Invoice line items or totals: choose the detail your books need
Use individual lines when charges need different ledger accounts, tax treatment or tracking, or when you need each product or service recorded separately. A single total suits one accounting treatment. A tax summary can preserve several tax rates without recreating every product line.
Does line capture choose the ledger account?
No. Descriptions, quantities and amounts come from the source document. Ledger accounts and other coding fields come from your accounting setup and are assigned by you or saved rules.
In this article
Choose among three levels of detail
Datamolino's Export as setting controls the accounting detail sent to the connected system. The supplier, dates and invoice number remain part of the record. Changing the export view does not require you to discard the captured line data.
Invoice Total
One accounting treatment. One line with one account and one tax code.
Tax Summary
Keep the tax breakdown. One line per tax rate, without every product row.
Line Items
Code charges separately. Individual rows with their own accounts, tax treatment or tracking.
The export-format guide describes the three modes and their integration behavior.
What changes for an itemised supplier invoice?
One supplier. Different purchases.
- Cleaning materials
- Replacement equipment
- Delivery charge
Imagine a supplier bills a business for cleaning materials, replacement equipment and a delivery charge. If all charges genuinely use one account and tax treatment, the total may be enough for its books. If the equipment needs a different account, retaining separate lines gives the reviewer a place to assign that treatment.
Need only the tax breakdown?
If the business only needs to preserve a tax-rate breakdown, Tax Summary may be sufficient. That is different from a project allocation: tax grouping does not tell you which job used the materials. Choose the level of detail for the decision the books need to support.
Several lines can still share one treatment.
A subscription invoice is a useful counterexample. Several printed lines may describe seats or dates, yet all may receive one accounting treatment. Capturing and posting every line is an option, not a requirement created by the number of rows on the PDF.
Keep source fields separate from coding
Line capture reads descriptions, quantities where shown and amounts. Datamolino calculates unit price from amount and quantity. The ledger account is not a fact printed on the supplier's invoice. It is your decision about the purchase.
Which coding fields does each connection support?
The coding columns depend on the connection. Xero can show ledger account, tax and active tracking categories, with inventory items when enabled. QuickBooks uses its own account, tax, class and customer fields where configured. FreeAgent has its own field set. Verify the actual destination record, particularly when an item or project field is important to the workflow. See the line editor guide.
Reuse the treatment you already decided
Datamolino can repeat the last exported coding for an exact line description from the same supplier. A changing date or reference needs a different approach: a keyword condition can match the stable words. This is deterministic saved coding, not a new accounting judgement on each invoice.
Repeat the last exported coding for that supplier and exact description.
Use a keyword condition for stable wording when the treatment stays the same.
The rules guide explains how to test the condition and review exceptions.
Use an allocation when source lines are not the split you need
An invoice may have one printed line but need to be divided between two departments. Bill Split creates allocation lines from fixed amounts and percentages. It is available as a one-off and saved-folder operation for Xero and QuickBooks, and as recurring supplier automation for those connections and FreeAgent.
Bill Split replaces captured lines. Choose it when your allocation, rather than the supplier's item list, defines the required accounting rows. It does not run alongside the supplier's keyword line automation. Review the Bill Split preview and save options before applying a recurring rule.
Review the detail and reconcile its amounts
- Code the common lines. Fullscreen lets you select multiple rows and apply shared coding with Bulk edit items.
- Review exceptions. Check individual exceptions after the group edit.
- Reconcile the amounts. Compare Invoice Summary with Line Items Sum; when checksum validation is enabled, a mismatch blocks export. Correct the source summary, line amount or tax treatment responsible for the difference.
A matching sum does not establish that every line is in the right account. Equally, a small difference may be a rounding issue rather than a missing product. Inspect the cause before using an adjustment or changing a validation setting.
Check the first exported record
Open the first representative bill in the accounting software. Confirm that the grouping, amounts, accounts, tax and required tracking match your intention. For QuickBooks, also check whether the workflow needs Category details or Item details. Save supplier or folder defaults after this result is correct, then review a new or changed invoice before relying on the same treatment.
Is line-item extraction available on every plan?
No. The subscription must include line-item extraction. The connected accounting software also determines which coding fields are available.
