Accounts Receivable: Customer Statements

This article describes how a Customer Statement can be accessed, tailored via data filters, sent to customers easily, and customized.

ARTICLE CONTENTS

• What is a Customer Statement?
• How To Access a Customer Statement Report
• How to Create a Customer Statement
• Statement Samples
  • Sample: Standard Statement with Aging Periods
  • Sample: Activity Statement for a Date Range
• Batch Emailing Customer Statements
• Customizing a Customer Statement Form

What is a Customer Statement?

The Customer Statement is a report that is a form.  Like a customer invoice, the customer statement format can be customized (reference: Customizing Forms). 

A Customer Statement typically displays:

1) Outstanding (unpaid) invoices and/or open credits as of a specific date, along with totals by aging period.

2) Activity for a given date range.

Customer Statements are commonly used to assist with collecting past due accounts and for customer inquiries.  

How To Access a Customer Statement Report

Customer Statements can be printed via the Reports menu dropdown list or directly from a Customer window.  Please see the article Accessing Connected Reports for more detailed information.

TIP: Statements can be printed for individual customers by selecting “Statement” from the Print menu in the Customers window, as shown in the following screen:

How to Create a Customer Statement

The Customer Statement report window appears as shown in the following screen:

Date and Form Selection

• Statement Date: This is an arbitrary date selected by the user and defaults to the first day of the current period.  
• Statement Form: Select a form from the list of statement forms to be printed. 

Activity Statement

If the "Activity Statement (includes starting balance)" checkbox is selected, a different report type is used that requires a statement date and an activity date range. 

The date range will generate a balance forward amount (aka beginning balance) that will represent the amount owed by the customer on the day prior to the start date. Activity will be shown until the end date with a running balance.

Activity statement will not include the following transactions: Quick Invoices, Credit Memo Invoice Refunds, Receipts that are Applications, or Receipts that have been voided.

Customer Selection

Choose from:

• All Customers or Range of Customers
• Customers with a specific Analysis Code. Reference: Analysis Codes
• Customers with a specific term code (Payment Terms)
• Customers with Invoices over __ days and enter the number of days
• The customer selection can be further filtered by choosing the "Customers with a balance of ____" checkbox and entering a dollar value. This is useful for removing customers with small balances.
• If the "Activity Statement" checkbox is selected, the "Customers with no activity and zero balance" checkbox can be selected. This defaults to OFF so that these customers are excluded.  

Statement Detail

Choose from:

• All Open Invoices; Include Receipts Since MM/DD/YY and enter a receipt cut off date
• Range of Invoices and Receipts dated and enter a date range
• *Backdated Invoices as of and enter a date to print statements that included only open items for customers as of a specific date, similar to a customer backdated aging report.  Enter the Statement Date that will appear on the printed statement.
• All Invoices and Receipts which will print a complete history of available transactions.

*Most common selection

TIP:  Statements can be sent to a single PDF file that contains all statements or separate PDF files that creates an individual PDF for each customer statement.

Statement Samples

An example of a standard and activity statement are shown in the following screens:

Sample: Standard Statement with Aging Periods

Sample: Activity Statement for a Date Range

Batch Emailing Customer Statements

Like Invoices, Customer Statements can also be emailed to many customers at once. Learn more about Batch Emailing here.

Customizing a Customer Statement Form

The statement form can be customized through the A/R Forms window. Please refer to Customizing Forms for more information on changing things like logos, lines, fonts, and fields.

NOTE:  There are specific fields that are only applicable to certain a certain type of statement.  All fields that begin with Activity Statement can only be used on that type of report.  See below for list shown by orange arrows.