About
Finaloop automatically tracks customer balances throughout the entire accounts receivable (AR) lifecycle.
Each customer has a dedicated Customer Ledger that combines invoices, payments, refunds, adjustments, and other customer-related activity into a single view. This makes it easy to understand:
What a customer owes
Why a balance exists
How the balance has changed over time
Whether invoices have been collected
As customer activity changes, Finaloop automatically keeps each customer's balance up to date.
This article explains how customer balances and the Customers page work. For wider information about how B2B sales are recorded in Finaloop, see Wholesale, retail, and other B2B sales.
1. What makes up a customer's balance
A customer's balance reflects every event that affects what they owe your business.
It's calculated from:
Invoices (increase the balance)
Customer payments (decrease the balance)
Refunds and credits (increase or decrease the balance)
Customer adjustments (increase or decrease the balance)
Every activity appears in the Customer Ledger, creating a complete audit trail of how the customer's balance was calculated.
Customer balances are recalculated whenever new activity is recorded. As a result, any of the items above may affect current or historical balances, depending on the transaction date, including when:
An invoice is created, edited, or deleted
A bank transaction is classified as an invoice payment, sales deposit, or another sales-related classification for that customer
A refund is issued
A customer adjustment is added, edited, or deleted
2. Managing your B2B customer accounts in Finaloop
To view your customer balances, navigate to Customers from the main navigation menu and select Customer balances.
The Customers page is designed for B2B and wholesale customers and includes every customer created from:
Invoices created or synced into Finaloop
Transactions classified as an invoice payment, sales deposit, or another related sales classification with a specific customer identified
Marketplace customers and individual Shopify order data is not included.
Use this page to:
Track who owes you money
Monitor collections
Analyze your receivables
Review customer sales history
A. Customer overview page
The Customer overview page provides a summary of balances and sales across all of your B2B customers.
You can:
Select a reporting period
Filter by source
Filter by balance or sales amount
Include or hide customers with zero balances
Sales tab
Sales tab
The Sales tab shows total sales generated by each customer during the selected reporting period, whether or not they currently have an outstanding balance.
For each customer you'll see:
Customer: The name of the customer
Source: Where the sales were generated or synced from
Sales: Total sales earned during the selected time period
Summary metrics at the top of the page include:
Total sales
Sales count
Average sales per customer
These metrics help you understand the overall health of your wholesale business.
Balances tab
Balances tab
The Balances tab shows all wholesale and B2B customers with open balances.
For each customer, you’ll see:
Customer: The name of the customer
Source: Where the invoice was generated or synced from
Balance: Current outstanding balance
You can export all this information into a CSV.
B. Individual customer pages
Select any customer from either tab to open their customer record.
Balances tab
Balances tab
The Balances tab is a log of all sales-activity relating to that customer. It contains everything related to that customer's ledger, including all transactions and amounts that impact the accounts receivable balance.
Customer details
At the top of the page you'll find:
Customer name
Email address
Billing address
You can edit this information and set the default values used for future invoices by selecting from the list, adding new values, or editing existing ones. Once a default is selected it will be used to pre-populate future invoices with this customer.
If Finaloop syncs the same customer from multiple sources using slightly different names (for example, Finaloop and Finaloop Inc.), we'll automatically merge those records whenever possible to maintain a single customer history.
If you have any questions or comments on the merged customers, feel free to reach out to [email protected] to adjust.
Customer metrics
You'll also see summary metrics including:
Total sales
Number of sales
Average sale value
Customer Ledger
The Customer Ledger provides a complete history of activity affecting the customer's balance, including:
Invoices
Customer payments
Refunds
Customer adjustments
A running balance is displayed after every activity so you can easily understand how the current balance was calculated.
You can also export the ledger and customer statement as PDFs or CSVs.
Add customer activity
Select + Add to:
Create a new invoice
Add a customer adjustment, such as:
Merchant fees
Selling fees
Discounts
Deductions
Advertising fees
FX commissions
Sales tab
Sales tab
The Sales tab displays all sales generated by that customer during the selected reporting period.
3. How customer payments affect the balance
Transactions classified as an invoice payment, sales deposit, or another related sales classification for that customer automatically reduce the customer's outstanding balance rather than creating additional revenue. This ensures customer balances remain accurate and prevents the same sale from being recognized twice.
