How To Set Up Customer Statements in QuickBooks Online
Tim is a Certified QuickBooks Time (formerly TSheets) Pro, QuickBooks ProAdvisor, and CPA with 25 years of experience. He brings his expertise to Fit Small Business’s accounting content.
Mark has researched and reviewed accounting software at Fit Small Business since 2019 and has developed an extensive knowledge of accounting software features and how unique business needs determine the best accounting software.
This article is part of a larger series on Accounting Software.
Our tutorial covers how to set up a customer statement in QuickBooks Online. We’ll also show you how to customize your QuickBooks statements by adjusting the format and adding an aging table to the bottom of your statement.
This free tutorial is part of our series of Free QuickBooks Tutorials, designed to help you learn how to use QuickBooks Online, our top-recommended small business accounting software. If you don’t have your QuickBooks account yet, you have the choice of a 30-day free trial or 50% off for three months.
You can follow along on your own computer as you watch the video below or read through the step-by-step instructions that follow.
Step 1: Navigate To Customers Under Sales
From your company dashboard, click on Sales in the left menu bar, and then select Customers from the drop-down menu, as shown below.
Select Customers under the Sales menu
Step 2: Select a Customer for Who You Want to Create a Statement For
A window displaying your customer list and their invoice and payment activities appears. From here, select the recipient of your customer statement by clicking on the name. You may choose multiple customers to receive statements by clicking on the checkbox before their name.
Select a recipient of your statement
Step 3: Create the Statement
After clicking on the customer, a list of all payments and outstanding invoices appears. From here, you’ll see which invoices are overdue and when they’re due instantly. To create a statement, click on the New transaction menu on the top right of the screen, and select Statement from the drop-down list.
Select Statement under New transaction
Step 3.1: Choose the Customer Statement Type
From the Create statements window, choose from three different types of statements in QuickBooks Online:
- Balance forward: This shows 1) all invoices and payments with outstanding balances for a particular date range that you choose, and 2) the amount your customer owed prior to the date range as the balance forward at the top of the statement.
- Open item: This document displays all open, unpaid invoices from the last 365 days.
- Transaction statement: A transaction statement displays the total amounts billed and received for every transaction within the period you specify, without showing any balance forward amount and amount due.
After selecting the type of statement, fill in the statement date and specify the date range for the statements you wish to create. You may leave the statement date as-is to use the current date.
Click Apply to continue.
Choose a statement type in QuickBooks Online
Step 3.2: Review the Recipient’s Email Address
Make sure that the email address is accurate. This will be populated based on the contact information you entered automatically, but it won’t hurt to double-check.
Review the email address of the recipient of your statement
Step 3.3: Click Save, Save and Send, or Print Preview.
After filling in all the sections, click on Save or Save and Send. If you want to see how your statement looks when printed, select Print Preview.
Step 4: Customize Your Statement
You can adjust the level of details you set in your customer statement from your company dashboard Account and settings. This can be executed in the following steps:
Step 4.1: Navigate To Sales Under Account and Settings
Click on the gear icon on the top right of your company dashboard, select Account and settings, and click on Sales.
Navigate to Sales under Account and Settings
Step 4.2: Customize Your QuickBooks Statements
Scroll down to the Statements section to reveal three options available for QuickBooks statements, which allow you to adjust the level of detail provided in the document.
Options to customize your statements
Tip: You don’t have to work on a single tab and go back and forth between your preview template and your Customize statement screen to track the changes you make. You may want to open a new tab by right-clicking on the Dashboard menu and selecting Open in New Tab.
A. List each transaction as a single line
If you select this option, the statement will only show a summary of the invoice, including the invoice date, number, and amount. Here’s an example of a statement from our fictitious company, Paul’s Plumbing, with a summary of the invoices.
QuickBooks customer statement with a single line
The colors and logos in the statement come from the master sales form that you customized in our tutorial on How to Customize Invoices.
B. List each transaction including all detail lines
This option will provide a complete recap of the transaction. Each line item on an invoice will be summarized and shown separately. This is what a QuickBooks customer statement looks like when all detail lines are included:
QuickBooks customer statement with all detail lines
The decision to summarize invoices (option 1) or provide detail (option 2) is a personal preference. However, we recommend summarizing the invoices if the customer has already received a detailed invoice.
C. Show aging table at the bottom of the statement
By selecting this option, a summarized accounts receivable (A/R) aging report will print at the bottom of the statement showing any amounts that are past due. We recommend showing this table to alert customers of any overdue amounts. The aging table for our sample invoice looks like this:
Aging Table at the bottom of a QuickBooks customer statement
Click the green Save button once you have selected your statement options.
The Importance of Setting Up QuickBooks Customer Statements
Statements provide a summary of goods and services sold to the customer during the statement period, grouped by invoice. If a customer pays their invoices promptly, then there’s probably no need to send a statement. However, for customers that are slow to pay, statements are a great way to remind them of their outstanding invoices.
Wrap Up
You now know how to set up a customer statement in QuickBooks Online. The next tutorial in our QuickBooks Online Training Course is How to Set Up Expenses in QuickBooks Online, which covers your available options for tracking and billing expenses to customers and the level of expense detail to provide on expense and purchase forms.
