Statements of account

A statement of account is the answer to "what do I owe you?" — every invoice, payment and credit note on a client's account over a period, with the balance at the bottom. Open one from a client's page, print it, email it, or let OrderDen send them on a schedule.

The two shapes, and which to send

What is still unpaid (open items) lists every invoice with money left on it, however old, and nothing else. This is the one you send to be paid: the client sees five invoices and one total, and nothing they have already settled clutters it up.

Everything in the period (activity) runs opening balance, every movement in date order, closing balance. This is the one a bookkeeper reconciles against, and the one to send when somebody asks "what happened on our account in August?"

Pick the default in Company Settings → Sales defaults → Statements of account; switch between them on any statement with the Shows picker.

Reading one

Under the letterhead: the period, the amount due, and any credit the client holds. Then the movements — date, reference, what it was, charges, credits and the running balance. At the bottom, how old it is: what is current, and what has been owed 1–30, 31–60, 61–90 and over 90 days. An invoice that is not due yet is current; one with no due date at all is current too, because a missing date is not evidence of lateness.

Nothing on a statement is stored. Every figure is worked out from the invoices and payments each time you open it, so a statement and the ledger it summarises can never disagree. A draft invoice is never on one — it is not a document yet.

Sending one

The Email this statement box takes the address (their primary contact by default), an optional line to go with it, and sends the workspace's Statement of account email template with a link the client can open and print. Edit the template in Company Settings → Email templates.

Under the statement, Statements already sent is the record: which period, when, to whom, what the balance was, and how many times it went. Sending the same period again bumps that count rather than writing a second record, so "we sent it twice because they lost the first one" reads as exactly that.

Sending them automatically

Turn on Send statements automatically in Company Settings → Sales defaults and pick monthly or quarterly, the day of the month, and what they show. Statements go out at 06:00 in your own timezone, covering the period that just closed.

Three things stop one being sent, and all three are yours to set:

• Do not send under — no statement for less than this. Chasing four dollars costs more than four dollars.
• Skip clients with nothing outstanding — rather than posting somebody a statement that says zero.
• Leave them off — on any client's statement page, take that one client out of the run entirely. For the ones who settle every invoice on the day and would only be puzzled by a letter.

A client with no email address is skipped rather than treated as a failure, and a period already sent is never sent again by the schedule — so a sweep that runs twice sends nothing the second time.

What the client sees

Two ways, and they answer different questions.

The link in the email is that statement: the period it covered when it went out, still saying what it said. A later invoice does not change it.

The portal (Client portal) shows their statement as it stands today — this month so far — because somebody who has signed in to check what they owe wants today's number, not last month's. Both print.

Through the API

GET /clients/{id}/statement computes one (optionally from, to and type), POST /clients/{id}/statement/send emails it, GET /statements lists what has been sent, and GET/PUT /settings/statements reads and changes the schedule. See the API reference.