There is one exception - If a customer pays more than they've been invoiced, Finaloop automatically adjusts your records to maintain a valid customer balance by increasing your sales amount for the excess payment to prevent a negative balance.
This way, even if you forget to add an invoice, your sales are properly accounted for. We call this an AR adjustment. If the missing invoice is added later, Finaloop automatically updates the AR adjustment to keep both your customer balance and revenue accurate.
4. Linking invoices and payments
Linking invoices and payments is recommended, but not required to keep your books current.
Finaloop automatically maintains accurate customer balances even if payments aren't linked to specific invoices. However, linking invoices and payments provides a more complete accounts receivable history and improves:
Accounts receivable aging reports
Collections tracking
Payment visibility
Auditability
Keep in mind that your AR aging report is based on your open and past due invoices. This means that if you have invoices that aren’t linked to payments, these invoices will still show as open and, therefore, your AR aging report will not show an accurate picture of your open receivables.
You can link invoices and payments from either the Invoice page or the Transaction page. For detailed instructions, see Managing B2B and wholesale invoices.
5. How customer balances affect your financial statements
Accrual basis
For accrual-basis companies, revenue is recognized when an invoice is issued.
At that point:
Revenue is recorded on your Profit & Loss statement.
The amount owed is recorded in Accounts Receivable on your Balance Sheet.
When a transaction is classified as a customer payment, it reduces Accounts Receivable. It does not create additional revenue because the sale has already been recognized.
But, if a customer temporarily pays more than they've been invoiced, we'll automatically adjust your records to maintain a valid customer balance by adding an AR adjustment so your balance won't ever be negative. If the missing invoice is added later, the AR adjustment is updated automatically.
Cash basis
Cash-basis companies can also use the Customers page and Customer Ledger to monitor customer accounts. Customer balances do not affect the Balance Sheet under cash-basis accounting, but they still provide complete visibility into customer receivables and payment history.
6. If a customer balance doesn't look right
Customer balances are calculated automatically based on invoices, payments, refunds, and customer adjustments. If a balance looks too high or too low, it's usually because some customer activity is missing or incomplete.
The balance is lower than expected
The balance is lower than expected
A lower-than-expected balance usually means one or more invoices are missing.
For example, if a customer payment was recorded but the related invoice hasn't been created yet, the customer's balance will be lower than expected.
To fix this:
Review the customer's invoices.
Create or sync any missing invoices.
Once the invoice is added, Finaloop automatically recalculates the customer's balance.
The balance is higher than expected
The balance is higher than expected
A higher-than-expected balance is usually caused by one of the following:
An invoice is no longer collectible
If an invoice was written off or is no longer expected to be collected but wasn't marked as uncollectible, it remains open and continues increasing the customer's balance. To fix this:
Add the appropriate customer adjustment to reduce or remove the outstanding balance.
An invoice was only partially paid or settled
Sometimes an invoice has been partially paid or settled, but the remaining balance was never adjusted. This leaves the invoice open for more than the customer actually owes. To fix this:
Add the missing customer adjustment to close the remaining balance.
Customer payments are missing or linked incorrectly
A payment may not yet appear in the customer's balance because it's waiting for your input, or linked to the wrong customer. To fix this:
Review transactions waiting for your input and classify any customer payments.
Verify that customer payments are linked to the correct customer.
Once corrected, the customer's balance updates automatically.
Still not seeing the expected balance? Open the customer's Customer Ledger to review every invoice, payment, refund, and adjustment affecting the balance. Because balances are recalculated continuously, correcting missing or incorrect activity automatically updates both current and historical balances where applicable.
7. Frequently asked questions
What affects a customer's balance?
What affects a customer's balance?
Invoices, customer payments, refunds, customer adjustments, and other customer-related accounts receivable activity.
What happens if I add or change customer activity later?
What happens if I add or change customer activity later?
Finaloop automatically updates the customer's balance to reflect the new information. This includes historical balances when the activity relates to an earlier date.
Do I still need to link invoices and payments?
Do I still need to link invoices and payments?
It's not required — balances update automatically — but linking is recommended for accurate collections tracking and aging reports.
Does this apply to cash-basis accounting?
Does this apply to cash-basis accounting?
Yes — cash-basis users can still use the Customers page and each customer's ledger for full visibility into customer activity even though it won’t impact their financials. Customer balances are displayed using accrual-based accounts receivable activity.
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