How to Review Outstanding Invoices Before Generating the CA Report

A month-end CA report is only as useful as the invoices and payment positions behind it. If a customer paid after an invoice was created but the receipt was never recorded, that bill will still look pending. If the owner and customer agreed to close a small difference but the staff selected partial payment, the invoice will also remain in outstanding even though the commercial matter is finished.

My Local Shops Order Manager therefore checks the selected month's open invoices before creating the CA pack. The owner can open each bill, see its complete details, record money that was actually received, confirm that the balance is genuinely pending, or explicitly close a difference that both parties agreed not to collect.

This review does not rewrite a GST invoice to make the outstanding list look clean. The original bill, tax values, payment records and settlement adjustment remain separate. That gives the owner a practical receivables list and gives the CA a more transparent monthly record.

Where to start the month-end review

Open Order Manager → Reports → Month-end for CA and select a month.

Only completed calendar months are available. For example, during August 2026 the newest selectable month is July 2026. The current month is excluded because invoices, returns and payments may still be changing.

When the owner opens a month, Order Manager first checks whether a saved report pack already exists. If none exists, the owner can generate it. If one was generated earlier, the screen shows the saved snapshot and offers Regenerate (overwrite) after corrections.

Before generation, the system checks the selected month's outstanding invoices. If it finds any, the owner sees:

• how many bills remain pending;
• their combined balance due; and
• a recommendation to review them before creating the CA report.

The owner can choose Review bills, Generate anyway, or Not now. Review is the recommended workflow, but it is not an artificial hard lock. A business may intentionally have genuine credit sales at month end, so pending invoices do not prevent a CA report from being created.

Which invoices appear in the review

The review is scoped to the signed-in owner and the selected invoice month. It loads only invoices whose current payment status is unpaid or partial.

It does not download every invoice for the month and then search for pending bills on the phone. Order Manager asks Firestore specifically for open invoices and loads them in pages of 20. This keeps the screen practical if a wholesaler's history grows and avoids unnecessary database reads.

An invoice appears when:

1. it belongs to the signed-in seller;
2. its invoice date falls inside the selected month; and
3. it still has an open balance.

Suppose a January invoice remains unpaid in February. It appears when reviewing January because January is the invoice month. A payment recorded in February can still reduce or close that January invoice before the January CA pack is regenerated.

The initial summary shows the pending invoice count and total due. As the owner reviews bills, it also shows:

• how many loaded bills have been reviewed;
• the value confirmed as still pending; and
• any agreed settlement adjustments added during this review.

Each list row shows the party, invoice number, invoice date, bill total, amount received, balance due and current review state. The bill is clickable, so the owner does not have to make a decision from a compressed summary alone.

Open every bill before deciding

Tap an invoice to open Invoice Detail. The owner can check the buyer, products, quantities, GST or non-GST values, payment history, credit notes and the remaining amount.

At the bottom, the month-end review provides three decisions:

Action	Use it when	Result
Record payment	Money was actually received but is missing from the invoice	Adds the receipt and recalculates the balance
Still pending	The customer genuinely owes the remaining amount	Keeps the invoice in outstanding
Agreed as complete	Both sides agreed that nothing more will be paid	Closes the balance using an explicit settlement adjustment

These actions are deliberately different. Recording a payment means money changed hands. Marking an invoice still pending means the receivable is real. Agreeing as complete means the owner accepts a commercial difference without pretending that money was received.

Decision 1: record a missing or later payment

Choose Record payment if the customer paid but the receipt is absent from the system.

The payment sheet limits the amount to the current balance due and supports the normal payment modes:

• cash;
• UPI;
• card; and
• bank transfer.

If the amount was received through more than one mode, separate rows can preserve the split. For example, a ₹40,000 pending balance may be recorded as ₹15,000 cash and ₹25,000 bank transfer.

After saving, the invoice is reloaded. If no balance remains, the review marks it as Payment complete and removes it from the live outstanding position. If a balance remains, the owner can review what should happen to the remainder.

