E-Commerce XAccounts Receivable

The purpose of the accounts receivable program is to keep track and report on money owed to your company by your customers as a result of providing them with goods or services. The information needed to operate the program is:

1. Customer Information-Any customer information that could be useful.

2. Invoice Information- Invoice dates, invoice amounts, credits, order numbers and other invoice information.

3. Payment Information- Data from customer checks received will be used to either close the open invoice or will show partial payments against the open invoice.

The AIS Solutions Accounts Receivable package is a full-featured system which handles all areas of customer account processing. All billing and payment functions are built-in and any of the standard reports can be printed on demand.

Each day, invoices, credit memos and payments are entered into the system. This will keep all customer accounts current; therefore, all reports and information may be displayed or printed at any time.

For most businesses, statements should be sent once a month to all customers with an account balance. The statement should show the following:

P a beginning balance (the previous month's ending balance)

P all invoices charged during the month

P payments on account during the month

P any debit memos or credit memos

P an ending balance

P a due date

When you mail statements to your customers every month, you should reconcile your accounts receivable ledgers with the accounts receivable control account. The control account is the total accounts receivable balance from your general ledger. The beginning accounts receivable total, plus charge sales for the month, minus payments on account for the month, should equal the ending accounts receivable total. Compare this amount to the sum of the individual customer accounts receivable ledgers. This will help you discover any errors in your customer statements before you mail them out.

Your accounts receivable balances are a valuable asset. When customers buy from you on credit you need to manage that relationship effectively. Web based accounting software provides the detailed reporting you need to keep track of your customers and identify potential problems in advance. You can age and generate statements for receivables on a consistent basis to make sure your customers receive up-to-date information about their accounts. Active management of your accounts receivable with e-commerce technology will help you bring in the cash.

Key features and benefits of the incorporating Accounts Receivable into e-commerce include:

h Complete Control of Cash Collection. You can choose to apply payments and credit memos to specific unpaid invoices, providing consistent and accurate customer payment information. You also have the choice to apply cash payments to oldest invoices first through an automatic payment application process.

h Flexible Payment Applications. You can use the Payment Applications process to accommodate many AR situations, including:

P Setup for each customer to automatically apply payments to the oldest invoice first, or to apply payments to selected documents.

P Ability to auto-apply any given payment to the oldest invoice for a customer whose setup calls for manual distribution.

P Setup options to apply payments to finance charges first.

P Ability to input payments as unapplied cash to affect the customer balance immediately and to apply to documents at a later time.

h Period Integrity. Users frequently need to enter AR transactions to the next period, before they complete closing of the current period. AIS Solutions permits batches of transactions to be easily posted to future or prior periods. You can then print the AR Customer Trial Balance report, based on a specific Period-to-Post, so that future or prior period transactions are excluded from the report.

h Recurring Invoices. Recurring invoice options reduce data entry time because they automatically generate invoices with the terms you have set.

h Convenient Module Integration. The Accounts Receivable module s strong integration with Project Costing, Order Processing, and General Ledger modules saves you data entry time and ensures consistent information.

h Flexible Terms Definition. Web-based accounting software allows you to set terms that identify a specific day of the month or a number of days from the invoice date, to be used for calculating document discount dates and due dates. This provides additional flexibility in establishing accounts receivable collection policies.

h Enhanced Credit Checking. A warning is displayed when a customer has invoices with due dates exceeding a specified number of days.

h Customer Classification Control. You can classify customers as active, inactive, one time, or on credit or administrative hold. This allows you to better control sales functions. If a customer is on credit hold, sales orders and/or invoices will automatically be placed on hold

h Flexible Invoice Printing. You can print original invoices or reprint copies of existing invoices, to make sure your customers get the information they need about their accounts.

h Accounts Receivable History Retention. You can retain up to 99 periods of transaction detail and 99 years of customer balances, for comprehensive reporting. A history of customer balances is especially convenient for trend analysis and reporting--without requiring you to waste space on unnecessary transaction detail.

What s more, if you have customer balance records in machine-readable format from years past, you can transfer that information to to your new accounting software with web functionality.

Bibliography

1. http://www. infousa.com/html

2. http://lsic.net/docs/acc_rec.html

3. http://www.midwesterngallery.com/pcmrp/manual/wmacct8.htm