Prepare Dunning Letters

Form ID: (AR521000)

On this form, you can generate dunning letters (letters of payment collection) for customers that have unpaid and overdue invoices. The intervals between successive dunning letters of different levels are defined on the Dunning tab of the Accounts Receivable Preferences (AR101000) form. After you generate dunning letters by using the current form, you can review and process them further on the Print/Release Dunning Letters (AR522000) form. For details on the settings involved, see Dunning Process Setup: General Information.

The form is available if the Dunning Letter Management feature is enabled on the Enable/Disable Features (CS100000) form.

Form Toolbar

The form toolbar includes standard and form-specific buttons and commands. For the list of standard buttons, see Form Toolbar and More Menu. The form-specific commands are listed in the following table.

Button Description
Process Initiates the process of generating dunning letters for the selected records—those for which you have selected the unlabeled check boxes in the table.
Process All Initiates the process of generating dunning letters for all the records in the table.

Selection Area

In this area, you can make selections to narrow the list of records.

Element Description
Company

The company for which dunning letters should be prepared.

This box is filled in by default with the company of the branch to which you are signed in. You can select another company in this box. (Company groups and branches are not shown.)

This box appears on the form instead of the Company/Branch box if on the Accounts Receivable Preferences (AR101000) form, Consolidated for Company is selected in the Prepare Dunning Letters box.

Company/Branch

The branch, company, or company group for which dunning letters should be prepared.

This box is filled in by default with the branch to which you are signed in. You can select a company group, company, or branch in this box.

This box appears on the form instead of the Company box if on the General tab of the Accounts Receivable Preferences (AR101000) form, For Each Branch is selected in the Prepare Dunning Letters box.

Customer Class

The customer class for which you want to display data. You can select a particular customer class to view only customers of the class that have overdue balances, or leave the box blank to view all customers with overdue balances.

The list of classes may be limited based on the roles assigned to the user account to which you are signed in if the Customer and Vendor Visibility Restriction feature is enabled on the Enable/Disable Features (CS100000) form. With the feature enabled, the Restrict Visibility To box appears on the General tab of the Customer Classes (AR201000) form. You can select a customer class if one of the following is true:
  • The Restrict Visibility To box is empty for the customer class—that is, the visibility of the customer class is not restricted.
  • A branch, company, or company group is specified in the Restrict Visibility To box for the customer class, and your user account is assigned to the role specified in the Access Role box of the Configuration Settings section of one of the following: the Branch Details tab of Branches (CS102000) form for the branch, or the Company Details tab of the Companies (CS101500) form for the company or a company within the company group.
Dunning Letter Date The date to be specified on the generated letters.
Add Coming-Due Invoices

A check box that you select to include coming-due invoices in the dunning letters.

By default, the state of this check box is the same as the state of the Add Coming-Due Invoices check box on the Dunning tab (Dunning Letter Settings section) of the Accounts Receivable Preferences (AR101000) form.

Add Open Payments and Credit Memos

A check box that you select to include AR payments and credit memos with the Open status in the dunning letters.

By default, the state of this check box is the same as the state of the Add Open Payments and Credit Memos check box on the Dunning tab (Dunning Letter Settings section) of the Accounts Receivable Preferences (AR101000) form.

Include

The documents to be included in the dunning letter preparation process.

Select one of the following option buttons:

  • All Overdue Documents (default): The dunning letter preparation process includes all the overdue documents of the customer.
  • Dunning Letter Level: The dunning letter preparation process includes those overdue documents whose level is in the range defined by the From and To values.

This group of option buttons is displayed if Dunning Process is set to By Document on the Dunning tab of the Accounts Receivable Preferences (AR101000) form.

From

The starting level of the range.

This box is available if the Dunning Letter Level option button is selected.

To

The ending level of the range.

This box is available if the Dunning Letter Level option is selected.

If the Customer Class box is empty and the Dunning Letter Level option button is selected, the setting in this box is used as the maximum dunning level in all customer classes when the dunning letters are prepared.

If a customer class is selected, the setting in this box is used as the maximum dunning level in the selected customer class when the dunning letters are prepared.

Table

The table contents depends on the option selected in the Dunning Process box on the Dunning tab of the Accounts Receivable Preferences (AR101000) form:

  • By Customer: The table lists the customer accounts that have at least one overdue document.
  • By Document: The table lists the overdue documents grouped by customer and by document dunning level. For instance, if a customer account has two overdue documents with different levels, the system will display two rows in the table. If a customer account has two documents with the same level, the system will group the documents into one row.

If the Parent-Child Customer Relationship feature is enabled on the Enable/Disable Features (CS100000) form, in the table, a single row for a parent and its child customers is shown with the customer class of the parent customer and the balances and number of documents totaled from the documents of all these customers. When the system processes the documents of these customers, to populate the table and create dunning letters, the system uses the dunning levels configured for the customer class of the parent customer. Thus, the dunning levels configured for the child customers will be ignored. When one of these dunning letters is released, the system applies the dunning fee from the customer class of the parent customer.

The table toolbar includes only standard buttons. For the list of standard buttons, see Table Toolbar.

Column Description
Included An unlabeled check box you that select if you want to generate a dunning letter for this customer.
Customer Class The customer class of the customer.
Customer The identifier of the customer.
Customer Name The name of the customer.
Earliest Due Date The due date of the oldest overdue invoice of the customer.
Branch

The branch on behalf of which the letter will be sent.

If one consolidated letter is generated for all branches, the branch selected as the letter sender on the General tab of the Accounts Receivable Preferences (AR101000) form is shown.

Overdue Balance The overdue amount that is due from the customer (sum of open invoices, overdue charges, and debit memos).
Number of Overdue Documents The number of overdue documents of the customer for which a dunning letter of the current level (by customer or by document) has not been prepared yet.
Customer Balance The total balance of all open documents of the customer including the total balance of prepayments.
Number of Documents The number of overdue and other unpaid documents of the customer for which a dunning letters of the current level (by customer or by document) has not been prepared yet.
Dunning Letter Level The level of the dunning letter to be generated for the customer.
Currency

The currency in which the dunning letter will be generated. This is the base currency of the tenant to which the current user is signed in.

The column is visible on the form if the Multicurrency Accounting feature is enabled on the Enable/Disable Features (CS100000) form.

If the Multiple Base Currencies feature is enabled, this column shows the base currency of the branch shown in the Branch column. The option selected in the Prepare Dunning Letters box on the Accounts Receivable Preferences (AR101000) form determines what this branch is as follows:

  • If For Each Branch is selected, the originating branch of the customer documents
  • If Consolidated for Company is selected, the dunning letter branch specified on the Companies (CS101500) form
Last Dunning Letter Date The date of the previous dunning letter, if any has been generated.