Example: payment existed outside the app

Consider a January invoice:

Field before review	Amount
Invoice total	₹80,000
Recorded payment	₹50,000
Balance due	₹30,000

The customer transferred ₹30,000 later, but the owner forgot to record it. During January review, the owner verifies the bank entry and records ₹30,000 as bank transfer.

The updated invoice becomes:

Field after review	Amount
Invoice total	₹80,000
Amount actually received	₹80,000
Settlement adjustment	₹0
Balance due	₹0
Payment status	Paid

This is a genuine payment, so it belongs in payment history—not in a write-off or adjustment field.

Decision 2: confirm that it is still pending

Choose Still pending when the retailer genuinely owes the displayed balance.

This does not modify the invoice or create a new payment. It records the owner's review decision for the current on-screen process and allows the owner to proceed after checking every loaded bill.

For example:

Invoice total	Received	Still due
₹1,20,000	₹70,000	₹50,000

If the buyer promised to pay ₹50,000 next week, the correct action is Still pending. The invoice remains partial and continues to appear in party outstanding and invoice detail.

Genuine outstanding is not a report error. A wholesaler can have legitimate credit sales at month end. The purpose of review is to distinguish real receivables from missed entries and agreed differences—not to force every monthly balance to zero.

Decision 3: close an agreed difference

Choose Agreed as complete only when the owner and customer have agreed that no more money is due.

Order Manager displays a confirmation with:

• bill value;
• amount received;
• pending difference; and
• a clear warning that the bill and GST value will remain unchanged.

Only the owner can perform this correction. Staff Bill users cannot silently write off an outstanding amount during the owner's month-end review.

Example: ₹51,000 invoice settled at ₹50,000

Assume:

• invoice grand total: ₹51,000;
• money actually received: ₹50,000;
• both parties agree that the sale is complete; and
• ₹1,000 will not be collected.

The system should not reduce the invoice to ₹50,000, because the confirmed bill remains ₹51,000. It should not store ₹51,000 as paid either, because only ₹50,000 was received.

Order Manager stores the position as:

Field	Amount
Original invoice total	₹51,000
Amount actually received	₹50,000
Owner-approved settlement adjustment	₹1,000
Balance due	₹0
Payment status	Paid

The settlement action reads the latest balance inside a Firestore transaction. If another device recorded a payment immediately before the owner confirmed the difference, the operation uses the updated balance rather than writing off the old amount twice.

The invoice and GST value remain unchanged. The CA report can show the invoice at ₹51,000, the amount received at ₹50,000, and the ₹1,000 settlement adjustment separately. The owner's realised profit also recognises the accepted difference instead of treating uncollected money as profit.

This preserves three different truths:

1. what was billed;
2. what money was received; and
3. what difference the owner accepted.

What happens after every bill is reviewed

The Continue to CA report button becomes available after every loaded bill has a decision and there are no more pages left to load.

Before continuing, Order Manager checks the server again. It compares the current pending count with the invoices the owner confirmed as still pending. If the list changed on another device, the app refreshes the review and asks the owner to check the updated bills.

This matters in a business with an owner phone and one or two billing devices. A staff member may record a payment while the owner is reviewing the month. The final server check reduces the risk of creating a report based on a stale list.

The review itself is a guided preparation step. It does not permanently lock the month. Once complete, Order Manager returns to the month report screen and creates the CA pack from the current invoice and credit-note data.

What the CA pack contains

The generated month-end pack contains four CSV files:

1. GST invoices — invoice number, date, party, GSTIN where available, supply type, tax mode, place of supply, taxable amount, CGST, SGST, IGST, tax total, invoice total, amount received, settlement fields, balance and payment status;
2. GST credit notes — linked returns and their taxable and tax reversals;
3. Non-GST records — non-GST invoices and credit notes kept separate from the GST register; and
4. HSN summary — HSN-wise taxable value and tax components, including reductions from applicable GST credit notes.

