Pennylane

Pennylane is cloud accounting software for entrepreneurs and small businesses, mostly in France. This page covers connecting your Pennylane account to BrickInvoice and setting up how your orders end up there.

Table of Contents

• Before you start
• Connecting Pennylane
• Configuring Pennylane
• How orders end up in Pennylane
• Troubleshooting
• Tips for your setup
• Next steps
• Support

Before you start

You need:

• a Pennylane subscription, with admin access to your Pennylane account
• your settings filled in
• your BrickLink or Brick Owl store connected
• the products you want on your invoices created in Pennylane. BrickInvoice puts a Pennylane product on each kind of line (products, shipping, handling fees), so they have to exist first.

You log in to Pennylane through its own authorization page, so you do not create an API key.

Connecting Pennylane

1. Go to Accounting → Connect (/home/accounting/connect).
2. Choose Pennylane under Select Accounting Package.
3. Click Connect to Pennylane. Pennylane's authorization page opens.
4. Log in to Pennylane if it asks, look at the permissions and click Authorize.
5. Pennylane sends you back to BrickInvoice.

The connection status then shows Connected. BrickInvoice renews its access to Pennylane in the background, so you do not have to connect again.

Disconnecting Pennylane

1. Go to Accounting → Connect.
2. Click Disconnect Pennylane.
3. Click Yes, Disconnect in the dialog.

BrickInvoice removes the connection and clears your accounting configuration, so after reconnecting you set it up again. Invoices already in Pennylane stay where they are. To renew the connection without losing your settings, use Change Connection and click Reauthorize instead. See Changing or disconnecting your package.

Configuring Pennylane

Go to Accounting → Configuration to choose how your orders are booked.

General settings

Invoice Template is the Pennylane template that sets the layout and branding of your invoices. The list comes from your Pennylane account.

Invoice Status has two choices. With Final Invoice (Finalized immediately), invoices are finalized straight away. With Draft Invoice (Requires manual finalization), they are created as drafts, so you can check them in Pennylane before you finalize them.

Differentiate BrickLink and Brick Owl: tick this to choose separate products for BrickLink and Brick Owl orders, for example to see the sales of each store apart in your revenue accounts. Each product field then gets a BrickLink and a Brick Owl version. See Platform differentiation.

Contact sync options

• Sync Email Addresses: adds the buyer's email address to the contact in Pennylane.
• Update Existing Contacts: when on (the default), an existing contact is updated with the latest order data. When off, existing contacts are left as they are.

Products per line

Each order becomes an invoice with a line for each kind of revenue. Pennylane puts products on the invoice lines, so you choose a product for each kind of line and region. You find your products in Pennylane under Sales → Products. Each product has its own revenue account and VAT rate.

Each card also has a Description field for the text on its lines. You can use these placeholders:

• {order_number}: the order number, such as 123456
• {source}: the store, BrickLink or Brick Owl
• {payment_method}: the payment method, such as PayPal

"Order {order_number} via {source}" becomes "Order 123456 via BrickLink".

Product Line Items, for the goods in the order:

• Domestic Product: customers in your own country
• EU Product: customers in other EU countries
• Export Product: customers outside the EU

Margin Scheme Line Items, for second-hand goods under the margin scheme, where VAT is charged on your profit margin instead of the full price. It has Domestic Margin Product, EU Margin Product and Export Margin Product.

Shipping Line Items:

• Regular Shipping Product: shipping within your country and the EU, at your normal VAT rate
• Export Shipping Product: shipping outside the EU, usually at 0% VAT

Other Line Items (Handling Fees):

• Regular Handling Fees Product: handling fees for orders within your country and the EU
• Export Handling Fees Product: handling fees for orders outside the EU

B2B orders with reverse charge

If you turned on B2B VAT exempt in your settings, each card also has a B2B field: Product (B2B), Margin Product (B2B), Shipping Product (B2B) and Handling Fees Product (B2B). BrickInvoice uses them for orders from business customers in the EU. The VAT is reversed on those orders: the invoice shows 0% VAT, and the customer reports and pays the VAT in their own country.

