What is it?

In an ideal world, customers respect their payment deadlines. In the real world, however, your customers might not always be able to pay on time. We at stub will help you keep track of those late or delayed payments so you can chase after them to ensure you get your money. This is where your customer statement, also known as an account statement, comes into play.

Your customer statement is a record of the transactions between you and your customer which you can use to remind them about the money they still owe you. Never a fun job, but it has to be done and sending your customer their statement is one of the most practical ways to make sure they know what they still owe. It’s also a great way for you to keep track of your business’s sales and exchanges with your customers.

When to send it?

Some businesses may never need to send a statement, and you may just use it to keep track of customer activity or only when a customer requests one. However, in saying that, sending your customers their statement every month keeps them informed on when a payment is outstanding and can eliminate any confusion on what's been paid or not. If sending statements each month means you don’t have to chase customers for payments then that’s a bonus!

What makes up a customer statement?

Your statement shows a breakdown of your customer’s transactions during a certain period. The top section of your statement shows the name, address, phone number, and email address of both your business and your customer. The other components include:

Date range: You can decide on the timeline you wish to show to your customers, it can cover a month, 6 months, or a year.

Opening balance: This is the starting balance that will show if there's any money outstanding before the date range chosen above begins. If they don’t owe your business any money the outstanding balance will simply show zero.

Invoiced amount: This is the invoiced amount you have sent your customer.

Payments received: This is the amount your customer has paid you and is deducted from the invoiced amount.

Closing balance: This is the amount that your customer is still required to pay. It can be positive (the customer owes you money), negative (you owe your customer money) or zero (all payments have been settled, this is what we hope for).