What a Statement Includes
A statement lists every invoice billed to the customer that has a balance due greater than zero. The invoice's current balance controls whether it appears, not the invoice status. If an invoice has a partial payment, the statement shows only the remaining balance. If an invoice has a purchase order value, Rhythm still treats it like any other unpaid invoice, so the purchase order does not keep it off the statement. Send Statements does not include a built-in way to exclude PO-billed invoices from a statement or billing run. If those customers need different handling, add explanatory text to the statement or invoice email asking them to disregard the balance, or build a custom process outside the billing run if you need automatic exclusion.
A statement does not have one due date because it can include several open invoices, each with its own due date, plus open credits that have no due date. Use each invoice's own due date instead.
In rare cases, an invoice can show a paid status with related payment transactions and still have a balance due above zero. Because the statement uses the balance instead of the status, that invoice still appears as open on the customer's statement even though it looks paid elsewhere. If you find this, correct the invoice's balance directly. Rhythm does not automatically fix it after the transactions, status, and balance no longer agree.
The statement also shows the customer's open credits and subtracts them from the total. Credits are always included on the statement. You cannot leave them off, even when invoices are restricted in certain automatic billing runs.
When you generate a statement by hand for a contact or organization, Rhythm includes every invoice and credit that is currently open, with no date cutoff. An older invoice appears the same way as a recent one as long as it still has a balance due.
How Aging Is Grouped
Rhythm groups open invoices into aging bands based on how many days past due they are. This helps the customer separate current amounts from amounts that are 30, 60, or 90 or more days overdue. Every invoice on the statement needs a due date so Rhythm can place it in the correct band. If invoices in different currencies appear on one statement, Rhythm adds their amounts into the same aging bands regardless of currency. Each aging band shows the remaining balance due on the invoices in that band, not the invoices' original total amount.
Very small balances, such as a penny left after a payment or credit, can display differently on the invoice, in the statement email, and in the aging bands. Do not be surprised if a balance that small looks slightly different in each place. Aging totals in the oldest band can also show very small rounding differences, even when the statement's main balance figures are otherwise correct.
How the Total Balance Is Calculated
The statement shows the customer's total open invoice amount, their open credit amount, and the net balance after credits. Outstanding invoice totals are calculated to the cent, so the balance matches what is actually owed down to the penny. Rhythm marks a statement past due whenever the customer has anything open, not only when an invoice is actually overdue. Because of that, a statement can show as past due even when every invoice is still within its terms. If invoices in more than one currency appear on a statement, Rhythm adds the amounts together and shows them under the first invoice's currency instead of separating them by currency.
If a statement's total does not match a specific payment you are comparing it with, check the timing before assuming something is wrong. A statement reflects balances as of the time it was generated, so a transaction posted around month-end or a holiday period can fall into a different statement than you expect.
Restricting a Statement to Certain Invoices
When staff generate a statement from a customer's page, the statement normally includes every open invoice for that customer. Rhythm can also limit a statement to certain invoice types or business units, but only when a billing run sends statements automatically. The dialog staff use to generate a statement by hand does not use those restrictions. Neither restriction filters by invoice age, so you cannot limit a run to invoices more than 60 days past due, for example. If your Rhythm account's billing runs restrict statements this way, the restriction only narrows which invoices appear. The customer's open credits are always included in full and are never filtered by those restrictions.
A billing run's business-unit restriction is meant to include only open invoices from the business unit selected on that run. If a statement's total looks like it includes invoices from a business unit you did not select, verify the result instead of assuming the filter narrowed the statement the way you expected.
A billing run's invoice-type restriction is based on the type of order that created the invoice. For example, restricting to membership orders includes only membership-originated invoices with a balance due, and no other order type's invoices. This is different from choosing which contacts receive a statement in the first place. If a billing run targets recipients based on whether they have an open order of a certain type, such as an open event registration, that targeting decides who gets a statement. It does not, by itself, limit which of that contact's other open invoices appear on the statement they receive. To limit the invoices themselves to one type, use the invoice-type restriction instead.
If you want to follow up only on older unpaid balances, statement generation will not filter that for you. Review the A/R Aging report to identify accounts with older balances, then exclude the invoices or accounts that do not meet your follow-up criteria before you generate or send statements to them.
Which Template a Statement Uses
Every statement uses a template, chosen in this order:
- A template named specifically for that statement, if staff choose one when generating a statement by hand.
- Your account's default statement template, if one is set.
- Rhythm's own bundled default layout, if your account has no default template set.
Rhythm still uses a deactivated template if it is named directly or set as the account default. Deactivating a template only keeps it out of the list staff choose from when generating a statement. If a specific template is named but does not exist, the statement fails instead of falling back to the default.
Generating and Emailing a Statement by Hand
From a contact's or organization's financial view, open the record options menu and choose Generate/Email Statement. The dialog includes a template picker, Statement Template:, two checkboxes, Email this statement to the customer and Save the statement on the customer record, and an Override Email Address: box when emailing is turned on. Select Generate Statement to build the document and, depending on your choices, email it and save a record of it.
Keep these details in mind before you use this option:
- Rhythm stores the finished statement at a link whether or not you save it on the customer's record. Saving on the record only controls whether the statement also appears in the customer's own statement history.
- If you enter an address in Override Email Address:, Rhythm sends the statement only to that address and replaces all of the customer's own recipients. For an organization with no override address, Rhythm emails every contact who has an email address, or only contacts in certain roles, depending on the template. Because an organization statement goes to its billing contacts rather than the specific person tied to a purchase, a billing contact can receive an overdue statement for an invoice that belongs to a different person's event registration, as long as that registration was billed to the organization.
- A successful result means Rhythm generated and stored the statement, not that the email was delivered. Rhythm does not tell staff whether an emailed statement bounced or failed to send, so treat "success" as confirmation that the document exists, not that the customer received it.
- If the customer has a very large number of open invoices, Rhythm fails to generate the statement instead of creating a partial document.
Tip
If you need to confirm that a customer received their statement, follow up with them directly. A successful generation result does not confirm delivery.
Tip
If you only need to remind one customer about a single unpaid invoice, resend that invoice's email and change the subject line to show it is a reminder.
Statements Sent Automatically by a Billing Run
A billing run configured to send statements generates and emails one statement for every customer who has a qualifying open invoice, using the same rules described above. Rhythm sends at most one statement per customer per run, even when that customer has several unpaid invoices, so the customer does not receive multiple statements from a single run. As long as an invoice stays open, the customer receives a statement on each later run instead of receiving it only once. A customer stops appearing on these runs only after their balance is paid off.
Set this up by creating a billing run and choosing the Send Customer Statements action. The run can be narrowed by order type, business unit, and customer type, using the restrictions described above. To reach billing contacts for open sponsorship invoices, for example, configure the statement template so it sends only to billing contacts, and configure the billing run to pull organizations rather than individual contacts.
You can also set up Send Statements as a recurring run, the same way you would a recurring membership billing run. Saving the recurring run only pre-processes the statements for its future runs. Nothing is actually sent until a user opens the resulting billing run and selects the action to execute it.
Related
See the related articles for step-by-step help with generating and sending a statement, reviewing a customer's account and balance, what members see of their own statements in the Portal, and setting up statement templates.