Debtors

The Debtors screen is used to manage debtors. You can:

• display customer balance information with various selection options and print the results
• print a current or prior statement for a selected customer
• do the end-of-period processing at the end of the accounting period
• generate the statements at the end of the accounting period
• re-print previously generated statements

For background information, see Concepts|Accounting. See also the note on statement detail at the bottom of this page.

How to summary:

• for month (or accounting period) end processingfor debtor management
  • set the Statement Date to the end of the period (eg end of previous month)
  • press the End Period button to do the period end processing for all customers
  • press the Send All button to generate the statements for the selected customers
  • if you did select customers (say those with 60 days overdue balances so that you can include a payment request note in the envelope with their statement), then clear the selection conditions and press Send All again to process the other customers. The 60 day overdue customers' statements will not be reprinted (unless you use the reprint option).
  • Note that you do not have to generate statements for all customers. If say you have two customer account types, Normal and Staff, you could choose to only print statements each month for Normal customers and never for Staff.
  • set the Statement Date to the required date
  • enter the other selection criteria
  • press the Find button
  • optionally press the Report button
• for account enquiries (if a customer wants a current statement)
  • set the Statement Date to today
  • set the Customer From and To to minimise the number of customers selected (ie 'sm' to 'smz' if the customer is named Smith)
  • press the Find button
  • click the line containing the customer and press the Print button
  • Note that the resulting statement will only include finalised transactions prior to the statement date - ie it will not show today's finalised invoice.
• for account enquiries (if a customer wants a statement for a prior period)
  • set the Statement Date to the end of the required period
  • set the Customer From and To to minimise the number of customers selected (ie 'sm' to 'smz' if the customer is named Smith)
  • press the Find button
  • click the line containing the customer and press the Print button
  • Note that the resulting statement will show transactions from the Opening Balance transaction prior to the specified statement date up to the specified statement date.

This is a standard select screen. The selection fields are:
Customer Account Type - this allows you to select customers by their account type
Overdue From & To - use these to select overdue accounts. They are entered as the number of days after the statement date, ie 30 and 60 will select accounts that are between 30 and 60 days overdue. They are both optional. If you enter bad data, it is ignored. Hence:

From	To	Meaning
		all
30		more that 30 days overdue
30	xxx	same as above (bad To value ignored)
	60	up to 60 days overdue
xxx	60	same as above (bad From value ignored)

Customer From & To - this allows you to select customers by name. For this to work as expected you need to set both the From and To entries and the To value must be greater than the From.  If you get this wrong, eg search from 't' to 't', no error will be reported, you will just get 'No results to display'.
Statement Date - the date of the end of the accounting period. Normally this will be the last day in the previous month if you are doing end-of-period and statement printing. However, if you are doing debtors management, then this should be set to the current date so that you can see the current situation.
Balances - you can select All, Current or Overdue. 'Current' selects those customers who do not have an overdue balance, 'Overdue' just those who do have an overdue balance.
Exclude Credit - uncheck the box if you also want to include customers with credit balances. Note that irrespective of any of the selection settings, customers with zero balances are never displayed.
Customer Location can be used to filter customers using their preferred practice location, to support location specific content. Selecting:

• a practice location, returns customers that have the location set as their Practice Location.
• None - selects all customers that don't have a Practice Location
• All - returns customers for all practice locations

The column headings are:
Customer Name - the customers' names - each is a link to the customer.
Balance - the balance of the account as at the Statement Date.
Overdue Balance - the overdue balance, see below
Credit Balance - if the account is in credit the amount will be shown here (as well as in the Balance column)
Unbilled - the amount that is unbilled, ie the total of any in-progress, on-hold, or completed transactions
Last Payment Date & Amount - the date and amount of the last payment
Last Invoice Date - the date of the last invoice

The Buttons are:
Send All - generates the statements for the selected customers.  This will display a confirmation window - which will also allow you to request the reprint of statements of previously printed statements (which would otherwise not be reprinted).
Note that you normally use Send All only after you have used End Period, and you should keep the same Statement Date for both.
The statements generated will be emailed to the customer (rather than printed) if the customer has an email address with the purpose 'Billing'.
The document template used for the statements will be that with the type 'Customer Statement' - and this MUST have an Email Template specified - see Administration|Templates.

Print - prints a statement for the currently selected customer

Report - prints a Debtors report for the accounts of the customers shown on the screen - ie only those customers who match the current selection criteria. Note that this report does not show the selection critera. The document template used for the Debtors report will be that with the type 'Customer Account Balance'.

End Period - initiates the end-of-period processing for all customers (not just those selected). A confirmation window will be displayed. It has a 'Finalise Completed Invoices' checkbox - you should normally leave this ticked. However, if your practice has a policy that all invoices should be manually finalised by the accounts department, then you should untick this. In this case the completed/not finalised ones will be held over and not included in the closing balance.
Note that you use End Period before you have used Send All, and you should keep the same Statement Date for both.

 

Overdue calculation
The overdue date, ie the date at which an account becomes overdue is calculated as:
   overdue date = statement date - customer's account type payment terms

If the customer doesn't have an account type, then the overdue date is the statement date.

A balance is overdue if it's unpaid or part paid, and has been so since prior to the overdue date.

 

Statement Detail
The standard statements generated by the system use a document template that is written so that whether or not the statement contains line item detail depends on the Line Item Print option in the Letterhead that is being used. The options are Always, Never, and 'Not Printed'. If the latter, then the line items are shown if the invoice's Print flag is not set. (This flag is set when the finalised invoice is printed - emailing or previewing does not set the flag.)

 

Emailed Statements

When statements are emailed, the From address will be set to:

• the Billing email contact associated with the customer's Practice Location; or
• the Practice's Billing email contact, if the  customer doesn't have a Practice Location, or the Practice Location doesn't have a Billing email contact; or
• the Practice's preferred email contact, if there is no Billing email contact

 

Location Specific Statements

Location specific statement content can be supported by:

• filtering by Customer Location, and using the appropriate letterhead
• examining the customer's Practice Location within the statement template