Connecting with other businesses

If your customer or supplier also runs on Kaalchakra, you can work together directly: message each other, share catalogues, and send documents that land in their workspace ready to accept — no PDFs over email, no retyping on the other side.

Connecting works like a messenger

1. 1

   Find the business

   Open Organisation → Connections and search by the business's short name on Kaalchakra.

2. 2

   Connect and say hello

   Connecting opens the conversation immediately — there is no approval queue. Your first message simply arrives, marked as a first contact.

3. 3

   They reply — or block

   A reply activates the business relationship. If they'd rather not engage, they can block the conversation; blocking freezes the chat but keeps its history.

What unlocks once both sides engage

• Party accounts — each side gets the other set up as a party in their masters automatically.
• Document exchange — invoices and orders you send appear in their Incoming page for review.
• Catalogue sharing — let a counterparty browse the items you offer, with full control over which organisation sees what.
• Item matching — map your item names to theirs so exchanged documents translate cleanly.
• Order drafts — a received document can become a draft purchase order on the other side.
• Statement of account — let a counterparty view a live, read-only statement of their dealings with you.

Naming a connection the way your team knows it

Every business chooses its own name on Kaalchakra, and that is rarely the name your staff use for them. A supplier your team calls "Mohit" might be registered as a much longer trading name, and two different businesses can even share the same one — which makes picking the right chat harder than it should be.

So a connection is shown using the name you would recognise. If you have already linked the business to a party account in your books, the chat uses that account's name. You can also set your own name for any connection: open the connection's settings from the chat header and fill in Name in your books.

• It is private to your organisation. The other business never sees the name you chose — they keep seeing their own.
• Everyone on your team sees it. It is an organisation setting, not a personal one, so your whole team recognises the same chat.
• Searching still works both ways. You can find the conversation by the name you chose *or* by the business's real name, so renaming can never hide a chat from you.
• Clearing it is safe. Empty the box and the connection goes back to the linked account's name, and then to the business's own name.

Sharing your catalogue — organisation by organisation

Open the settings (gear) button in the Messages header to manage everything you share. You set a default rule that applies to every connected organisation, then give specific organisations their own rule when you want them to see something different. For each organisation you can share your entire catalogue, only selected item groups, only selected items, or nothing at all — so a regular customer can see your full range while a one-off buyer sees just a couple of groups. You also choose which item details are visible (only the item name always shows; your cost is never shared) and whether buyers may filter by group.

Your default rule is also the most anyone can see. A rule for one organisation shows that organisation fewer item details than your default, never more — unless you choose otherwise for that one organisation, as described below. So if your default does not include MRP, no organisation sees MRP just because its own rule asks for it. This is deliberate: it means you can widen or narrow what every buyer sees from a single place, without having to re-check every organisation's rule one by one.

Under Prices buyers see you tick, one by one, which prices a buyer sees: MRP (the printed maximum price), List price (your rate before the discount), Discount (the discount you give them), Net price (after discount, before GST) and Final price (after discount and GST). Any mix is allowed. Show big decides which of the final price and the net price appears in large type; if the one you choose is not shown, the other shown price is used. Your cost is never shared either way.

You can also decide prices organisation by organisation. In one organisation's own rule, tick Customise visible fields for this organisation to give it its own MRP, List price, Discount and Net price ticks; Final price for this organisation offers Use my default, Show final price or Show rate only; and Shown big for this organisation picks which price it sees in large type — so one buyer can see the final price while another sees only the net price.

You can also share your range with no prices at all: untick every price — in your default, or for one organisation only — and that buyer browses your items without seeing a rate, a discount or an order total. Their running order still works and still reaches you at your agreed prices; only their view of the numbers is withheld. A running order shows line totals and the order total only while Net price is shown, so if you would rather quote one all-in figure and keep your rate and discount to yourself, show Final price alone.

Your orders follow your own masters. If you change an item's price, its discount or its details later, your open sale orders are brought up to date — including ones placed by a connected business. Their copy is not changed. Their order is their own record, and only they can change it. What happens instead is that they get a message on your conversation naming the order, what moved, and what it moved from and to, so they can look at their copy and decide for themselves. If you keep your rates private from that buyer, the message tells them which terms changed without showing the figures. Once a connection has ended, your orders carry on following your masters and nobody is messaged.

Importing items a counterparty shared

When a supplier shares their catalogue with you, open their chat and use Import items to browse what they offer. Tick several items and import them all at once, or pick a group and import the whole group in one go — each item is copied into your own catalogue and linked so the supplier's future documents line up with your items automatically. Items you already have are skipped, so you can import again safely. Their price to you is filled in as your purchase price; you set your own selling price. If that supplier does not publish prices, the purchase price comes in blank for you to fill in yourself.

