the customer’s final total).
- Fixed surcharges are interpreted as tax-exclusive (the surcharge line’s tax code/rate adds the VAT on top).

Ordering when both are present

When a document has both a discount and a surcharge line:

Discounts apply first. Surcharges are computed against the post-discount subtotal, not the raw subtotal.
Percentage bases are pre-tax. Percentage discounts compute against the non-adjustment pre-tax subtotal; percentage surcharges compute against the post-discount pre-tax subtotal. Tax is recomputed on the adjusted base.
Each adjustment line shows in its own row so the customer or supplier can see the deduction or addition explicitly.

You can add more than one discount and more than one surcharge to the same document. Acqui does not prevent stacking — if you need to manage edge cases (e.g. a 10% discount and a separate 5% loyalty discount), remove one line and adjust manually.

Catalog drawer fields

When you create a discount or surcharge item in Finance → Line Items, the drawer shows:

Item Code, Item Name, Status — standard.
Item Type — pick Discount or Surcharge.
Show In Point of Sale — defaults to Yes so a cashier can add the adjustment at the till. Set to No if you only want the adjustment available on back-office documents.
Adjustment Type — Percentage or Fixed Amount. Defaults to Percentage the first time you switch an item to Discount or Surcharge. Changing the type clears the inactive field (switching from Percentage to Fixed Amount resets the rate, and vice versa).
Rate (%) — visible only when Adjustment Type is Percentage. Accepts values between 0 and 100, with up to four decimal places for fractional rates.
Amount — visible only when Adjustment Type is Fixed Amount. Must be zero or greater; negative values are not accepted. Enter the amount as a positive number regardless of whether it is a discount or surcharge — Acqui handles the sign on posting.
Tax Code, Tax Rate, Tax Amount — only shown for Surcharge items. A surcharge can carry its own tax (e.g. a 10% card surcharge is still taxable), and the tax portion posts to tax-liability separately from the surcharge revenue. Discounts are modelled as pre-tax reductions and do not carry a tax code themselves.
Barcode — optional; supported on both Discount and Surcharge items so a POS scanner can trigger the adjustment directly from the Order grid.
Description and Notes — free-text fields; Description is printed on documents, Notes is internal.

Category, sub-category, stock quantity, and product image fields are intentionally hidden for adjustment items. Unit price is hidden for percentage adjustments and mirrors the Amount for fixed adjustments.

POS availability

Adjustment items are added to the POS Order grid the same way as other catalog items — tap the card, or scan the barcode. The configured rate or amount is applied automatically to the current order or tab, and stock levels are never touched. Toggle Show In Point of Sale to No if the adjustment should only be usable on back-office Estimates, Quotes, Jobs, Purchase Orders, Invoices, Supplier Invoices, or Expenses. See POS → Order for how an adjustment behaves once it is rung up.

Acqui posts adjustment-line activity to dedicated revenue accounts so gross sales, surcharges, and discounts stay visible on the P&L:

Surcharge revenue posts to 4200 Surcharge Revenue (not lumped with 4000 Sales Revenue).
Discounts given post to 4900 Discounts Given, a contra-revenue account that reduces gross revenue.
The primary settlement leg (Accounts Receivable on invoices, cash/card on POS sales) remains aggregate — only the revenue credit splits.

If you do not already have these accounts in your Chart of Accounts, run Finance → Chart of Accounts → Finance Health Check once after upgrading. The “System chart of accounts” step creates the missing accounts automatically.

Cash Off is not a discount

The POS “Cash Off” workflow is unrelated to catalog discount items. Cash Off is a tip-payout process for staff and is documented under Cash Management in the POS. Use a catalog Discount item when you want to reduce a customer’s bill, not Cash Off.