A customer's ledger is their account with you, line by line: every invoice you raised, every payment they made, every credit memo and every journal entry that touched them, with the balance after each. It answers "what does this customer owe, and how did it come to that?" and is where you print or email their statement, edit their details, see their jobs and open any document behind a line.
Opening a customer's ledger
- In the Customer Centre, double-click the customer, or select the row and press Enter.
- From anywhere, press Ctrl+J. SeroBooks asks which customer — suggesting the customer on the invoice you are writing — and opens their ledger.
- When a lead is converted in the Lead Center, the new customer's ledger opens.
The ledger opens in its own window, titled with the customer's name, with Customer ledger (and the customer's price level, if any) underneath. You can keep it open beside an invoice or a payment and move or resize it; SeroBooks remembers its size.
The toolbar
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Period bar | The dates the ledger covers. It opens on the last twelve months. Pick another period to reload; everything before the start date is summed into the opening balance. |
| Summary F5 / Detail | Switches between one line per transaction and one line per month. F5 does the same; Esc goes back from the monthly view to the lines. |
| Options | How the ledger is laid out. See Ledger options. |
| Edit | Opens the customer's form. See Add or edit a customer. |
| Duplicate | A new customer copied from this one; this one is not changed. |
| Delete | Deletes the customer, after asking. Possible only when no invoice, bill, payment, journal entry or other entry uses them; otherwise Cannot delete explains why. |
| Jobs | The customer's jobs. See Jobs. |
| Custom Fields | The values of your custom fields for this customer. See Custom Fields. |
| Statement | Prints, exports or emails a statement. See Statement from the ledger. |
| Refresh | Reloads the ledger. The ledger also refreshes by itself when a payment, invoice or journal entry is saved anywhere in SeroBooks. |
The summary strip
Across the top of the ledger:
| Figure | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Opening · (date) | The balance on the start date of the period: everything before it, summed. |
| Invoiced | The total of invoices in the period. |
| Received | The total of payments received in the period (green). |
| Credit notes | The total of credit memos (sales returns) in the period (amber). |
| Owes you / In credit / Settled | The balance at the end of the period. Owes you (red) when the customer owes you money; In credit (green) when you owe them — they have paid more than they were invoiced, or hold a credit memo; Settled (green) when the balance is zero. |
| Credit limit | Shown if the customer has one. |
| Available / Over limit | The credit limit minus the balance. Over limit (red) when the balance is above the limit. |
| Terms | The customer's payment terms, for example Net 30 days. |
| Price group | The customer's price level, if any. |
If the lines do not add up to the balance the server holds for the customer, an amber Balance does not reconcile — check with support badge appears. It means the ledger found a difference it cannot explain; contact support rather than adjusting the balance yourself.
The lines
| Column | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Date | The date of the transaction. |
| Type | What it is: Invoice, Payment received, Credit note (a credit memo), Opening balance, General Journal, Void. |
| Reference | The document number — invoice number, payment reference and so on. |
| Details | What the line was for: for a payment, the method and any note. A payment applied to several invoices is one line naming them — for example a $3,060.00 card payment reads Credit · Invoices #1281, #1300, #1303, the last being its card-surcharge invoice. What a payment left as the customer's credit is part of the same line: $3,100.00 for $3,060.00 of invoices reads Invoices #1281, #1300; credit $40.00, one line of $3,100.00. Each part of a split payment is its own line with its own method, as QuickBooks records it: $50 cash and $70 by debit card on one invoice are two lines, Cash 50.00 and Debit 70.00. |
| Debit | Amounts that increase what the customer owes (invoices). |
| Credit | Amounts that reduce it (payments, credit memos). |
| Balance | The running balance after the line. |
With Show the opening balance on, the first line (or last, when newest is first) is Balance brought forward. The footer counts the movements in the period and reminds you which way the running balance reads.
Double-click a line (or select it and press Enter) to open the document behind it: an invoice opens the invoice, a payment opens its payment receipt. When you close the document you come back to the ledger. See Drilling down from a report.
The monthly view
Summary F5 shows one line per month: Month, Entries, Debit, Credit and Closing balance, with an Opening line first and a chart of debits and credits. Double-click a month to see its lines.
Ledger options
Options opens Ledger options. Your choices are remembered on this computer and apply to every customer's and vendor's ledger.
| Option | What it does |
|---|---|
| Show bill references | One line per payment, with each invoice it paid beneath it (Adj: 1281 … 1,650.00). On by default. Payments recorded in Receive Payments share one receipt number across the invoices they pay, so a $3,060.00 card payment over three invoices is one Payment received line of $3,060.00, not three. An amount the payment left as a credit shows beneath its invoices as Left as credit … 40.00. |
| Show item details | The items on every invoice beneath it. |
| Show the opening balance | A line for the balance brought forward. On by default. |
| Daily balance | Shows the running balance once a day (on the day's last line) instead of after every line. |
| Oldest first | Reads the ledger forwards from the opening balance, so the running balance reads down the page. On by default. Turn it off to see the newest lines at the top. |
Click Apply to use them, or Cancel.
What Dr and Cr mean
On documents, SeroBooks shows the customer's balance as a small chip beside their name — on the invoice form, in the customer search list, and in the customer field of other forms. The chip reads like Balance $1,250.00 Dr.
| Chip | Colour | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| … Dr | Red | Debit balance: the customer owes you this amount. This is the normal position for a customer with unpaid invoices. |
| … Cr | Green | Credit balance: the customer has a credit with you — they overpaid, paid in advance or hold a credit memo. |
| (grey, no Dr/Cr) | Grey | Nothing open. In compact lists a settled customer shows no chip at all. |
Point at the chip to see the meaning in words ("This customer owes you", "This customer has a credit with you"). The chip is live: it updates when a payment or invoice is saved anywhere, and is read afresh at least every minute.
Why debit and credit? In the books a customer is part of Accounts Receivable, an asset. An invoice debits Accounts Receivable (the customer owes more); a payment or credit memo credits it (they owe less). So a customer's normal balance is a debit, and a credit balance means the position has turned round. For a vendor it is the other way: Cr means you owe the vendor.
Statement from the ledger
Statement opens Statement · (customer). Choose what kind of statement:
| Choice | What it contains |
|---|---|
| Transactions for a period | Every invoice, payment and credit between the dates, with the balance after each. Starts with Balance brought forward; columns Date, Description, Charge, Credit, Balance. |
| Open invoices | What is still owed on the date, invoice by invoice: Invoice, Date, Total, Paid, Due, Days. |
Then set the dates: From and To for a period, or As of for open invoices. This fiscal year fills in your fiscal year to date. Finish with:
- PDF — builds the statement and opens it to print or save.
- Excel — saves the statement as a spreadsheet.
- Email… — asks Email the statement to (filled with the customer's email) and sends the PDF with the subject "Statement of account – (your business)" and the balance due in the message.
If the From date is after the To date you see The From date is after the To date. If the server cannot be reached, Could not build the statement — server unreachable. To send statements to many customers at once, use Create Statements.
Permissions
Viewing a ledger needs access to Customers. Edit, Duplicate and Delete need Edit, Create and Delete on Customers respectively.
Common problems
| Problem | What to do |
|---|---|
| Could not load the ledger | Usually a connection problem. Click Try again. |
| A payment you just took is not on the ledger. | Check the period covers today's date, then Refresh. |
| The balance chip on an invoice does not match the ledger. | The chip includes every open item up to today; the ledger's closing figure is at the end of the selected period. Set the period to end today. |
| Balance does not reconcile — check with support | Do not post an adjustment to make it go away; contact support with the customer's name. |