Send balance confirmation letters

Year-end auditing and end-of-month reconciliation processes often involve sending balance confirmation letters to customers or vendors. The Essential module in Continia Finance includes the Balance Confirmation Codes feature, which allows you to:

• Automatically generate balance confirmation letters, return letters and the list of entries
• Use customized templates for different customers or vendors
• Set up return letters from financial auditors instead of the customer or vendor
• Keep a log of sent balance confirmation letters

Set up Balance Confirmation Codes

Using balance confirmation codes, you can create multiple variants of balance confirmation letters. Each balance confirmation code configures the contents of the letters and list of entries.

A DEFAULT code is included from the original set up of Continia Finance Essentials Module, but you can edit the default, and add more codes as required. For example, you can create a new code for the different languages needed by your customers, vendors and financial auditors.

Each Balance Confirmation Code line includes:

• A unique Code, for example NO_RETURN
• A Description field, to help you describe the purpose of each code
• Options for including or excluding the three pages
  • Cover Letter
  • Return Letter
  • List of Entries
• The Language Code for using the available translations of Business Central labels such as Customer No. and Open Amount.
• A Date Formula that specifies the period for the list of entries

Edit the letter templates

From the Balance Confirmation Codes page, you can view and edit the text included in the cover letter, return letter and list of entries for each of the different balance confirmation codes.

• Select the relevant Code from the list
• From the Actions menu, choose Texts.

You can customize the Beginning and Ending Text of each of the letters and the list of entries.

Create balance confirmation letters

Balance confirmation letters can be generated from multiple locations within Business Central:

• From the Customers/Vendors list and individual cards, using the Customer/Vendor Balance Confirmation action
• From the Balance Confirmation Codes page, using the Report action
• Use the search function to navigate directly to the Customer/Vendor Balance Confirmation page

In the Customer/Vendor Balance Confirmation page, navigate to the General Options FastTab.

Choose the appropriate Balance Confirmation Code. You can also create or edit the balance confirmation codes from here.

The FastTabs for Cover Letter, Return Letter and List of Entries allow you to make individual adjustments to the set Balance Confirmation Code. For example, even if the code includes a configured return letter, you could disable this part of the code for an individual customer if required.

Use the Filter options to specify an individual vendor or customer, or to select a group.

Lastly, the buttons at the bottom of the page allow you to:

• Send to different file types, including Microsoft Word, XML, and PDF
• Print using your computer’s print dialog
• Preview and download as a PDF

View the print log

You can view a log of sent balance confirmation letters from the Balance Confirmation Codes page.

From the Reports action, choose Show Cust/Vend Bal. Conf. Print Log.

Scenario

Ester at Cronus needs to set up two different types of balance confirmation letters. She needs to set up:

• An end-of-year balance confirmation letter with a return letter to a financial auditor
• A return letter in a different language
• An end-of-month balance confirmation letter with no return letter

Other resources

Create customer balance acknowledgements with Extended Financial Reports(Continia Learn unit)