Send automatic statements

Document Output can create and automatically send statements to your customers. You can set up a range of Automatic Document profiles that include different types of statements to cover different requirements and preferences for different groups of your customers.

Create new Automatic Document codes

You can access the setup page for Automatic Documents from the Customer card. The Document Output FactBox shows the current setup for Automatic Documents, and you can change the settings using the "..." option at Automatic Documents, which opens the Document Output Customer Card.

In the General FastTab in the Document Output customer card, the Automatic Documents field shows which Automatic Document code is currently configured, if any.

• Use the Select from Full List action to view the other available codes.
• Use the New action to start creating a new code.

Each Automatic Document Code can include two types of statements:

• Automatic Period Statement
• Automatic Due Date Statement (this is an advanced feature not covered in this Fundamentals learning path)

Work with Automatic Period Statements

Automatic Period Statements allow you to configure:

• a period to include in the statement
• the sending schedule for the statement
• additional settings to pause or skip sending the statement

From the Select - Automatic Documents page, in the column for Automatic Period Statement, use the Open Full List action to see the available codes.

From the Select - Automatic Period Statement page, you can configure the Output of each code as either Journal or Email. You can also see:

• an automatically generated Description, which summarizes the configurations
• the Next Sending Date for Automatic Documents that include the selected Automatic Period Statement

Click on the Description text to open an Assisted Setup Guide for each Automatic Period Statement.

Statement Rules

This step in the assisted setup guide helps you choose the basic conditions for when each statement code is sent.

You can send a statement automatically if it meets one of these conditions:

• There are entries in the period
• There is a balance amount on the customer account
• There is a balance due for the customer account
• There are either entries or balance amount
• There are either entries of balance due

Period Settings and Date Details

In this step of the assisted setup guide, you choose the start and end point of each statement.

• Date Formula allows you to specify a set period, such as 1 month. If you use this option, it should be selected as both the start and end date type.

  • Use the Period Date Formula field to enter standard Business Central formula, such as 1M for 1 month.
  • Specify a Period start day of month. For example, you could start a month period on the 15th day of each month.

• First Open Entry Date allows you to create a dynamic statement only when open entries exist for the customer card.

• If you set the start date type to First open entry date, you can choose among three options for the end date type:

  • Last Entry Date
  • Last Open Entry Date
  • Last Bank Posting Date

Sending Schedule

This step in the assisted setup guide helps you configure when statements are sent to customers, instead of sending the statement as soon as the period is complete.

• At Sending interval, use a standard Business Central date formula, such as 2W for 2 weeks.
• At Sending interval start day of month, specify a day of the month in number form, which will be the earliest that the statement is sent.
• Optionally, at Sending interval Weekday, specify a day of the week for sending the statement. The statement will be sent on the start day of the month if that day is also the specified weekday. Otherwise, the statement is sent on the following specified weekday after the start day of the month.

Additional Settings

In this step of the assisted setup guide, you can be quite specific about when to skip or pause sending statements.

• Skip sending a statement if the customer has negative balance, by enabling Do not send if negative balance.
• Pause automatic sending of statements if the customer has been issued a reminder or finance charge, by enabling Change to manual on Finance Charge Memo and/or Change to manual on Reminder.

Update a group of customers

If a group of your customers need the same automatic statement settings, you can set this up quickly using an appropriate filter field.

From the main Document Output menu, choose Customer then Customer Cards.

Use the Update Customers action, then

• specify the Automatic Documents code
• change the Automatic statement option to Automatic

You must enable the option to Change Existing setup to push this configuration to existing customers. After this, you can still change the statement setup for individual customers as needed.

The Filter option allows you to specify the group of customers that should receive this automatic statement configuration.

Scenario

In this scenario video, Ester, the bookkeeper at Cronus, has been asked to set up automatic statements for two customers.

She needs to work on these tasks:

• Set up a standard automatic statement that covers one month and includes all entries in the month, if there are any
• Set up an automatic statement for high-volume customers that is sent every two weeks, and includes any open entries or balance
• View the calendar of scheduled statements for a customer

Other resources

More learning resources for this topic include:

• Enhanced Automatic Statements (Continia Docs article)
• Automatic email sending (Solution Demo video)
• Entering dates and times in Business Central (Microsoft Learn article)