The Export Centre

The Export Centre is one place to take your data out of Kaalchakra. Open it from Transactions → Import/Export, or from Administration → Setup → Import / Export. You pick what to export, which dates it should cover, and what the file should look like — then press the export button once and get everything together. The page opens with everything already filled in, and the line under the top summary tells you whether anything still needs your attention before you press it.

The page in three steps

1. 1

   1 · What to export

   Tick the things you want — sales, purchases, vouchers, your account and item masters, and so on. If your account is not allowed to export one of them, it is still listed, but marked and greyed out with a short note naming the right to ask for — it is never quietly hidden, and it is never included in the export. The counts on this page leave those out and say how many there are, so you can see at a glance how many are being kept back. Everything else you ticked still exports normally.

2. 2

   2 · Which rows you get

   Two questions that decide which rows land in the file. First, dates: which date to count by, and how far back to go — for the whole export at once, or for a single tile on its own card. Second, whether to leave out rows you already have, so you get only what is new or changed since your last export. They sit together because they are easy to confuse and they do different things: the dates pick which documents, and the second picks which rows of those documents you have not already got.

3. 3

   3 · The file itself

   Excel or CSV, one workbook or one zip, the file name, and the order the files come out in. Files are numbered so they stay in your order when you open the zip.

Saved settings sits under those three. It is not a step — it is a shortcut that fills all three in at once, so next month is one tap instead of ten. It is explained below.

Laying out the file: Column setup

Column setup is the second tab of the Export Centre, and it is where you decide what your file looks like. It shows the sheet itself — a grid with column headings and a few sample rows — so you can see the file before you make it. The sample rows are made-up data; your export will hold your own.

• Move or remove a column from its own heading. Each heading has arrows to shift it left or right and a cross to take it out. The grid redraws immediately, so what you see is what the file will hold.
• Add a column with the *Add or remove columns* button. Every field the file can carry is listed, grouped the way the sheet is laid out. Nothing is held back.
• Pick the file you are laying out at the top: Transactions, Vouchers or Bank Reconciliation, and then which one — Sale, Payment, and so on. Each keeps its own layout.
• Save it for yourself or for everyone. Saving for the organisation sets the layout for everybody who has not saved their own. Saving for yourself gives you one that is used instead of the organisation's — your own always comes first, including for you.
• See where the layout you are getting came from. Under the grid, Where this layout comes from names it: your own saved layout, the organisation's, or the standard one. On voucher files it can name two — your columns and the row shape can come from different places, and when they do it says so instead of leaving you to work it out.
• Start from a different layout. The buttons under it put another layout into the grid: what your files use now, your own saved one, the organisation's, or the standard one. A layout nobody has saved is shown greyed out with the reason, and the one already in use is marked. Loading one replaces what was in the grid and stores nothing — saving is what changes anything, and it writes to whichever of the Who should get this layout buttons you pick: Just me changes only your own exports, Everyone in this organisation sets it for every colleague who has not saved their own.

Putting your own words in the Supply Type column

Every sale and purchase file has a Supply Type column, telling you whether the supply was local or central. Until now it always printed the same two words. It can now print yours.

The names come from Masters → Sale & Purchase Types. Open a type whose supply is set to *Always local* and rename it, and the local rows in your file come out under that name. Do the same for *Always central*. Five kinds of type name nothing, and each for its own reason: *Decide by state*, because it does not stand for one answer; anything that is not ordinary taxable supply, such as exempt or nil rated; anything marked as an export, an SEZ supply or reverse charge — those describe more than where the supply went, so using one as a plain name would say something about your documents that is not true of all of them; and any type you have marked *Only when I pick it by hand*, which is never matched to a document on its own; and any type still carrying the name Kaalchakra gave it, until you rename it to your own word.

Telling two kinds of local supply apart

Some books record a bill’s GST on each item line. Others put the whole of it in separate charge lines at the foot of the bill — a CGST line, an SGST line, an IGST line. Both are ordinary ways to keep books, and a great many bills brought over from other programs are the second kind. They are both local supplies, so a name chosen by where the supply went alone cannot tell them apart.

So a type also says where the tax sits: on the item lines, in the charge lines at the foot, either way, or *only when I pick it by hand*. Give one type each of the first two and your file comes out with a different word for each kind of bill. Leave a type on *either* — which is what every type you already have is set to — and nothing about it changes.

Seeing and changing the supply type as you enter

On Sale, Purchase, Sale Estimate and Purchase Estimate, the supply type now appears beside the Account box as you build the document, with the tax heads still shown next to it. It changes as you work — a bill with no taxed line yet is not any kind of supply, and it becomes one the moment a taxed line is added.

• Change picks a type by hand. Choosing one is a decision about the document, and a type set to *Always local* or *Always central* will set the tax heads to match — which is what those types are for.
• Work it out for me puts it back to being named by what the document actually is.
• It is saved with the document from now on, so your file carries the name the document had when you saved it, not a name worked out later from masters that may have changed.

