This guide will walk you through the process of generating, printing, and emailing client statements in Xero. Sending statements provides your clients with a consolidated view of their transactions, helping them reconcile their records and serving as a clear, professional reminder for outstanding payments. Mastering this process is crucial as it helps maintain transparent financial communication with clients, prompts timely payments, and ensures accurate record-keeping, all of which contribute significantly to your business's financial health and cash flow.
Overview
Client statements are vital tools for financial communication. In Xero, they compile a client's financial activity, giving them a clear overview of what they've paid, what they owe, and any credits they hold. This process relies on accurate data syncing from Vital (for service transactions) and Lightspeed (for retail transactions) to Xero. Ensuring data integrity across these platforms before sending statements is key to avoiding discrepancies and client queries.
Optimise Your Workflow
- Your Bank Reconciliation is up to date, or atleast reconciled up to the client statement end date. Inaccuracies here can lead to incorrect outstanding balances.
- You have reviewed the Aged Receivables (AR) report and apply any credit balances (e.g., prepayments, overpayments, credit notes) where possible. This ensures the statement accurately reflects the net amount owed. See guide: Managing Client Credits Across the Evolution Platform
- You have checked any invoice syncing errors in Vital and Lightspeed. If invoices fail to sync, it will lead to inconsistencies on statements: User the Cross-stack Inspector Tool to help identify and rectify discrepancies.
- That invoices are voided correctly across all three systems (Vital, LightSpeed and Xero) if applicable. Failing to do so can lead to statement errors and reconciliation issues.
Prepayments on Outstansding Statements: Prepayments do not show on 'outstanding statements' and are not deducted from the total balance until they are formally applied to an invoice in Xero. They only show on activity statements and are not deducted from the total balance on the statement until they are applied to an invoice.
For clearer client statements, it is recommended to use the 'overpayment' feature in Xero for funds received in advance, as overpayments are included in the total balance on an activity statement. Refer to the guide: Options for Recording a Client Prepayment or Deposit Without an Invoice
Retail store credit Visibility: Retail store credit is not visible on a client's account in Xero and, consequently, will not appear on client statements. This is a known system limitation, for more information refer to: Managing Client Credits Across the Evolution Platform.
Xero offers two main types of client statements:
- Activity statements: These provide a comprehensive view of all financial activity for a client within a specified date range, including sales invoices, payments received, credit notes, prepayments, and overpayments.
- Outstanding statements: These only display what is currently owed by the customer as of a specific date. They do not show prepayments or transactions that have been fully paid or credited.
- You must have standard or Adviser user permissions in Xero.
- Your client records in Vital should be accurate and up-to-date, as clients created in Vital sync in real-time to LightSpeed and then influence Xero's data.
- Ensure that all invoices are correctly processed in either Vital (for service transactions) or LightSpeed (for retail transactions) and have synced to Xero.
- Confirm that all steps in the One Poolwerx Way have been performed.
Step by step instructions
- Navigate to Contacts > Customers.
- Click the contact’s name for whom you want to view the statement.
- At the top right corner of the screen, click the Ellipses menu (3 dots in a vertical line).
- Select Send Statements
- Confirm the statement type aligns with your needs and adjust the date range as needed.
- Click Update.
- The statement will refresh to display the selected information.
- Click Print PDF
- Select the branding theme "Poolwerx Branding" to ensure your bank details appear on correctly on the statement.
- Click OK.
- Click Email.
- Review fields in the Send Statement window, amend if needed:
- To (Email): This pre-populates if an email exists on the contact's record.
Note: If you change an email address here, it does not update in the contact’s record. You need to update the contact's record to to change an existing email address permanently. - From, Reply to: This is the name and email address that appears as the sender and receives replies.Email template: Select an appropriate email template from the list.
- Subject: Xero populates this from the selected template; you can edit it for clarity.
- Branding: Select the Poolwerx Branding to ensure your bank details show correctly.
- Message: Xero populates this from the selected template; you can edit it.
- Send me a copy: Select this checkbox if you wish to receive a copy of the emailed statement for your records.
- Click Send.
- Navigate to Contacts > Customers.
- At the top right corner of the screen, click the Ellipses menu (3 dots in a vertical line).
- Select Send Statements
- Confirm the statement type aligns with your needs and adjust the date range as needed.
- Click Update.
- Select the checkbox for each customer for whom you want to print a statement.
- Click Print.
- Select the branding theme 'Poolwerx Branding' to apply to the statements,
- Click OK.
- Click Email.
- Review fields in the Send Statement window, amend if needed:
- To (Email): This pre-populates if an email exists on the contact's record.
Note: If you change an email address here, it does not update in the contact’s record. You need to update the contact's record to to change an existing email address permanently. - From, Reply to: This is the name and email address that appears as the sender and receives replies.Email template: Select an appropriate email template from the list.
- Subject: Xero populates this from the selected template; you can edit it for clarity.
- Branding: Select the Poolwerx Branding to ensure your bank details show correctly.
- Message: Xero populates this from the selected template; you can edit it.
- Send me a copy: Select this checkbox if you wish to receive a copy of the emailed statement for your records.
- Click Send.
Why don't prepayments show on my customer's outstanding statement?
Prepayments only show on activity statements in Xero. They are not deducted from the total balance on the statement as Xero does not account for a prepayment in accounts receivable until its formally applied to an invoice. We recommend using the 'overpayment' feature instead for funds received in advance to ensure they are reflected in statements. Refer to: Options for Recording a Client Prepayment or Deposit Without an Invoice
Why don't the account balances in Xero and Lightspeed match?
This is a known system limitation due to credits, prepayments and overpayments not being reflected in LightSpeed. Additionally, retail store credit is not visible in Xero on client accounts. This can lead to discrepancies when comparing reports. Refer to: Managing Client Credits Across the Evolution Platform
Related Guides & Next Steps
What's next? If you have not already done so, set up invoice reminders to automatically follow up any overdue amounts. Remember to mark invoices as 'sent' in Xero to trigger these reminders. Refer to: Setup the automated Invoice Reminders feature
See Also: