Getting startedالبداية

What Libra is

Libra is an ERP built from modules. Accounting is the core, and every other module sits on top of it. Your license decides which modules you have and therefore which groups appear in the left menu when you open the program.

Everything in Libra happens inside a company. So the first thing to do is create one.

Your first hour with Libra

Follow these five steps in order. Each one is a guide of its own:

1. Get your bearings: The main screen. The ribbon at the top, the menu on the left, and what the status bar at the bottom is telling you.
2. Know which plan you are on: Old Plan vs New Plan. One decision, made once, when the company is created. New companies use the New Plan.
3. Create the company: How to set up a company. A two-step wizard: the fiscal year, the opening date and the VAT policy are all set here, and some of them cannot be changed afterwards.
4. Build your Home group: How to set up the Quick List. Put the screens you use every day at the top of the left menu, in your own order.
5. Start the accounts: Chart of accounts. The seven classes, and the parent/child rule that decides how you structure them. Then open your first account.

After that, open the records you need: suppliers, clients, bank accounts, currencies and cash.

What Libra is made of

Libra is built from modules, and each module is controlled by the client's license:

• Accounting: the mandatory core, in junior / junior plus / enterprise tiers. It covers the general ledger (chart of accounts, journal vouchers, budgets, audit), cash & bank, fixed assets, and the receivable and payable accounts (clients and suppliers).
• Stock and Inventory - each in junior / junior plus / enterprise tiers. They cover item definition, price lists, discounts, warehouses, transfers and adjustments.
• Production: in basic / advanced / lines tiers. It covers production formulas, production orders and production invoices.

How the modules depend on each other

Accounting is the backbone of every Libra setup:

• You cannot sell Stock without Accounting.
• You cannot sell Production without Accounting and Stock.
• The minimum a client must have is Accounting.

So the dependency runs: Accounting, then Stock on top of it, then Production on top of both.

The tiers

Junior / junior plus / enterprise (Accounting, Stock, Inventory) and basic / advanced / lines (Production) are capability tiers of the same module. The client's license decides which tier they get.

Companion apps & products

Around the core there are applications that run standalone or connected to Libra:

• Payroll: a full payroll and attendance solution. Run it on its own, or connect it to Libra.
• Salary Declaration: payroll tax & NSSF declarations.
• POS: point of sale (standalone or connected - see below).
• INVO: a salesman app that connects to Libra: sales orders, invoices & receipts, statements of account, and client addresses.
• Vendro: a separate e-commerce platform by IDS for running an online store.

POS: standalone vs connected

A point of sale can run in two ways:

• Standalone: it only sells. No accounting entries, no profit/loss, and no purchases/sales records. It is rarely sold this way, but a client may ask for "just the POS".
• Connected: each sale automatically posts an accounting entry to Libra, so accounting and profit/loss are always maintained.

Posting is automatic

In current Libra, when you create an invoice it posts automatically (auto-post). This is one of the old options that became standard and is now off by default. The manual "post the invoice" step still exists and can be re-enabled for a client who insists, but it is not recommended because it becomes a headache - the invoice and the accounting can drift apart.

What to remember

1. Accounting is always present - it is the base every other module sits on.
2. Production needs Accounting and Stock; Stock needs Accounting. The minimum is Accounting.
3. Check what a client actually licensed before assuming a feature exists (a POS-only client has no accounting).
4. Auto-post is the default; manual posting is a legacy option.
5. Work through the five steps above in order - each one depends on the one before it.