This article is part of this article series: API Best Practices - Introduction
Introduction
The process of importing sales transactions from a POS system has seven steps. You can read the details of these steps in this article:
Importing sales transactions including customers
- Download all customers that currently exist in Twinfield
- Update the dimension type mask
- Add or update customers into Twinfield
- Find the available transaction types
- Find the available general ledgers
- Find the available vat codes
- Import new sales transactions
In the article above, we give a generic explanation of importing sales transactions including customers. Below you will find an explanation of the additional steps that need to be made by POS systems specifically. The steps that are not described below are the same as in the generic article.
Important: There are two types of customers. Those who prepay their invoices by use of a payment provider and those who postpay their invoices by bank transfer.
Step 3: Add or update customers into Twinfield
This step is the first step where it is important to make a distinction between customers who prepay their invoice and customers who will pay for their invoice afterwards by bank transfer, also known as postpaid transactions.
Customers that prepay their invoice by use of cash or a debit card do not have to be sent or updated in Twinfield. This is because in this situation the amount of the invoice will be received from the customer directly by cash payment or later through a payment provider.
Only customers that have chosen to pay their invoice afterwards by bank transfer should be added or updated to Twinfield. You can refer to the generic article above for more information about adding or updating customers to Twinfield.
Step 4: Find the available transaction types
In this step, a distinction between customers who prepay and customers who will pay afterwards also needs to be made.
- Customers who prepay should be registered as a cash transaction.
- Customers who postpay should be registered as a sales transaction.
Important: Instruct the end-user to create two new transaction types for each POS system they use. This should be done by the end-user in the user interface of Twinfield. The first should be a cash transaction type. The second should be a sales transaction type.
To request the available transaction types for cash transactions you can use the Postman collection in the attachment of this article, specifically the request 'Find the available transaction types for prepaid transactions'.
To request the available transaction types for sales transactions you can use the request 'Find the available transaction types for postpaid transactions'.
After you have found all the available transaction types, let the end-user configure which transaction type they want to use.
Step 7: Import new sales transactions
This step is the last step where a distinction needs to be made between prepaid and postpaid transactions. As mentioned in the previous steps, customers who prepay don't have to be updated or added. The transaction type used for these transactions will also be different.
Importing prepaid transactions
For prepaid transactions, a single entry per day per payment method (cash, debit card, visa, etcetera) can be made which totalizes all the revenue made.
To import cash transactions into Twinfield for prepaid transactions you can use the Postman collection in the attachment of this article. You can use the requests named 'Import new cash transactions for prepaid transactions paid by cash' and 'Import new cash transactions for prepaid transactions paid by debit card/visa/etcetera'.
Importing postpaid transactions
For postpaid transactions specific entries per invoice and customer are needed to allow for the ability to match invoices with bank transfers at a later stage.
To import sales transactions into Twinfield for postpaid transactions you can use the Postman collection in the attachment of this article. You can use the request named 'Import new sales transactions for postpaid transactions'.
