Customer debt ledger

How a debt is born

A debt starts as a credit invoice on a registered customer, never on an anonymous walk-in. At the sale you pick the customer and set payment terms in days, and the system derives the due date. That due date, not the invoice date, is what lateness is measured against later.

• Credit sales straight from the point of sale, posted to the customer's account at once
• Payment terms in days per invoice, with the due date derived from them
• No credit sale without a named customer, so no debt is lost in an anonymous receipt

What the debts screen shows

Three figures at the top summarise the position: the total owed by customers, the part of it that is past due, and the credit balances customers hold with you. Below them, the list of debtors, searchable by name or phone, each with their balance. Choosing a customer opens their statement on the same page.

The statement: every movement with its document

The statement covers any period you choose. It opens with an opening balance, the result of everything before the period, then lists each movement with its date and reference: the invoice in the debit column, the payment or credit note in the credit column, a running balance after every line, and a closing balance at the end. There is no editable balance field anywhere; the balance is always the sum of the documents, so a dispute goes back to the specific invoice or payment.

• Opening and closing balances for the period, and a running balance after each movement
• Only three kinds of movement: invoice, payment, credit note, each with a reference number
• What you see on screen is what prints, from the same source

Recording a payment

A payment is recorded against the invoice in cash or by bank transfer. A transfer (from Bankak or another bank app) is recorded by hand with the sender's bank, the transaction number and the company bank account that received it, so you can match it to the app's or the bank's statement later. There is no direct link to the bank. A partial payment is deducted and the remainder stays due under its original due date. Every payment carries who recorded it and when.

• Cash or bank transfer with a reference and a receiving account
• Partial payments, as many as needed
• A payment above the approval threshold the company sets needs verification by the owner, general manager or CFO

Documented reduction, never deletion

A return issues a numbered credit note that reduces the customer's account exactly once. A recorded financial movement is never edited or deleted; a mistake is corrected by a counter-movement linked to the original. That is why the statement remains valid as evidence: every line has a document, and every document has an author in the audit log.

Who is late, and since when

The ageing report sorts every outstanding amount by days past its due date: 1 to 30, 31 to 60, 61 to 90, and over 90. An invoice that has just passed its due date appears in the owner's dashboard alerts the same day, so you know who to call this week without opening a report.

Branches and permissions

A branch user sees only their branch's debts; the owner and general manager see the whole company. Even viewing a statement is written to the audit log with who viewed it and when. Suppliers get the same ledger in reverse: what you owe each supplier and how old that debt is.