Statement

The information in this section relates to a pre-release version of ContactsLaw and is not representative of the final product.

For the purposes of billing, a statement is a group of invoices for which the business requests payment by a debtor.

Unlike invoices, statements are not restricted to a single matter; they are issued to the "bill-to" contact and may span multiple matters and workgroups.

ContactsLaw retains a permanent copy of all statements issued to the contact, making it easy to identify each statement period.

Properties

Statements have the following properties:

• Statement date (as well as the due date)
• Statement code, which is derived from the client number
• Cut-off date for the inclusion of invoices

Invoices

By default, a statement includes all finalised invoices addressed (billed to) to the contact on or before the cut-off date.

Invoices can be manually added or removed.

Creating

Since statements operate on finalised invoices, they are payable immediately upon creation.

A document is generated from the statement template which can then be sent to the contact. A separate document is created if the statement changes.

Opening Balance & Account Activity

Since statements may span multiple matters, the opening balance, account activity and closing balance (typically included in the generated document) represent aggregate figures.

These figures are calculated from the start of the statement period, which depends on the statement:

• If this is the first statement issued to the contact, the start date is the earliest commencement date across all matters for which invoices are included.
• For all subsequent statements, the start date is the date of the previous statement.
• The end date is always the date of the current statement.

The opening balance is the sum of the balances on Accounts Receivable for the affected matters, as at the start of the statement period, excluding any of the invoices included in the current statement.

The account activity is a list of all processed transactions debiting/crediting Accounts Receivable for the affected matters during the statement period, excluding:

• Transactions posted before the most recent invoice in the previous statement (if any)
• The most recent invoice in the previous statement (if any)
• Transactions posted after the most recent invoice in the current statement
• Any of the invoices included in the current statement

The closing balance is the opening balance, plus the account activity, plus the total of all invoices included in the statement.