Accounts

Accounts is the customer book: every customer you serve on one list, with their open balance, what is past due, what they bought in the last 30 days and whether any of their tanks is running low. Open a customer to see their running statement and to record a payment against an invoice.

How to read the book when you open Accounts

Every customer appears, including one you have never invoiced. The totals across the top cover the whole book: Open balance, Past due, Revenue · 30 days and Accounts with a low tank. The header shows your company's current business date and an Ask AimRack button that opens the assistant beside the list.

The list's columns are the account, Revenue · 30 days, Open balance, Past due and Last payment, and each line has a Statement link. Click a column heading to sort by it.

"Recent revenue" means the 30 days ending on the day of your latest invoice, not the 30 days ending today, so a book whose invoices stop before today still shows real figures.

How to narrow the book when you are chasing a group of customers

Pick a view above the list, and use the search box to find a name within it:

1. All accounts is everyone, with the most past-due money first.
2. Overdue is every customer with a past-due balance.
3. Top revenue is everyone, ordered by revenue over the last 30 days.
4. Dormant is every customer with no invoice in the 60 days before your latest invoice.
5. Low tank is every customer with a tank whose last reading was under 20 percent.

The view you pick stays in the page address, so you can bookmark it or send it to a colleague.

How to look at one customer's statement when they ask what they owe

1. Click Statement on the customer's line.
2. The top of the page shows the balance and the number of open invoices.
3. Open invoices lists each unpaid invoice by the day it was issued, its due date, its status and the amount still owed. An invoice past its due date shows Overdue.
4. Statement is the running ledger: each invoice adds to the balance and each payment subtracts from it, in date order, with the balance after every entry. When an invoice and a payment fall on the same day, the invoice is listed first, so the balance never dips below zero by accident.

An account with no invoices and no payments says so, with the date the account was opened.

How to record a payment when a customer pays an invoice

You need permission to create invoicing records.

1. Open the customer's statement.
2. In Open invoices, click Receive payment on the invoice being paid.
3. Enter the Amount, choose the Method (Card, ACH for a bank transfer, Check or Cash) and, if you have one, a Reference such as the check number.
4. Click Receive payment.

AimRack creates the payment, applies it to that invoice and posts it to your default bank or cash account. The invoice's status and the statement update at once. If the amount you enter is the full balance, or within one cent of it, the payment settles the exact open amount, so a rounded figure on screen never leaves a fraction of a cent behind. A payment that fails, for example because no default bank account is set up in accounting, shows the reason and records nothing.

How to ask the assistant about an account when something looks off

The statement page offers two questions for the assistant:

• Fix this account asks for the smallest per-gallon surcharge that would make this account worth keeping, with the working shown.
• Audit billing asks the assistant to check this account's invoices against your price book and list any delivery priced off it.

How to see the book on one screen when you want a summary

Open /accounts-rg, the one-screen summary of the same book. It shows the open balance across the whole book, what is overdue and three panels: Longest overdue, Top accounts by recent revenue and Accounts with a low tank.

Where this fits

• Invoices are created by deliveries and by sales; see Deliveries and Sales invoices.
• Payments recorded here are ordinary payments; the full payment and settlement screens are in Payments.
• The low-tank figure comes from the same readings as the Tanks board.
• The customer's contacts, service locations and terms are on the customer record.