Accounts receivable are unpaid customer invoices, and any other money your customers owe you. The accounts receivable program is a transactional, real time system It gives you instant access to your receivables information to manage your cash flow and process delinquent accounts. An entry in cash receipts immediately affects a customer's account and credit status. You can view A/R ledger activity for any customer for any date range and drill down from a summary level to transaction level with one keystroke. You will often find Accounts Receivable abbreviated as A/R in the system.
Use the procedures in the following areas to manage your accounts receivables.
When you receive a payment from a customer, you can use the Cash Receipts application to record it. This application shows all of the customers invoices, even those received via EDI (Electronic Data Interchange), and provides a variety of ways to apply payments. You can make adjustments or write off bad debt as needed. As soon as you enter a cash receipt, the system posts the amounts to the general ledger, providing you with a constant, up-to-date picture of your accounts receivable.
View A/R activity for a customer, for any range of dates, from A/R Inquiry or the A/R Ledger. You can drill down from summary level data to see transaction level detail. The A/R system provides you with a number of tools to help you manage your accounts receivable:
The A/R inquiry gives you a complete picture of your customers' accounts, from aging information to credit limits to when they last purchased products from you, as of a particular date, in real time.
The A/R ledger is a real-time record of your customers' charges and payments.
Aged receivables reporting and task automation work queues helps you prioritize collection efforts and minimize write-offs. The A/R collection queue helps you track customers whose invoices are past due, in real time.
You can track your communications with customers, including the last time you contacted them, any conversations you had with them, and whether you have sent them collection notices. You can sort the queue by who owes you the most money, who has owed money the longest, by who is over their credit limit, or by any number of other useful ways. This information is also available in report form.
You can even eliminate proof-of-delivery phone calls by imprinting digital signatures on your customers' invoices, if you use the Signature Capture companion product in conjunction with the Accounts Receivable application.
The system also includes a variety of ways to evaluate your customers in terms of how much business they give you and what kinds of products they purchase most often. You can find out who uses credit cards, which can be useful if you are interested in extending them credit through your company. You can even use an accessory program called ABC (Activity Based Costing) to find out which customers are costing you more money than they spend.
A number of reports are available for your use. When a customer purchases something, the system records the sale in the cash receipts journal. The system also records any over the counter purchases in the cash box journal, which you can then use to reconcile the cash in your drawer to the system totals. For a complete review of all A/R reports, see A/R Reports Overview.
Click here for a printable version of the Accounts Receivable documentation.