Statements

This option prints statements of account, one to a page. Sales ledger statements are normally sent to customers to remind them of how much they owe you and how the balance is made up. The same facility is given in the purchase ledger. But the main use there is to print a remittance advice as discussed above.

You can print sales ledger statements as often as you wish. If you normally maintain your accounts on a monthly basis then you would normally print customer statements at the end of each month. However, you may wish to print them more often for internal accounting purposes, or you may wish to print statements for particular accounts during the month — to accompany chasing letters, for instance.

You may define up to six different statement layouts (only one for Compact systems) for any company. Examples of different uses for statements include:

Monthly statement showing current position

Account history statements showing full history for an account

Chasing letters of varying degrees of severity according to the age of the oldest debt – you don’t have to print the transactions, but you can print the ageing.

If your ledger contains both open-item and balance brought-forward accounts you would normally print the statement in two ‘runs’ using a different statement design for each run.

Starting a Statement Run

When you choose ledger statements you are first offered a sub-menu which shows the statement types which are defined for your system, as in the example shown here which has a choice of two layouts.

If you have only one statement layout defined, incidentally, then no sub-menu is show — you go straight through to the next stage.

Once you have chosen the statement type you wish to print, you then have the facility to enter some pre-report parameters for the statement run.

Date Print on Statement

The system date is displayed, which you can accept or overtype with the date that you wish to print on the statement. Note that the ageing of transactions is calculated from this date.

Eligible Accounts

There are five ways to select the accounts you want to print, and four of the choices are made here.The fifth choice is by account activity, and is the answer to a later question. The four options display in a sub-menu for you to choose:

All Accounts — all accounts will print, subject to the account activity choice later

Range of Accounts — you can specify a range of accounts to print. You can use the <F4–Select> key to find the start and end of your range, and the range includes both the accounts chosen as the range.The chosen accounts do not have to exist, however — you could choose accounts in the range (say) of AAA000 to AAA999, even though neither of these accounts may yet be defined

List of Specified Accounts — you can list up to 200 accounts in any order for which to print statements. Only valid account codes are accepted here, and again you can use the <F4–Select> key to find particular accounts. Key <Enter> to a blank account code to end the selection

Search Criteria Screen — this lets you use the standard selection criteria capability.

Change Aged Analysis

The current ageing periods are displayed. If you want to use different ageing periods for this particular run reply Y and you can then change the periods. If using monthly analysis periods you cannot change the ageing periods.

Account Activity Criteria

This option adds a further filter to the accounts you want to select, based on the activity on the account. This is in addition to any other selection you may have chosen above. You are given a sub-menu from which to choose, with up to eight options, depending on how many ageing periods are defined:The "All accounts” option prints statements for all accounts selected even if there is a zero balance and there are no transactions for any particular account.

The "If current account balance” prints statements for the accounts selected only if there is a non-zero balance on the account.Zero balance accounts are omitted even if there are transactions for that account in the period.

The "If current balance or transactions” option prints statements for the accounts selected, only if the account has either a non-zero balance or has had some transactions posted in the period. A statement for an account with a zero balance is printed if there are any transactions for the period, but not otherwise.

The remaining options use the aged analysis periods accepted or defined above. Statements are printed for the selected accounts only if any part of the balance has been outstanding for more than the ageing period specified.

Statement Message Printed

If you have designed your statement to take advantage of this feature, you may enter up to three lines of text to print on the statement. The document design parameters allow you to print a further pre-defined message that depends on the age of the oldest debt which can be helpful for debtor chasing.

Report Which Currencies

On a foreign currency system an extra prompt allows you to filter the accounts reported according to the currency code recorded against the account. Leaving the value blank produces statements in the base currency of the system, alternatively you can enter ALL to produce statements in the account currency, or enter a specific currency code to produce statements for accounts with a matching currency code.

Once the pre-report parameters are set as required selecting the PRINT button will prompt you for the desired printer or other output device and produce the statement. Selecting CANCEL will return you to the menu.