A/R Essentials You Might Be Missing
Over the last few weeks, we’ve taken a fresh look at the Accounts Receivable side of SyteLine®—not every form or scenario, but enough to provide a solid foundation and get you thinking about how you're using (or not using) some of the features highlighted.
Here's what we covered:
- How to set up customers the right way for your business
- What to know about sales tax, especially if you’re using Avalara
- The different invoicing paths you can take
- How cash receipts are more than just recording a deposit
Let’s wrap things up with our final reports, utilities, and power tips that don’t quite fit anywhere else—but absolutely belong on your radar.
Reports
A/R Aging Report
Straightforward at first glance—but worth reviewing these key options:
Print Open Payments? Yes, for customer review. Not usually, for period-end GL tie-outs.
Multiple AR accounts? You’ll want to be strategic with customer prefixes and/or other filters available within the report.
PRO TIP: The aging report generally mimics the Active data found on the A/R Posted Transactions Detail form (when using the Activate/Deactivate feature—keep reading for more on that!). The form also holds the A/R Account at the transactional level. 🤔 Could this be the perfect opportunity to get creative with the To Form DataView option?
Other Report Settings to Review:
✔ Print Zero Balance Customers
Allows you to see customers who may have debit and credit balances that offset but aren't cleared.
✔ Show Active Transactions Only
Be sure to uncheck this box if backdating the aging and/or cutoff dates. An April invoice paid in May is likely inactive if re-running the 4/30 aging in June.
✔ Print Posted Transactions
Set to “No” to print a summary version of the report.
✔ Aging Buckets
Defaults from the Accounts Receivable Parameters and are editable.
A/R Balance Report
The roll forward report you didn’t know you had. Includes the opening balance, invoices, payments, and closing balance by period/customer. A favorite for audits and reconciliations.
Customer Statements
Yep, SyteLine® has them. Unfortunately, they’re not great out of the box.
The formatting can be confusing to customers, especially if applied amounts are hard to follow. But they’re customizable, automatable, and can be grouped by Statement Cycles: defined at the Customer level ... this field doesn't have a default value when running the report and is often overlooked.
Want to add a "Note" or "Comment" to the statements? You have two separate fields, 31 characters each that come standard. They're freeform and can be different each time statements are generated.
Statement of Account Report
Your audit confirmation letter. One form works for both A/R and A/P, depending on what you select. Useful during internal or external audits to confirm customer balances as of a specific date.
You can choose to include transaction details or print only the balance due. You can also choose whether to include a response letter.
Utilities
Each of the utilities noted below can be automated via the Background Queue. The ones followed by a ✅ are low-risk and are on my recommended list of default background items. The other utilities may require added consideration to ensure desired results are achieved.
Finance Charges
Yes, SyteLine® can still calculate and post finance charges. No, most customers won’t pay them. But the functionality exists, and it’s configurable (including whether to compound charges).
Currency Revaluation Report
Technically a utility, but it comes with a report too. If you’re in a multi-currency environment and need to revalue at period-end, this is your go-to. It’s not basic, but it does come standard—and it's essential for clean cutoffs and accurate translations.
The utility generates realized or unrealized currency gains and losses and creates the resulting journal entries based on your inputs.
Activate/Deactivate Posted Transactions ✅
Keeps your data clean by marking invoices as inactive once they’re fully satisfied.
Bonus: The A/R Posted Transactions Detail button on the Customers form only shows active lines by default. Perfect for live calls.
Rebalance Customer Balances ✅
Ensuring posted and on order balances are correct and credit hold logic is dependable.
A/R Balance History
Rebuilds balance history, including average days to pay—based on the criteria you define.
A/R Period/Year End Procedure
Resets your period-to-date and year-to-date values.
Rebalance Customer Pay History ✅
Also useful for resetting PTD and YTD values—especially if you’ve ever missed running the A/R Period/Year End Procedure—or you just need to recalculate past values.
CAUTION: Purged transaction data can affect the accuracy of this utility.
That wraps our A/R Basics series—at least for now. If you’ve followed along, you’ve now got a clearer view of how SyteLine® handles receivables. But, if you're still finding that your reports aren’t balancing or your team is stuck using external spreadsheets to manage what should be system-driven … reply with some details (or leave a comment if viewing this on the web), and I'll be happy to provide some additional options for help.
This entry is posted. See you in the next journal.
Stacey
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