QuickBooks 2012: The Missing Manual

Chapter 11. Producing Statements

Statements are the perfect solution for businesses that charge individuals for time and other services in bits and pieces, such as law offices, wireless telephone service providers, or astrology advisors. Statements can summarize the statement charges racked up during the statement period (usually a month). But they’re also great for showing payments and outstanding balances, the way your cable bill shows the charges for your monthly service, the Pay-Per-View movies you ordered, your last payment, and your current balance. So even if you invoice your customers, you can send statements to show them their previous balances, payments received, new charges, and overdue invoices. (To learn about the limitations of statements, see Choosing the Right Type of Form.)

However, business to business is another story. Most accounting departments process only vendor invoices and credit memos for payments, so statements end up in the wastebasket. So if you do business only with other businesses, you’re better off turning off this feature (the Note on the next page explains where to find the preference setting to do that).

In this chapter, you’ll find out how to produce statements, whether you accumulate charges over time or simply summarize your customers’ account status.

Generating Statements

Think of a statement as a report of all the charges and payments during the statement period that you then send to your customer. The dates you choose for the statement determine ...