Stopping Supply to a Customer Who Is Not Paying

A customer is well past their terms, the phone calls have stopped working, and you have decided that nobody in the group sells to them again until they pay. This guide is for the credit controller, or whoever decides that the group stops selling to a customer. By the end of this guide you will have put them on stop in BigLedger, told the order desk and the counter what they will see, closed the gaps the stop does not cover, and protected the stop from the one thing that can quietly remove it. It takes about fifteen minutes. The last section explains how to lift the stop cleanly when the money arrives.

BigLedger calls a stopped customer blacklisted. It is a flag on the customer record. A person sets it, and so does the Blacklist Overdue Customer job for customers over their credit limit, once your tenant schedules it, as we recommend. Every run of that job first clears every flag, the hand-set ones included (see Step 4).

The stop is checked live, at the moment somebody presses FINAL. Every sales document carries a copy of the customer taken when it was raised: name, address, terms. The stop does not use that copy. It reads the customer record as it stands at FINAL. So a draft keyed last week is refused today if you stop the customer this morning, and goes through the moment you lift the stop. The copy on the document plays no part either way.

Stopping a customer, at a glance

Put the customer on stop (Step 1, on this page).
Know exactly what the stop refuses, and what it lets through (Step 2).
Tell the people who will meet the refusal (Step 3).
Protect the stop from being wiped out (Step 4).
Lift the stop when the money arrives (Step 5).

The job runs across three pages: Step 1 is on this one, Steps 2 and 3 are on What the Stop Reaches, and Steps 4 and 5 are on Keep and Lift the Stop.

Meet GadgetSphere

GadgetSphere Distribution Sdn Bhd (GSD) has a corporate customer, a small systems integrator, who owes RM 64,800 across four invoices. The oldest is 97 days past due. Two promised payment dates have passed. The same customer has an account with the retail company (GS) for accessories and occasionally buys at the GS-KV-01 counter. Their purchasing officer also orders cables on account from the online store run by GSO. There is also a draft order at GSD for RM 18,900, which the salesperson keyed yesterday.

All three companies run in one BigLedger tenant, so the integrator is one customer record that all three share.

You have decided: no more goods, from any GadgetSphere company, until the 97-day invoice is paid.

Before you start

You can edit customers in Customer Maintenance. The stop lives there and nowhere else. The customer editors built into the order and invoice screens do not show it.
The decision is agreed with whoever owns the customer relationship: the sales manager, and for a large account the finance manager. A stop that surprises the salesperson becomes a stop that somebody lifts by lunchtime.
You have checked Chasing Overdue Accounts Step 4 and the debt is not disputed. Stopping supply to a customer who thinks your invoice is wrong usually delays the payment rather than bringing it forward.
You know every customer record this buyer trades under. The stop sits on one record and depends on the document naming that record. If the integrator was also set up a second time (a cash account at a branch, a variation of the name), that record keeps trading. Search the customer listing for the name, phone and registration number before you start, and see Duplicate Customers.

Setting a customer INACTIVE instead

The customer record also has a Status of ACTIVE or INACTIVE. An inactive customer disappears from the customer lists on the sales order, sales invoice, delivery order and receipt screens and from the till’s customer list, so nobody can start a new document for them there. It is not a stop at FINAL: the server never looks at the status, so a draft that already names the customer can still be finalised, and so can a document created by an integration or through the API. It is not touched by the Blacklist Overdue Customer job (Step 4).

Use INACTIVE for a relationship that is over and settled. For a customer who still owes you money, use the stop. Their receipts, credit notes and statements have to keep working, and an inactive customer cannot be picked on the receipt screen, so the payment you are chasing becomes harder to record, not easier.

Step 1: Put the customer on stop

The outcome: every sales order, sales invoice, cash bill and delivery order for this customer is refused at FINAL, in every company in the tenant.

Master Data > Customer Maintenance > Customer Listing > (the customer) > Main

Scroll to the credit block. There are two dropdowns, each with the values OK and BLACKLISTED:

Credit Limit Status. Use this when the reason is that they owe too much.
Credit Term Status. Use this when the reason is that they pay too late.

Either one stops the customer, and the effect at FINAL is the same. Choose the one that is true, because it changes what people see:

The refusal message names the reason: “Customer is blacklisted due to credit limit”, "…due to overdue credit term", or "…due to credit limit and credit term", each followed by “Transactions are not allowed for this customer.”
With Credit Term Status set, the sales invoice screen also shows a list of the customer’s invoices past their due date when somebody picks them, with how many days old each one is. Whoever picks up the phone to the customer has the overdue invoices in front of them.

For the integrator, the reason is lateness, so set Credit Term Status to BLACKLISTED and save. If the Blacklist Overdue Customer job is scheduled, its next run clears this flag and never sets Credit Term Status back. So that the stop lasts until they pay, also give them a credit limit of 0, as their Default Credit Limit: every run then re-flags them under Credit Limit Status while their net balance in a company is above zero (Step 4).

