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How to Create and Send Customer Statements

You can send statements to your customers of their invoice history including all activity, open items and balance forward.

Coming the week of 9/27/2026

Available on: Patriot Accounting Premium only. Customer statements are not available in Accounting Basic.

A customer statement is a summary of a customer's account activity for a date range you choose. In Patriot Accounting Premium, you can generate a customer statement for any customer, download the statement as a PDF or spreadsheet, email the statement to the customer with the PDF attached, and see a history of every statement you have shared. Use customer statements to show a customer what they owe, to give a customer a full record of invoices and payments, or to follow up on overdue balances.

Before you generate your first statement, you can set your logo, brand color, and default statement email under Settings > Accounting > Email & Document Templates > Customer Statement Templates. See How to Set Up Your Customer Statement Template [link when published].

Customer Statement Types

Patriot offers three customer statement types. All three statement types show your company header (logo, business name, address, and phone), the customer's information, line items, an Aging Summary, and a Refunds section when the customer received a refund during the date range.

  • Open Items: Shows unpaid invoices with an outstanding balance as of the end of the date range, plus payments and credits applied during the date range. Use the Open Items statement to show a customer what they currently owe.

  • All Activity: Shows every invoice, payment, and credit dated within the date range, whether paid or unpaid. Use the All Activity statement to give a customer a complete record of their account for the period.

  • Balance Forward: Starts with the customer's outstanding balance as of the day before the date range begins, then shows all activity during the date range. A Balance Forward summary tile shows the opening balance. Use the Balance Forward statement for customers who carry a balance from one period to the next.

How to Generate a Customer Statement

  1. Go to Accounting > Customers.

  2. Click the customer name.

  3. Click the Statements tab. The Statements tab appears between the Payments and Attachments tabs on the customer's page.
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  4. Choose your statement filters:

    1. Date Period: Choose a preset period such as Current Month, or choose Custom to enter your own dates. The Date Period defaults to Current Month.

    2. Date Range: The start and end dates of the activity to include. The Date Range fills in automatically from the Date Period you choose.

    3. Statement Type: Open Items, All Activity, or Balance Forward. The Statement Type defaults to Open Items.

    4. Statement Date: The date printed on the statement. The Statement Date defaults to today and must be on or after the Date Range end date.

  5. Click Generate. The customer statement appears on the page.

Your filter selections stay in place for your session. If you switch to a different customer using the customer dropdown, the same Date Period, Date Range, Statement Type, and Statement Date are already selected, so you can generate statements for several customers quickly.

If the customer has no qualifying activity for the date range you chose, the Statements page shows a message that no activity was found. Adjust the Date Range or Statement Type and click Generate again.

How to Read the Aging Summary on a Customer Statement

Every customer statement includes an Aging Summary that groups the customer's outstanding balance by how long each amount has been due. The Aging Summary calculates days overdue as the Statement Date minus each invoice's due date, and groups the amounts into five buckets:

  • Current (not yet due)

  • 1 to 30 days overdue

  • 31 to 60 days overdue

  • 61 to 90 days overdue

  • 91 or more days overdue

On a Balance Forward statement, the Aging Summary includes open invoices from before the date range as well as invoices from within the date range.

How to Hide $0 Unpaid Invoices on an Open Items Statement

After you generate an Open Items statement, a Hide $0 Unpaid Invoices toggle appears if the customer has any unpaid invoices with a $0 balance.

The Hide $0 Unpaid Invoices toggle is on by default, so $0 unpaid invoices are hidden.

  • Turn the toggle off to show all unpaid invoices, including $0 invoices. The toggle changes only the invoices listed on the statement; the summary tile totals do not change.

  • The toggle setting is reflected in any PDF you download of that statement.

How to Download a Customer Statement as a PDF or Spreadsheet

After you generate a customer statement, a Share button appears on the Statements page. The Share button is not visible until a statement has been generated.
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  1. Click Share.

  2. Choose Download PDF to save the statement as a PDF file, or Download Spreadsheet to save the statement as a CSV file. Both file types are available for all three statement types.

The downloaded file is named with the customer's name and the download date, for example CustomerName-20260930.pdf or CustomerName-20260930.csv. The spreadsheet download includes the same header, line items, summary totals, and Aging Summary as the on-screen statement.

Downloading a customer statement automatically saves the statement to Statement History. You do not need to save the statement separately.

How to Email a Customer Statement

You can email a generated customer statement directly from Patriot Accounting. The statement is attached to the email as a PDF.

  1. After you generate a customer statement, click Share, then choose Send Email. The Email Statement page opens.

  2. Review the email fields. Each field is pre-filled from your customer record and your Customer Statement Template, and you can edit any of them before sending:

    1. Customer Email Address(es): Pre-filled with the email address(es) on the customer's record. You can enter more than one address. If the customer has no email address on file, a "Customer Email Required" banner appears and you must enter an address to continue.

    2. Your Email Address (Reply-To Address): The address the customer's reply will go to.

    3. Email Subject: Pre-filled from your template. The default subject is "Statement for [Customer Name] as of [Statement Date]."

    4. Email Body: Pre-filled from your template.

  3. Click Send Email. All four fields are required; if any field is empty, an error appears under that field and the email is not sent.

    The Email Statement page in Patriot Accounting, showing the Customer Email Address(es), Your Email Address, Email Subject, and Email Body fields pre-filled, with a note that the statement will be attached as a PDF, and Send Email and Cancel buttons.

After the email sends, Patriot returns you to the customer's Statements tab and shows a confirmation message with the statement date. The emailed statement is recorded in Statement History with an "Emailed" action.

  • Click Cancel on the Email Statement page to return to the Statements tab without sending.

To change the default subject, body, or reply-to address for all future statement emails, see How to Set Up Your Customer Statement Template.

View Statement History for a Customer

Statement History is a record of every customer statement you have downloaded or emailed for a customer.

Patriot saves a statement to Statement History automatically whenever you download or email it.

  1. On the customer's Statements tab, click the Statement History link next to the page heading. The number next to the link is the count of saved statements for this customer.

  2. The Statement History panel opens on the right side of the page. Each saved statement shows:

    1. Statement Date

    2. The date range the statement covers

    3. Statement type and amount due

    4. The most recent action taken (for example, Downloaded (PDF) or Emailed) with the date and time. If a statement has more than one action, click the "more" link to see all of them.

  3. Click the X to close the Statement History panel.

Statements are listed with the most recent Statement Date first. If you download and email the same generated statement, both actions appear on one Statement History entry. Clicking Generate again creates a new statement and a new entry.

How to Re-download or Resend a Saved Statement

You can re-download or resend a saved customer statement from Statement History without generating it again.

  2. On the customer's Statements tab, click Statement History.

  3. Find the statement and click the three-dot menu on its card.

  4. Choose Download PDF to download the saved PDF again, or Send Email to open the Email Statement page for that statement.

Re-downloading a saved statement adds a "Downloaded (PDF)" action to that statement's history and does not change the Statement History count.

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