Statements of account

A reminder answers "is invoice 214 paid?". A statement answers "what do I owe you, in total?" — which is the question the other company’s accountant asks at month end.

Two kinds, because both are asked for

• Open item — every document still unsettled, each with its own due date and how late it is. This is what people mean by a statement in B2B, where invoices are paid one by one.
• Balance forward — opening balance, the movements in the period, closing balance. This is what you want when you run a running account with a supplier or a customer.

One customer

Open the customer and press Statement. You see the balance, the ageing — not due yet, 1–30, 31–60, 61–90, over 90 — and every line that makes it up. Look at the sheet before you send it, then either issue and keep it, or issue and email it.

All of them, at month end

Statements in the sidebar lists every customer with a balance, worst first, with the ageing across the top. One button emails all of them. The confirmation tells you how many are about to go out, and how many have no email address, before anything is sent — a button that sends thirty emails without saying thirty is a trap, not a command.

On its own, every month

On each customer you can set a schedule: every Monday, once a month on a day you pick, or the last day of the month. Skip it when they owe nothing is on by default, because a statement for zero is an email nobody wanted. You can also set it to show only overdue items, for customers you are actively chasing.

Three things it deliberately does

It never mixes currencies. A customer invoiced in both euro and your local currency gets two statements, not one with a meaningless total. We do not convert: a balance converted at today's rate is a figure nobody recognises in their own books.

What you sent stays sent. The figures could be recalculated from the invoices at any time, but they would not come out the same — an invoice credited next month changes what the customer saw. So the sheet is frozen when it is issued, and the link you emailed still shows that sheet a year later.

Ageing is measured from the statement date, not from today. Reprint a statement from March and it still shows March's buckets.

It is not an invoice

A statement carries no number from your invoice series, generates no tax, and goes to no authority. It says so on the sheet, in the customer's language — otherwise it lands in their accounts payable as if it were a bill.

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