| Billing Statements: Balance Files |
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Level II or Higher Feature
Balance Files contain the names of your customers and their balances at six-month intervals. Every six months, a new Balance File is created. They are created automatically by the program during the billing process. The primary function of a Balance File is to provide a starting point to calculate how much a particular customer owes. When AnyOrder creates a billing statement, it begins with the customer's starting balance, adjusts for payments and charges, and arrives at the customer's current balance. A key piece of information in that process is the starting balance - and that's where the Balance File comes into play. Here's where the starting balance appears on a statement:
How Balance Files Are Named. Balance files have a fairly simple naming convention. A Balance File at the end of 2013 would be named: "Bal13End.dbf." It would contain a list of your customers and exactly what they owe you at the end of 2013. A Balance File created midway through 2013 would be named "Bal13Mid.dbf" and would contain a list of your customers and what they owed you at the mid year point. (The extension ".dbf" means dBase file, a common type of data base file). When creating statements, you'll almost always use the "Normal" billing process. The billing period for a "Normal" statement is ¾ to 1 ¼ year (9 to 15 months) and it provides your customers with an optimal amount of account activity. Any less and they don't have quite enough information to track their purchases and payments. Any more and they are overwhelmed with information. The range of account activity provided by a Normal statement is just right. Here's a visual look at Balance Files in relation to a "Normal" billing process:
How Balance Files Are Created. Balance Files are created as they are needed when billing statements are prepared. As long as you are preparing billing statements at least every six months, the program will automatically make them. When the program makes billing statements, it looks for the appropriate Balance File to get the starting balances of your customers. If it doesn't find it, it will make one. When AnyOrder creates statements using the "Normal Billing Process," which is the primary method that you'll use to create statements. The statement produced from the "Normal" process includes between 9 to 15 full months ( ¾ to 1 ¼ year) of invoice and payment activity. This provides your customers with an optimal range of activity to keep them informed and updated on their purchases and payments. Let's look at an example. Let's say you are preparing statements in the early months of 2015. In that case, the program would use Balance File at the end of 2013 (Bal13End). Why Bal13End? By using this Balance File, AnyOrder is able to provide at least a year of account activity. If we look at the statement created, the first line on the statement will be a customer's balance as of December 31, 2013. Then the statement will list all activity that took place in 2014, and any at the beginning of 2015. This fits in the range of activity (¾ to 1 ¼ year) that we're trying to provide for our customers. Now let's run statements each month. In January, February, and March, the program, as discussed, will be using Bal13End. That all makes sense. Things change, however, when it comes time to run statements for April of 2015. When April 1st rolls around, we will now have gone past 15 full months (1 ¼ year). In April, AnyOrder needs to move to the next Balance File. So it looks for Bal14Mid. It probably won't find the file, since this will be the first time it has been needed, and, not finding it, Bal14End will be automatically created. Every time we reach 15 full months, and at the beginning of the 16th month, a new Balance File is created. Since statements start with 9 full months of activity and end with 15, new Balance Files are created twice a year at the beginning of April and October. (The months would be different if you utilize a fiscal year other than the calendar year. More on fiscal years below.) It's helpful to look at this all visually. The chart, below, illustrates how and when new balance files are created during the Normal Process:
Fiscal Years Other than the Calendar Year. AnyOrder allows you to work with a fiscal year which doesn't coincide with the calendar year. For example, your business's fiscal year may go from July 1st to June 30th of each year. If you have a fiscal year different than the calendar year, make sure that you've entered the necessary information in Basic Set-up. One important point to remember about fiscal years is that, by convention, the second of the two years is used to name the fiscal year. Thus, Fiscal Year 2014 (FY 2014) extends from July 1, 2013 to June 30, 2014. AnyOrder uses this naming convention when referring to Balance Files. Thus, a Balance File named Bal14End.dbf would include your customer's balances as of June 30, 2014 (if your fiscal year runs from July 1st to June 30th). A Balance File named Bal14Mid.dbf would include your customer's balances as of December 31, 2013. Is December 31, 2013 correct? Yes, it would be. Remember that the 2014 fiscal year extends from July 1, 2013 to June 30, 2014. Let's look at another example. If your fiscal year extends from September 1 to August 31, a Balance File named Bal14End.dbf would include your customer's balances as of August 31, 2014. A Balance File named Bal14Mid.dbf would include customer balances as of March 31, 2014. To keep things simple, examples in the help documentation are based on a calendar year. To make the examples in the text directly applicable to your fiscal year, substitute the start of your fiscal year whenever January 1st is used. (For example: substitute June 1st for January 1st for a fiscal year of July 1st to June 30.) Substitute the start of the middle of your fiscal year when June 1st used. (For example: substitute July 1st for January 1st.) The same holds for ending dates. Substitute the end of your fiscal year whenever December 31st is used. (For example, substitute June 30 for December 31st.) Substitute the end of the first half of your fiscal year when June 30th is used. Finally, remember that mid year ending dates will fall in the previous calendar year. Bal14Mid.dbf, for example, includes customer balances as of December 31, 2013. (That's again based on a fiscal year of July 1st to June 30th.)
Manually Altering a Balance File. Normally, the program will take care of Balance Files for you, but if in a rare instance, it is necessary to change a customer's starting balance, you may do so from "Manually Update Balances" accessed from the Billing Options Screen. You can select the Balance File in which you want to make changes, and then Balance File Screen with the contents of the Balance File (shown below):
One situation in which you might want to change a Balance File would be if you found a mistake in a starting balance on a billing statement. If, for instance, the statement showed an incorrect starting balance for a customer as of December 31, 2013, you would then make the appropriate correction in the Bal13End file. You might also change a Balance File if when you run Billing Statements, you end up with two or statements for the same customer. You'll find information on that here: Customer Names & Number Changes It is possible to make other types of changes in a customer's balance. For example, you may have a customer that hasn't paid you in a couple of years. Each time you do billing statements, that customer's name will continue to appear since they still owe you. When you finally decide to write the customer off, you have two choices. The best way of writing off the customer is to make out an invoice form and type "Write Off" in the PO Number blank and assign credit to the customer in the amount of their balance. This method will provide you with a written record. But, if desired, you can also go to the most recent Balance File and change that customer's starting balance to "0." That will remove the customer's name from your statements. The disadvantage of using this method, however, is that it won't provide you with documentation. (Note that there is an automated write-off process that can be accessed from the Billing Statements Screen).
Other Information about Billing Statements: Balance File Screen (Manually Update Balance Files) Batch Printing Billing Statements Exporting Billing Statement Data
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