Trade debtors (also known as trade receivables) are amounts you have invoiced to your customers for goods and services, but which you have not yet received payment for.
It is important to periodically review your debtor balances to ensure that payments are received in good time, or that they are followed up if outstanding. This helps you to maintain healthy cash flow.
Viewing debtor balances
You can view the sales invoice dashboard and use filters to view outstanding or overdue invoices.
To view this, go to Sales > Sales invoices. Click “More” next to the date range and use the dropdown to select the status.
Alternatively, you can run the Aged Debtors report to assess the outstanding balance at a given date.
To view this, go to Reporting > More. Scroll down until you find the “Aged Debtors” report under the Essential Reports section. You can click the star icon to add this report to favourites.
You can also select the “detailed” option to view a breakdown showing the relevant invoices and credit notes that make up each customer balance.
Automated invoice reminders
Sage Cloud offer automated reminders which means you can keep on top of chasing payments with ease. You can schedule the reminder to be sent a certain number of days before (or after) the invoice due date and you can set other parameters such as only issuing a reminder to the customer if an invoice is above a particular value.
Sage will send these reminders unless the invoice has been marked as paid in the system, so it is paramount that you keep up to date with your bookkeeping to avoid reminders being sent when the customer has already paid.
It is important to ensure that all credit notes have been applied to invoices where necessary as automated reminders will still be sent even if an unapplied credit note exists on the account.
Our cloud accounting experts in Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, and Hertfordshire are here to help you explore what works for your business, and to ensure you’re getting the most out of your chosen software.
If you’d like to find out more about how we can support you with credit control processes and monitoring debtors please contact us.