How orders end up in Pennylane

Contacts

BrickInvoice gives each contact an external reference made from the store and the order number, in the form {SOURCE}_{ORDER_ID}. Before it creates a contact, it looks for one with that reference. Syncing the same order again therefore reuses its contact. A buyer who orders again gets a contact for the new order.

Invoices

For each order BrickInvoice creates an invoice with a line for each kind of revenue. Each line gets the product that fits the customer's country, and the VAT rate comes from that product in Pennylane. BrickInvoice keeps a link to the invoice and its public PDF.

A Dutch seller with an order from a German customer (EU):

Order: €100 (products) + €5 (shipping) + €2 (handling)

Pennylane invoice lines:
1. Products: €100.00 → Product (EU) → 21% VAT
2. Shipping: €5.00   → Shipping (Regular) → 21% VAT
3. Handling: €2.00   → Handling (Regular) → 21% VAT

The same seller with an order from a US customer (export):

Order: €100 (products) + €5 (shipping)

Pennylane invoice lines:
1. Products: €100.00 → Product (Export) → 0% VAT
2. Shipping: €5.00   → Shipping (Export) → 0% VAT

VAT rounding correction

Pennylane works out the total of each line, including VAT, like this:

total_incl_vat = round(amount_excl_vat × (1 + vat_rate), 2)

That rounding can leave the total a cent above or below the order total. The order totals from BrickLink and Brick Owl are what the buyer paid and cannot change. So when the Pennylane total would differ, BrickInvoice splits the line in two:

1. a main line with the rounded amount, a whole number of cents
2. a correction line with the small remainder that makes the total exact

Both lines use the same product and VAT rate. The correction line ends in (correction), so you can recognize it. The invoice total then always matches what the buyer paid.

Syncing by hand

You can also sync a single order by hand. That helps for an order whose automatic sync failed, to try out your configuration, or to sync an order again after you changed the configuration.

Troubleshooting

Authorizing fails, or you are not sent back

Close the tab and start again from the connect page. Check that your browser does not block third-party cookies for Pennylane's authorization page, and that you log in to the right Pennylane account.

The connection stopped working

BrickInvoice renews its access on its own, but now and then Pennylane asks for a new authorization. Go to Accounting → Connect, click Change Connection and then Reauthorize.

Products or templates do not load

Check that Pennylane is still connected, then reload the configuration page. Pennylane allows 5 requests per second, so if many lists load at once, wait a moment and try again. Templates only show if your Pennylane account has at least one invoice template.

An invoice is not created

Check that every required product field in the configuration is filled in, and that the products and the invoice template you chose still exist in Pennylane.

The invoice total differs from the order

The VAT rounding correction should prevent this (see VAT rounding correction). If you still see a difference, contact support with the order number.

Tips for your setup

Products in Pennylane

A product per kind of line and region keeps your books clean. For example:

• Sales - Domestic (21% VAT or your local rate)
• Sales - EU (21% VAT)
• Sales - Export (0% VAT)
• Margin - Domestic, Margin - EU, Margin - Export
• Shipping - Regular (21% VAT), Shipping - Export (0% VAT)
• Handling - Regular (21% VAT), Handling - Export (0% VAT)

Each product carries its own VAT rate, so you set the rates in Pennylane, not in BrickInvoice.

Draft or final

Start with Draft Invoice, so you can check the layout and the lines of your first invoices. Switch to Final Invoice once you trust the setup.

Separate stores

Turn on Differentiate BrickLink and Brick Owl if you want BrickLink and Brick Owl apart in your Pennylane reports, with their own products or VAT treatment, or to see the profit per store. If you do not need that, leave it off and your configuration stays shorter.

Next steps

1. Sync a few orders and check the invoices in Pennylane.
2. Check that each line has the right product and the right VAT for the customer's country.
3. If you use Draft Invoice, look at a few drafts before you switch to Final Invoice.
4. Turn on the accounting schedule so new orders sync on their own.

Support

If something goes wrong, check the connection status in BrickInvoice, and your products and template in the configuration. If you still need help, contact support with the error message and the order number.