The report also preserves settlement adjustments and excess received as separate commercial fields. It does not make an accepted shortfall disappear inside a false payment value.

The owner can download the four files or share them through the Android share sheet using WhatsApp, email, Drive or another installed app.

My Local Shops organises the data; it does not file a GST return. The owner and CA remain responsible for checking the records and completing the applicable tax process.

Why the report is a saved snapshot

When a pack is generated, Order Manager saves that month's report document. This gives the owner a stable, previously generated view rather than silently rebuilding different numbers every time the screen opens.

If the owner later corrects a payment, settlement, invoice or credit note, the old pack does not pretend it was always different. The screen explains that Regenerate (overwrite) creates a fresh snapshot from the corrected records.

This behaviour supports a simple operational rule:

1. complete the month;
2. review pending bills;
3. make valid corrections;
4. generate the pack;
5. review or share it with the CA; and
6. regenerate if source records are corrected later.

There is no irreversible “GST filed” state inside the app. That would be misleading because My Local Shops cannot know whether the CA has filed, revised or reconciled an external return.

Generate anyway: when it is valid

The warning also offers Generate anyway. This is intentional.

Use it when:

• the pending invoices are known genuine credit sales;
• the owner has already reviewed them through another process;
• the CA needs the month data before collection is complete; or
• the owner wants an initial pack and plans to regenerate after corrections.

Do not use it merely to avoid checking unexplained balances. An inaccurate outstanding list can affect collection follow-up, party relationships and the owner's understanding of realised profit even when the invoice tax values themselves are correct.

Practical month-end checklist for the owner

Before sharing a report with the CA:

• select only the completed month;
• compare pending bills with bank, UPI, cash and WhatsApp confirmations;
• open every unexplained invoice;
• record only money that was actually received;
• leave genuine dues as still pending;
• use agreed settlement only when both sides consider the bill complete;
• check returns and credit notes for the same month;
• generate the four-file CA pack;
• verify GSTIN, HSN, place of supply and tax mode with the CA; and
• regenerate the pack if a source record is corrected.

Common mistakes to avoid

Recording an agreed difference as cash

If ₹50,000 was received against ₹51,000, do not record ₹51,000 cash just to close the bill. That creates a false receipt. Keep ₹50,000 as payment and ₹1,000 as the accepted settlement adjustment.

Reducing the invoice after both sides accepted it

Do not edit item prices merely to make the bill equal the payment after the confirmed invoice has already been issued. The invoice value and commercial settlement answer different questions.

Closing a balance without owner confirmation

An employee may not know whether the owner agreed to waive a difference. Keep it partial until the owner reviews it. The owner-only correction exists for exactly this scenario.

Treating every pending invoice as a mistake

Wholesale businesses commonly sell on credit. A reviewed pending bill is a valid receivable, not a failure in the report.

Assuming the saved pack updates automatically

A saved report is a snapshot. If invoice, payment or credit-note data changes later, use Regenerate (overwrite) before sharing the revised files.

A clean hand-off from daily billing to the CA

Staff can continue creating invoices and recording normal payments during daily work. At month end, the owner uses Order Manager to review the remaining exceptions. The CA receives organised GST invoices, credit notes, non-GST records and an HSN summary without needing access to private product costs or owner profit screens.

That separation keeps the workflow understandable for a small wholesale team:

• staff records sales and collections;
• the owner confirms unusual balances;
• Order Manager preserves the audit trail; and
• the CA reviews the monthly tax records.

The result is not a promise that every customer has paid. It is a more reliable statement of which invoices are paid, which are genuinely outstanding, and which differences the owner deliberately accepted before the monthly report was prepared.

For the payment mechanics behind this review, read How to Record Payments and Correct an Invoice's Settlement Status. For the difference between private owner profit reports and the CA pack, read Owner Reports, CA Reports and GST Month-End Review in Seconds.