Cash, credit, or from a booking?
Ask any business owner “what did you sell this month?” and you get a number. That number on its own says nothing about the state of the business. A million all in cash means money in the till. A million all on credit means a million sitting with other people and not a pound in your hand. A million from bookings means goods delivered that were paid for long ago. Three completely different businesses with the same sales figure.
The idea in a minute
This is a full partition: every sale falls into exactly one bucket, so the three add up to the total exactly. They are not three numbers you have to reconcile.
How it works
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1. A cash sale: the money came in with the invoice
When you raise a cash invoice you say which cash box or account the money went into and how it was paid — cash, card, transfer, wallet or cheque. The collection is recorded as the invoice is confirmed, so your treasury updates in the same moment, with no second step and no separate receipt.
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2. A credit sale: a receivable with a due date
A credit invoice records a receivable on the customer with a due date. No money has come in, and it stays on that customer's account until it is collected. This is what feeds collection follow-up and the ageing report.
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3. Bookings: a sale born from an earlier order
When you deliver an order that was booked and had a deposit on it, the resulting invoice counts in the “bookings” bucket — even if the customer settled the balance in cash at delivery. Because “came from a booking” is a different question from “how was it paid”, and the first one describes how your business actually works.
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4. Returns go back to their own bucket
If a customer returns goods they bought on credit, the return is netted against credit — not against cash, and not just off the total. If an invoice is voided, it is removed from the same bucket it was counted in. So the buckets stay honest over time instead of drifting with every return.
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5. The same definition on every screen
The split is defined in one place inside the system, and both the dashboard and the sales report read from it. So you never get one number on screen and a different one in the report — which is what happens when each report works it out its own way.
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6. And the bookings not yet delivered?
Those are not sales — they are commitments you owe and work in the pipeline. Zemam shows them separately: open orders with their totals and what has been collected on them. So you know how much work is coming without mixing it into this month's sales.
In short
Three buckets that add up to your total sales exactly — not overlapping numbers.
A cash sale collects with the invoice itself, so the treasury updates immediately.
Credit records a receivable with a due date that drives collection follow-up.
Returns and voids go back to their original bucket, so the numbers stay honest.
Decisions this split changes
Am I heading into a cash squeeze?
Strong sales with the credit share growing month after month means your growth is being funded out of your own pocket. The split shows you that early, before you find yourself unable to pay a supplier.
Your credit policy
Once you know your true credit share you can decide with numbers: tighten terms, offer a prompt-payment discount, or leave it alone because it is healthy.
Is your business moving to pre-orders?
If the bookings share is growing, the nature of your business is changing — you are producing or sourcing to order rather than selling from stock. That changes your purchasing, your stock levels and your planning.
Comparing branches
Two branches with the same sales, one cash and one credit. That is not the same performance and not the same risk. The split filters by branch so you compare on a fair basis.
Related reading
Want to know how your sales really split?
Talk to us and we'll show you the split on your own data — cash, credit and bookings, by branch and by month.