Tracking Customer Balances at the GL Level

Addsworth Accounting lets you track who owes you by tagging journal lines with a customer. Tagged lines drive the AR by Customer report, which groups your Accounts Receivable activity by counterparty so you can see each customer's net receivable position.

Who is this for?

Solo accountants, bookkeepers and small-business owners who need to see what each customer owes. Addsworth Accounting totals the balances by customer from tagged journal lines. It does not issue documents and does not match payments to specific sales.

Prerequisites

• A company created in Addsworth Accounting (see Getting Started with Addsworth Accounting).
• An AR control account in your Chart of Accounts, the GL account where you record amounts owed to you (see Setting Up Your Chart of Accounts).

What Customer Tracking Provides

Customer tracking gives you GL-level totals per customer; it does not produce documents. You get:

• A Customer record (name, contact details, province or territory, tax-exempt flag).
• An optional customer tag on a journal line.
• The AR by Customer report (period activity, GL-grouped).
• CSV or JSON import of the customer list.

Working with foreign-currency customers. Addsworth Accounting records every transaction in Canadian dollars. If a customer pays in a foreign currency, decide on the CAD equivalent at the time of the transaction (for example, using your bank's posted rate) and enter that CAD amount. To record a gain or loss arising from a later settlement, post a manual journal entry against the appropriate account.

Step 1: Designate Your AR Control Account

An AR control account is the asset account that holds the total amount your customers owe you. In a typical Canadian SME chart that is account 1100, Accounts Receivable, but you can use any asset account. A company has one active AR control account. The Subledger Role section shows only on an asset account.

1. Open Chart of Accounts from the sidebar.
2. Open the account you want to use as your AR control account (or add a new one).
3. In the Subledger Role section of the editor, turn on AR Control Account.
4. Tap Save.

Tip: An account can be either an AR control account or an AP control account, but not both. The toggles automatically clear each other when you select one.

If you import your Chart of Accounts from CSV or JSON, you can flag AR control accounts directly in the file using the isARControlAccount column or field. The bundled CoA template demonstrates the flag on the Accounts Receivable row.

Step 2: Add Customers

1. Open Settings → Counterparties → Customers.
2. Tap the + button to add a new customer.
3. Enter the Name (required) and any optional contact details.
4. Optionally choose the customer's Province/Territory. When you pick this customer in a journal's sales tax panel, it fills the place of supply.
5. Tap Add.

Import on your Mac.

Use Settings → Import / Export Data → Customers & Vendors → Manage Customers & Vendors… Import a CSV or JSON file. A row with the name of an existing customer, archived or not, updates that customer. Match-on-name lookups are case-insensitive.

Archiving a customer

A customer you no longer trade with is archived rather than deleted, so the entries tagged with it stay readable. An archived customer is hidden from the Customers list and from every customer picker; its transactions stay on the books.

• Right-click or long-press a row and choose Archive. A customer with no linked entries is deleted instead.
• Turn on Show Archived in the toolbar to list archived records beside the live ones. They are drawn in secondary text and still open their editor.
• To bring one back, choose Unarchive on the row, or open its editor and turn Active back on.

Step 3: Tag Journal Lines with a Customer

Tag lines on your Mac. A companion shows the tag and does not change it.

Customer tagging is purely optional, and only makes sense on lines posted to an AR control account.

1. Create or open a journal entry (see Creating Journal Entries).
2. Add a line and select your AR control account in the GL Account field.
3. A Customer picker appears under that line. Choose a customer, or None. Add a new customer first in Settings → Counterparties → Customers.
4. Enter the debit or credit amount as usual, then save or post the journal.

You can also choose the customer once in the Counterparty & Place of Supply panel above the lines. Each untagged AR control line then takes that customer.

On the Mac, you can change the customer of a posted journal that is not reversed. Tap Save Counterparty.

Tip: A line cannot be tagged with both a customer and a vendor, the picker switches based on the GL account's subledger role. If you tag a line and later remove the AR-control flag from the GL account, the tag remains on the data but the AR by Customer report no longer surfaces it.

Step 4: Read the AR by Customer Report

1. Open Reports from the sidebar.
2. Select the AR by Customer report.
3. Choose your reporting period and run the report.

The report shows one row per customer with the net amount posted to your AR control account in the period. Draft journals are not counted. The last line is Total Receivable Activity. Lines posted to AR control accounts that you did not tag with a customer are aggregated into an (Unassigned) bucket. Inactive customers appear with an (inactive) suffix.

The report total ties exactly to the period activity of the AR control account on your Trial Balance for the same date range, this is your reconciliation check.

What this report is not: It is not an aged-AR report. It does not age balances.

Common Workflows

Recording a sale on credit

• Debit your AR control account, tagged with the customer.
• Credit a revenue account.
• Apply your sales tax code on the revenue line; the AR-control line itself is tax-free.
• Enter the AR debit as the total the customer owes, tax included. The editor adds the tax line under the revenue line, and the journal balances when the totals are equal.

Recording a customer payment

• Debit your bank account.
• Credit the AR control account, tagged with the same customer.

The two journals net to zero for that customer once both are posted within the same reporting period.

Writing off a bad debt: on the Mac, right-click a posted Sales Journal that debits the AR control account for one customer, with tax collected, and choose Write Off Bad Debt…. Right-click a posted write-off to choose Record Recovery…. See GST/HST Tracking & Reporting for the entries they make.

What's Next

• Tracking Vendor Balances at the GL Level: Mirror these steps for amounts you owe.
• Setting Up Your Chart of Accounts: Add additional control accounts or restructure your AR section.
• Creating Journal Entries: Master the broader journal workflow.
• Running Financial Reports: Cross-check the AR by Customer total against your Trial Balance.
• Importing Data: Chart of Accounts & Opening Balances: Bulk-load customers and CoA control flags.