Chasing Overdue: Statements, Escalation, Disputes

Chasing Overdue Accounts: Send Statements, Escalate on a Ladder, and Settle Disputes

Steps 3 to 5 of Chasing Overdue Accounts: send statements that reach the customer’s accounts payable team, escalate on a ladder you agreed in advance, and take disputed invoices off the collections list. It follows Step 2, where every overdue account got a next action and a date.

The running example: GadgetSphere Distribution (GSD) has about 180 corporate customers on account, most on Net 30, and shares many of them with the retail company (GS). On a typical Monday, roughly RM 310,000 of GSD’s RM 1.4 million outstanding is past its due date.

Apply receipts to invoices first: a statement shows an invoice whose payment was never applied as unpaid (Before you start). And check that each credit customer has an e-mail address on their record that reaches their accounts payable team, not their buyer: a statement goes to the addresses stored there.

Step 3: send statements that arrive.
Step 4: escalate on a ladder you wrote down in advance.
Step 5: deal with disputes separately.

Step 3: Send statements that arrive

The outcome: every credit customer receives a statement each month, at an address that reaches their accounts payable team.

Statement of Account > Statement Of Account Runs > +

Before the first run, fix the one thing that silently leaves customers out. A statement run can only choose customers by customer category or by sales agent. There is no “all customers” option. A customer with no category, and no default sales agent in the selection, is never on the run.

So give every credit customer a category you control. GadgetSphere uses one called Monthly statement. Then create the run:

Statement Type: Aging for a collections statement.
Run Type: Email.
Companies: all the companies that sell on credit. The run makes one statement per company per customer, so a customer who owes both GSD and GS gets two statements, each from the right company.
Customer Category: Monthly statement.
Recipient check boxes: choose which of the customer’s stored addresses to use (main e-mail, address contacts, staff contacts, login e-mails). All five start ticked. If the buyer’s address is stored as a contact, the statement goes to them too.
Email All Outstanding Docs: tick this for customers who always say “please resend the invoice”. It attaches every open document.

Press Run, then open the Lines tab. On a run you create yourself, Run renders the statements and sends nothing yet: press EMAIL ALL once the run is complete, and a line with no sent date afterwards is a statement that has not gone. Before that, count the lines against your list of credit customers. A customer missing from the lines has no category or no finalised document for that company. Also check the recipients on each line: an invalid e-mail address is dropped without any message, so a line with no recipient is a statement nobody received.

A scheduled run is a draft until someone presses RUN, and then it sends at once. The applet also offers scheduled, recurring runs (Statement Of Account Events). Know four things before you rely on one:

A run is made from an event only if your administrator has scheduled the statement job for your tenant in the Scheduler. When it is, the run is made, with its lines, the next time that job runs after the event’s period has ended (it looks back seven days), and then it waits: nothing renders or sends it until somebody opens it and presses RUN.
On an e-mail run made from an event, RUN renders and e-mails every statement straight away. There is no EMAIL ALL step to review first, so open its Lines tab and check the recipients before you press RUN.
A run made from an event also lists purchase invoices, purchase returns and goods received notes, so a customer who is also your supplier gets a statement that nets the two sides. Create those customers’ runs by hand.
On the screens served today (checked 7 October 2026), editing a saved event stops it from ever running, without a message: its Run Status goes blank. Delete the event and create it again instead.

For the monthly collections statement, the hand-made run above remains the simplest routine: you choose the moment, you count the lines, and you press EMAIL ALL.

Step 4: Escalate on a ladder you wrote down in advance

The outcome: the same account never sits at the same step for two weeks, and the step after that is already agreed.

BigLedger has no reminder letters and no automatic escalation, so the ladder is yours. Write it once, agree it with the finance manager and the sales manager, and follow it. GadgetSphere’s is:

Days past due	Action	Who
1–14	E-mail with the invoice and the statement	Credit controller
15–30	Phone call to their accounts payable team; promise logged	Credit controller
31–45	Salesperson calls the buyer; new orders held until a promise is kept (Deciding on Credit)	Salesperson, briefed by credit control
46–60	Formal letter; the customer is warned of a stop	Credit controller, signed by the finance manager
Over 60	Stop supply (Stopping Supply to a Customer)	Credit controller, agreed with the finance manager
Over 90	Letter of demand, or referral to a collection agent or lawyer	Finance manager

Charging interest on late payment. If your terms and conditions allow a late-payment charge, a Sales Debit Note is the document that adds it to the customer’s account. It charges the customer more, is not blocked for a stopped customer, and appears on the ageing and the statement like any other document. It is also an e-invoice document, so it goes to LHDN like an invoice would. Charging it is a commercial decision, and one the finance manager should make case by case. See Sales Debit Note.

Step 5: Deal with disputes separately

The outcome: disputed money is not mixed in with late money, and it gets a decision.

When a customer says “we are not paying that because…”, the invoice is disputed. Chasing it harder does not help. Take it off the collections list and put it on a disputes list with the reason, then settle it:

You were wrong (wrong price, short delivery, damaged goods): raise a credit note or a sales return and apply it to the invoice. Returns and Exchanges explains which to use.
The customer is wrong: send the proof (the signed delivery document, the agreed quotation) and put the invoice back on the collections list with a date.

A dispute that is more than 30 days old needs a decision from the finance manager.

What success looks like for this part

Every credit customer is on a line of this month’s statement run, each line has a recipient, and each line has a sent date (after EMAIL ALL on a run you created, or after RUN on an e-mail run made from an event) and none came back undelivered. No account sits at the same step of your ladder two weeks running. Every disputed invoice is on the disputes list with its reason, and any dispute more than 30 days old has a decision from the finance manager.

Common mistakes in this part

Pressing RUN on a scheduled statement run without reading it first. A run made from an event waits for someone to press RUN, and on an e-mail run that one press sends every statement, purchase documents included for customers who are also suppliers. Check its Lines tab first, or create the run by hand each month and count the lines.

Assuming every customer is on the statement run. Only customers in the selected categories, or with the selected sales agents, are included. A new customer with no category never gets a statement until somebody gives them one.

Mixing disputes with late payers. A disputed invoice aged 70 days sitting next to three genuinely late ones hides both problems. Keep two lists.

The mistakes that belong to the whole routine are on the guide’s first page.