Recurring Statements

Saasu is about helping you look professional, saving time and bringing forward cashflow. The Recurring Statement feature lets you set rules for sending statements automatically via email and apply these to either individuals Contacts or Contact Groups.

Use Recurring Statements to advise customers of their trading activity with you and help with debt collection.

TIP: Before your scheduled statement run anniversary date we recommend you reconcile your bank statements to apply payments received from customers to their invoices.

Create a Recurring Statement

  1. Contacts – Set your statements to run on either All Contacts or Contact Group.
  2. Send Method – Select from either:
    • Email Contact – have a statement emailed directly to the contact, or
    • Email Bulk Statement – creates a PDF file with all statements in it for easy printing to one of your email addresses.
  3. Layout – Choose from Contact Statement or Outstanding invoices layout. Change the Currency if emailing foreign currency customers in a Contact Group you have setup. You may have a statement run setup for AUD customers and one for USD customers as an example.
  4. Rules – Send statements to contacts that are:
    • Non-zero balance contacts – These are generally customers who are in your accounts receivable list.
    • Overdue by a certain number of days – This allows you to cut some slack and not chase people unless they are a overdue by a certain number of days
    • With any sales or payments in the statement period – This allows you to send a Contact a Statement if they have had any activity at all. Much like banks who send you a statements reflecting any activity that has occurred.
  5. Frequency – Set how often we email the statements and the day that you want to run this for.
  6. Statement Period – Set the period covered by the statement.
  7. Next Run – We let you know when the next email run will occur.

Ideally, you should set the frequency to run as close as possible to the statement period end-date. This way, you limit the gap and minimise the possibility of payment being received after the statement period but before the statement run date.

List Recurring Statements

  1. Go to Automate > Recurring Statements.
  2. You will see a list of the Statement runs and their description.
  3. Click the Add link in this screen to add a new Statement run.

Exclude Contacts from statement runs

  1. Go to Contacts and search for the Contact you wish to exclude from the Statement run.
  2. Open their Contact record by click their name.
  3. In the Communications section un-tick the ▢ Auto Send Statements option.
  4. Save this screen.

Note: Excluding customers by un-ticking the Auto Send Statements option works for the Email Contact method, not the Email Bulk Statement method.

My customer has paid but the statement says they haven’t

Sometimes you have some delay in your Recurring Statements to allow yourself some reconciliation time and to be sure you have your accounts balanced at month-end before issuing your Recurring Statements. This can create an issue where you may have set your statement period to be the previous month or quarter but since then your customer has made a payment and will now receive a statement suggesting they still have a payable account with you.

The key point for billing models like this is that you need to clearly identifying the statement period (which Saasu does for you) and secondly include a courtesy statement identifying this in some way. Businesses such as Telco’s and Credit Card companies handle this by including a note to the effect of “Please ignore the payment amount/request if you have made a payment since the Statement date”.

The gap in days between statement period end and date of issue if kept short will help. However, different businesses need differing amounts of time for month-end reconciliations and/or mailing time.

Keep a copy of Recurring Statements emailed

  1. Go to View > Templates and open the Statement Template you use by clicking on it.
  2. Click on the Email tab.
  3. Enter your email address in the BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) field.
  4. Save the screen.

A copy is then sent to the BCC-specified email account when the Recurring Statement email is sent to the customer.

NOTE: We suggest that you create an email address that you blind carbon copy all your emails to (eg statements@yourdomain.com). This email address will function as an audit trail/repository for outgoing statements.