Understanding Credit and Collection Date Patterns
Before you can review customer account activity that occurred within a specific period, you must set up credit and collection date patterns. Date patterns represent the beginning date for the fiscal year and the ending date for each period in that year. The system uses the date patterns that you specify to process and display statistical information. For example, the system uses date patterns to calculate the:
Total amount invoiced for a customer within a given period.
Amount and number of invoices that were paid late.
Amount and date of a customer's high balance.
Number of days that sales are outstanding (DSO).
Aging information.
You must set up credit and collection date patterns for each year in which you have invoices and receipts on the system, and for the next fiscal year.
Date patterns provide flexibility and the ability to specify different periods for special reporting needs. You can set up an unlimited number of date patterns. For example, you might set up 52 periods to report a customer's status on a weekly basis, or you might want to review information based on a calendar year rather than a fiscal year.
If you do not specify a company when setting up credit and collections date patterns for a customer, the system uses the default information for company 00000 from the credit and collection date patterns. You must set up a date pattern for company 00000. Do not set up date patterns for each company. Instead, set up date patterns for those companies that have unique reporting requirements.
The system uses the credit and collection date patterns only when you run the Statistics History Update program (R03B16A). All other accounts receivable programs use the date patterns established for the company. The system stores credit and collection date patterns in the Credit/Collection Date Pattern table (F03B08).
Do not change credit and collection date patterns after running the Statistics History Update program. You should make changes to date patterns only when you can run the Statistical Purge Repost program (R03B163) to reset all of the data in the A/R Statistical History (F03B16) and the A/R Statistical Summary (F03B16S) tables.