37.4 Managing arrears

In order to find out about over due invoices, a company should run the AR aging report available under AR Reports AR Aging. The initial screen presents parameters for the aging report to be generated.

@@@ discuss parameters

This report shows customers and their outstanding invoices categorised as:

Current

Invoices not over due

30

Invoice amounts over due by 30 days or less

60

Invoice amounts over due by 60 days or less (but more than 30)

90

Invoice amounts over due by 90 days or less (but more than 60)

@@@ Printing / mailing aging reports to customers

After an invoice becomes over due a process will be started to remind the customer of the outstanding amount requiring payment.

In order to keep records of actions taken to chase customer payment, the invoice screen has an “Internal Notes” field which can be edited after the invoice has been posted.

In order to save any edits to that field, hit the “Save Info” button.

Note that the “Save Info” button also saves any changes to the “TaxForm” column or rather, any information that’s not accounting information (posted to the books and thereby fixed) nor information which appears on the invoice - which also should remain unedited in order to be able to generate an exact copy at a later date.

There may be good reasons to treat some over due invoices differently. E.g. in case payment arrangements have been made with the customer and further standard arrears management would not be appropriate any more.

In this case, you can put an invoice “On Hold”. The opposite of being on hold is being active. The AR Aging report allows selection of all invoices, only active invoices (those not on hold) or only invoices on hold.