Showing documents you raised before you connected

When you connect with a business today, only the documents you raise for them from now on appear in their chat. If you already billed them — or raised orders and estimates — before you connected, open their chat and use Share past forms to show those too. Pick the account that represents them, tick the sales, purchases, orders or estimates you want to share, or choose Share all not shared in one go. Each one lands in their Incoming page exactly like a new document, and they still approve every one before it reaches their books.

Sending files in a conversation

Use the paperclip in the message box to send files alongside your message — a signed copy, a photo of a delivery challan, a price list, a bank advice. You can attach up to six files at a time, each up to 10 MB, and 32 MB in total across one message. You can send a file on its own, without typing anything.

You can send images, PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, CSV, text and ZIP files, along with the plain data files used to move records between accounting systems and to file returns — everything a business normally exchanges. A few types are not accepted, such as web pages and anything that can run as a program on the other person’s computer. If you pick one, the message box tells you which file it was and what you can send instead, and nothing is uploaded.

Sharing a statement of account

You can let a customer or supplier see exactly where their account stands with you. Turn on Share statement of account for that organisation in the sharing settings, and they get a live, read-only statement — the same transactions and running balance you see for their account in your books. They only ever see their own account with you, never any other account, and they cannot change anything. To view a statement someone has shared with you, open their chat and use the Statement button.

Previewing a document before you approve

Every document that arrives in a chat has a View button. It opens the document exactly as the sender designed it — in their own print format, with their letterhead and totals — so you can check it before deciding. Until you approve it, the preview is clearly marked as not yet approved by you; once you approve, that mark disappears. You can view a document you sent the same way, to see precisely what the other side sees.

Changing an order after they have it

A sale order or purchase order can be changed at any time, by either side, however old it is — orders are working documents and nothing about them is locked. Because the other business is holding their own copy, the change does not simply overwrite theirs: it becomes a proposed change in your chat, and they Approve or Decline it. The card lists what moved — items and quantities, and also the price, the discount, the tax rate, the date, the series and the tax treatment — so they are agreeing to something they can actually read. Approving updates the items and amounts on their copy; the other changes are shown for their information, and they adjust their own document if they agree. If they decline, the two copies stay different and the connection is marked out of sync so neither of you is working from a document the other has not accepted.

One thing an approval will not do is put back quantities that have already been dispatched. If you have shipped against an order and the other side proposes a change that would restore what you have already invoiced, the approval is refused and explains why — agree the remaining quantities between you and edit the order yourself. The same applies to a change that would alter quantities the card did not show.

The Incoming page

Organisation → Incoming is your review desk for documents other businesses send you. Approve a document to bring it into your books, or set per-counterparty auto-accept once you trust the flow. Nothing enters your records without that approval policy saying so.

What a connected business can see about you

While you are connected, the other business can see your organisation's name, address, contact details and GST number, and the list of people on your team who are allowed to take part in cross-organisation chat. The moment a connection ends — whether you disconnect or block — the details stop: no address, no phone number, no email, no GST number, and no list of your people. Your organisation's name and logo stay visible to them, so any past conversation still makes sense and the entry in their list is not left blank.

Your state appears on your profile alongside your GST number, and only when you have a GST number on file. A GST number already begins with the two-digit code of the state it was issued in, so a connected business can read your state from it either way — showing it as its own line simply saves them decoding it. If you have not recorded a GST number, your state does not appear on your profile. Note that your state is also printed on documents you share, the same way it appears on any invoice, whether or not you have recorded a GST number.

You can also choose a separate phone number and email address to show businesses you are connected with, under Administration → Organisation. This is useful because the phone and email captured when you registered are often a personal number and a personal email address. Fill either one in and connected businesses see that instead. Leave them blank and nothing changes — they keep seeing your registered contact details, exactly as before. The one difference: your email address is only ever copied into another business's own records if you have deliberately set one here.

When you change the phone number or email address that connected businesses see, the copy saved on your account in each of their books is updated to match. A number they typed in themselves is never touched — that includes a copy of an older number of yours that they entered by hand, which stays exactly as they typed it — and if they have deleted your number from their record, a later change does not put it back. If you clear it instead, they keep the number or address they already had: it simply stops following your changes, so blanking a field by mistake can never wipe a working contact out of someone else's records. The next time you give them one, it takes the place of the one they kept.

Clearing the separate phone number for connected businesses works the same way. They keep the separate number they had, and your registered phone is not copied into anyone's records in its place — not when you later change something else, such as your email address, not when a connection is unblocked or an account is linked again, and not for a business you connect with afterwards — even though your profile goes back to showing your registered details. Two things end this: setting a separate phone number again, or changing your registered phone to a new number. Either way, the new number takes the place of the one they kept.