It is a stricter stop than the one you chose: it holds until the whole balance is paid, invoices not yet due included. And from the first run the refusal reads due to credit limit and the overdue-invoice list no longer appears, because the run clears Credit Term Status; re-apply that flag from your stop list after each run if the order desk needs the list. Put the customer on your stop list either way.

Then write the reason in the customer’s Alert Message on the same tab, so the banner says why as well as that:

ON STOP 24 Sep — RM 64,800 overdue, oldest 97 days. Credit control only.

Next: know what the stop refuses, and tell the people who will meet it.

Step 2: Know exactly what the stop refuses, and what it lets through

In brief: the stop refuses a sales order, sales invoice, cash bill (including at the POS counter) and outbound delivery order at FINAL (a till working offline is checked only when it reconnects and sends the bill, after the customer has left with the goods), and lets quotations, credit, debit and refund notes, sales returns, job sheets and receipts through. The online store does not look at the stop, so for a stopped customer who uses your store on account, also deactivate their credit limits in the store’s currency, except a zero limit kept as the lasting stop. The full table, every route a sale can take and how the stop sits beside the credit-limit check are in Step 2.

Step 4: Protect the stop from being wiped out

In brief: schedule the background job Blacklist Overdue Customer, daily and outside trading hours, so customers over their limit are stopped automatically. It does not run unless somebody gives it a clock in the Scheduler. Every run first removes every blacklist flag in the tenant, including every flag a person set by hand. For a stop that lasts until the customer pays, give them a credit limit of 0, which every run re-flags while their net balance is above zero; keep your own list of every customer you put on stop, and re-apply any hand-set stop after each run, before trading opens: Step 4 has the detail.

Step 5: Lift the stop when the money arrives

In brief: before you lift a stop, decide whether the customer comes back on the same terms. Lifting it is the dropdown back to OK on the customer record, and nothing is waiting to happen by itself: every draft still needs somebody to finalise it, a credit limit you deactivated for the online store needs re-activating, and nobody is told unless you send a note. Only a bill a till kept in its offline queue goes through on its own. Step 5 lists each.

What BigLedger will not do, and who does it instead

It will not…	So…
Stop a customer automatically for being late (the sweep catches lateness only against a term set for one company)	You decide and set the stop, from the weekly ageing (Chasing Overdue Accounts)
Keep a record of who set or lifted a stop, and why	Your stop list is that record. Keep it where your finance manager can read it
Warn at the order screen, the delivery order screen or the till before FINAL, or an offline till before it syncs	You tell the people involved, as in Step 3; the alert message warns the order desk, and a branch that runs offline keeps the stop list at the counter
Check the stop at the online store’s checkout	You deactivate their credit limit in the store’s currency (Step 2), and the store’s order team knows the customer is on stop
Stop a customer at one company and not the others in the same tenant	The branches apply your walk-in policy for cash sales (Step 3). The status boxes on the customer’s Company tab do not do it
Stop quotations, credit notes, returns or job sheets	You tell the teams that raise them
Keep a hand-set stop through a run of the sweep job	You give the customer a credit limit of 0, which every run re-flags while their net balance is above zero, or re-apply the stop from your stop list after each run; anyone running the job by hand tells you first

What success looks like

Three checks, one minute, and a fourth if the customer uses your online store:

Pick the customer on a new sales invoice. The banner shows your alert message and “This account is blacklisted…”. With Credit Term Status set, the overdue-invoice list appears below it.
Press FINAL on a draft order for them (the one in the listing, or a one-line test). It is refused with the reason you chose.
The customer is on your stop list with a date, a reason and the name of whoever agreed.
Open the customer’s credit limits. None is active in the online store’s currency except a zero limit kept as the lasting stop, so the store gives them no credit while their net balance is above zero.

Common mistakes

Setting the stop and telling nobody. The order desk finds out when FINAL fails, keys the order under another customer record “to get it out”, and the stop now protects nothing. Step 3 is not optional.

Stopping a customer whose invoice is disputed. They are not refusing to pay. They are refusing to pay that. Settle the dispute first, with a credit note if you were wrong, and the stop is often unnecessary.

Running Blacklist Overdue Customer to “refresh” the stops. It removes every stop you set by hand, and re-adds only customers who are over their limit in a single company, or past a payment term set for that company. Never run it without your stop list in hand. On its schedule it does the same every time, which is why the list is re-applied after each run.

Expecting the stop to cover the online store. It does not. A finalised sales order for the stopped customer appears in the sales order listing, raised by the store at checkout. Deactivate their credit limit in the store’s currency when you set the stop, keeping only a zero limit you attached as the lasting stop (Step 2).

Lifting the stop and expecting orders to flow. Nothing was queued except a till’s offline bills. Every draft waits for a person to finalise it.