A column that carries a value you type

Some systems will not accept a file unless a particular column has something in it — a series or a batch name they expect on every document. In Column setup, the headings that can take one show an Always write box. Type the value there and it goes into that column in every export of that file.

• Choose what it does to what you already have. *On every document* writes your value over whatever is in your books. *Only where it is empty* leaves a stored value alone and fills the blanks.
• It is written on each document’s first row. Rows that continue the same document stay blank, exactly as the other headings do — that is what lets the file be brought back into Kaalchakra without splitting one bill into several.
• Vouchers work slightly differently, and they are covered below. On a voucher file the box appears on Document Type, and only when the file is set to one row per voucher.
• It saves with the layout, for yourself or for the whole organisation, like everything else on this tab.

A typed value on a voucher file

Vouchers can take a typed value too, and there are two differences worth knowing before you look for the box.

• The box is on Document Type. A voucher in Kaalchakra has no series of its own — a payment or a journal is numbered, not serialised — so there is no Series column on a voucher file to put one in. Document Type is the column that carries a token for an outside system, and it is the one that takes a typed value.
• The Document Type column has to be in your layout. The box sits on the column heading in the grid, so if you have not added that column there is nothing to type into.
• Your file has to be set to one row per voucher. That is the Rows in a voucher file choice on this same tab — two buttons, not a tick. With one row per line the box is not offered at all, and the reason is the next paragraph.
• Payments, Receipts, Contras and Journals only. On a Credit Note or a Debit Note, Kaalchakra fills Document Type in for you with the code the GST system expects, so it is not yours to set. Sale and Purchase Returns always come out one row per line, so the choice above does not apply to them either.

If a voucher has more ledger lines than fit on one row it spills onto a second, and the Part column says which part you are looking at. Your typed value appears on both rows — the same as the voucher number and the date, which are repeated there too, so that sorting the sheet in Excel cannot separate the two halves.

One row per line, or one row per voucher

A voucher has at least two ledger lines — what was paid, and what it was paid from — and normally each line gets its own row. That is the shape a voucher sheet has always had, and it is the shape you need if you ever want to bring the file back into Kaalchakra.

In Column setup you can ask for one row per voucher instead. It sits beside the sheet, so switching it redraws the grid and you can see the difference before you export. Each voucher then takes a single row, with its ledger lines side by side: the first line’s account and amounts, then the second line’s. Most vouchers have exactly two lines, so most of the file halves in length and reads far more easily in Excel.

• A voucher with more than two lines carries on to the next row. The date, voucher number and narration are repeated so every row still says which voucher it belongs to, and a Part column reads *1 of 2*, *2 of 2* so you can see at a glance that they go together. Sorting the sheet cannot separate them.
• Returns are not affected. A Sale Return or Purchase Return lists items, not ledger lines, so it keeps its own layout whichever setting you choose.
• Adding up a money column works a little differently. With one row per line, adding up the Debit Amount column gives every debit in the file. With one row per voucher the debits sit in two columns — Debit Amount 1 and Debit Amount 2 — so add up both together to get the same figure. Nothing is left out either way.

Changing this setting changes what every row looks like, so the next time you export only what is new or changed, every voucher comes out once more. Nothing is missed and nothing is duplicated in your books — you simply get a full file that once.

The same happens once for documents whose cells now fill from your masters — a party's transport, station, PIN code or GSTIN, an item's HSN, group or MRP: the first time you export only what is new or changed after these columns began filling, those documents come out once more. After that, a value read from a master is left out of the change check, so editing a party or an item does not send its documents out again.

Saved settings

Setting the page up the way you like it takes a minute. Saving it takes a second, and it lasts. There are two ways to save, and they do different things.

• Remember this for me keeps the current set-up as *your own settings* and starts using it straight away. There is one of these per person.
• Save under this name keeps the current set-up as a named set — “Daily update”, “Month end” — and does not switch to it. You build up a small library and choose from it when you need to.

The closed Saved settings heading also tells you how many sets you have and which one is in use, so you can see it without opening anything.

A saved setting keeps the rule, not the dates

This is the part worth knowing. If you choose last 7 days and save it, the saved setting remembers *last 7 days* — not the seven particular days it happened to mean on the day you saved. Next month it still gives you the last seven days. The same is true of *this month*, *this quarter* and *this financial year*. If you pick two fixed dates instead, those exact dates are what gets saved.

The organisation default

An organisation can have one default set-up that applies to everyone who has not saved anything of their own. It is there so a new colleague opens the Export Centre and finds it already sensible, instead of a blank page.

• Your own settings win while they are in use. If one of your own saved sets is the one in use, that is what you get and the organisation default does not override it. If none of yours is in use, the organisation default applies — saving a set is not the same as switching to it.
• Only the Master User can set it. The buttons that change it are not shown to anyone else.
• Make it the default beside any of your named sets copies that set-up to the organisation default.
• Make this the default for everyone at the bottom uses whatever is on screen right now instead.

Past exports

The Past exports tab lists what has been exported and when, so you can see what has already gone out before you send anything again.