If you sell to customers on account, that is you ship or provide goods or services and expect to receive payment later, it’s a good practice to periodically send customer statements.
If navigating from the Home Page, it’s important to choose the correct icon. Statement Charges is a feature that allows the creation of customer charges that do not create an invoice. They are generally simple service call entries that appear on a summary customer statement sent at periodic intervals, like monthly.
Reminder Statements will give the customer a summary of all their account activity. We all receive these on a regular basis from credit card or other companies where we purchase goods or services with a promise to pay later.
Besides selecting the icon, customer reminder statements are available at Customers->Create Statements.
Here is an image of the window QuickBooks opens when we access customer reminder statements.
The window is segregated into three major sections. The first, in the upper left, allows us to select the type of statement we want to send.
The option selected is Statement Period From, and then the dates displayed are 11/16/2018 to 12/15/2018.
This option is what some might term a consumer type statement. Credit card companies use this style.
The customer statement will show a beginning balance, if there is one. Then it will list all the activity of payments, credits, and invoices during the specified period (11/16/18 – 12/15/18). Finally will come the total or ending balance.
The other statement type is “All open transactions as of Statement Date.” The statement date is set in the first field of the window.
This option lists all open transactions on the statement, no matter the date. All added up, they will total to the customer’s outstanding balance. Businesses doing business with other businesses will often use this type of statement.
Above is an example of the customer balance forward type statement. The beginning balance in this case was zero. The ending balance is shown at the bottom of the page and does not appear on the screenshot.
The second section of the customer statement window allows us to select which customers should receive statements. All Customers would indicate all customers with a balance or account activity.
We can also hand-pick certain customers, or create a statement for only one customer. This is one of the areas in QuickBooks where customer type can be used to good effect. Perhaps a company has both retail and wholesale customers and the statements can be sent in different batches.
The third section is the right-hand side of the window. There are many settings here.
First, we can select the template we want to use. Statement templates can be customized just like invoices and other forms.
Most of the other settings are easy to understand. We can select whether we want to send a statement for each customer, or each job if we use job under customers.
We could print statements sorted by zip code for mass mailings, decide whether zero balance statements should print, and so on.
Once complete, we have the option to either print or email the resulting customer statements.
Hector Garcia, CPA
Certified Advanced QuickBooks ProAdvisor
12401 Orange Drive #136
Davie, FL 33330
954-414-1524
hector@garciacpa.com
