Customer Account Records

If you are planning on offering credit to your customers you will need to maintain customer account records to track sales made to those customers and any payments received against the account.

If you haven't already, it might be a good idea to look into what is involved in offering credit to your customers before you jump right in.

How to Record Credit Customer Transactions

Before we start download and print this customer account form.

You should prepare one of these forms for each of the customers that you have offered a credit account to.

To keep them all organized, I keep mine filed alphabetically in a ring binder.

Write the name and contact details of your customer in the spaces provided of the form. Make a note of the credit limit for the customer so that you check whether or not each transaction is taking them over the limit.

If you are using a electronic bookkeeping system, make a note of the account number assigned to this customer by your software. Now you are ready to begin recording your customer's transactions.

What to do When Your Customer Buys Something

When your customer makes a purchase on credit, enter the transaction date, invoice number and invoice amount on the form. You can use a pre-printed carbon book for handwriting your invoices if you are not using an electronic system. Give the customer the top copy and the second copy stays in the invoice book as your record of the sale. You can buy one of these invoice books at your local office supplies or stationery store.

It is also a good idea to make a note of the credit terms for each transaction. That way you can keep an eye on whether or not your customer has paid the invoice by the agreed date.

What To Do When Your Customer Pays on an Invoice

When you receive a payment from a customer, you scan the form to locate the record for the original invoice and enter the details of the payment in the date paid and amount paid columns. Ideally, your customer will pay the full amount on the invoice and the invoice balance will be zero.

What's Next?

Now that you know all about managing your customer account records, you might like to check out some other basic bookkeeping tasks.

• Recording your expenses,
• Recording your sales,
• Managing your asset records,
• Recording your petty cash transactions,
• Doing a Bank Reconciliation, and
• Tracking your creditor accounts.

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