Spending: purchases and expenses in one list

Spending is the money-out side of the business on one screen: what suppliers billed you and everything else that went out on a receipt, in one list, newest first.

There is one question a person actually asks here — what did I spend? — and until now the app made you ask it twice. Now you ask it once, and a Type column on each row says which kind of record the answer came from.

Two records, on purpose

The list is merged. The records underneath it are not, and that is a decision rather than an oversight.

That "touches stock" row is the whole reason the two exist separately. Receiving a purchase books the goods in, which writes a stock movement, which moves the item's average cost — and the average cost is what every valuation, margin and cost-of-goods figure in OrderDen is built on. An expense has no lines to receive and no items to cost, so it never enters that chain.

Collapsing the two records into one would have broken it. Merging the two lists costs nothing, so that is what was merged.

Which do I record?

Raise a purchase when there is a bill with lines on it, something you are waiting to arrive, or something that lands in stock — receiving a purchase is what gives your materials a cost.

Record an expense for everything else: one amount, one photograph, ten seconds.

If you would not chase the supplier for it, it is an expense.

Both file under the same category list, so the spend reports and the year-end tax summary see one picture rather than two halves.

The screen

Three tabs:

• Everything — both kinds in one list. Filter by type, vendor, category or a date range; sort by any column; pick your columns; save a view; export the filtered set to CSV.
• Purchases — the purchase list on its own, with the filters only it has: status, what is still awaiting receipt, what is unpaid.
• Expenses — the receipt list on its own, grouped by month with a total on each heading, and the filters only it has: what is waiting to be reviewed, what is waiting to be re-billed to a client, what repeats.

Two buttons make a record, because starting one is two different jobs: New purchase opens the order form with its lines, and Add expense (or Photograph a receipt) takes an amount and a picture.

The columns

Type carries a badge either way, and the tooltip says the thing worth knowing: a purchase puts stock on the shelf when you receive it, and an expense never does.

Status reads differently on each. A purchase shows where it is up to — Draft, Ordered, Part received, Received, Paid, Cancelled. An expense is already paid by definition, so it shows what is outstanding about the record: To review for one drafted from a photograph that nobody has agreed with yet, or To re-bill for one spent for a client and not yet put on an invoice.

Balance is a purchase's figure only — what is still owed on it. An expense shows a dash, because the money already left.

The archive is left out: an archived purchase is spending you filed away, not spending you did. It is still on the Purchases tab under ?archived=true.

In the reports

Nothing changed there. Reports → Expense summary and the tax-time report already read both kinds through the shared categories, and the accounting export still writes bills and expenses as the two things your accountant's software expects.

On the API

GET /api/v1/spending returns the merged list, each row carrying kind and movesStock. It is read-only for the same reason the models are separate: creating and editing still go to /purchases and /expenses. See the API reference.