In some cases customers will not pay money owed, and the accounts receivable must be written off to bad debt expense.
There are two methods to writing off bad debts.
To write off an invoice(s) whether partially paid or not paid at all in Accounts Receivable as a bad debt, follow the procedure below.
Enter or select the customer ID associated with the invoices you want to write off as bad debts. To display a list of existing customers, type ? in this field, or select the Lookup button.
Sage 50 displays the outstanding invoices that are due.
In the Cash Account list, enter or select a Bad Debt expense account or an Allowance for Doubtful Accounts account. This will create a debit to that account.
Note: If you have the Hide General Ledger Accounts global option activated, Sage 50 will not display the Bad Debt expense account in this window. You will see only the current list of cash accounts. To use the Bad Debt expense account here, select the Journal button and change it in the Accounting Behind the Screens window.
Warning! If the Hide General Ledger Accounts global option is NOT activated, whatever the last used account was in the Cash Account field will continue to default again until it is changed, even after the Receive Money window is closed and reopened. If you do not change it back to your normal cash account, all Receipt transactions after the bad debt write off will continue to debit the Bad Debt Expense account or Allowance for Doubtful Accounts account.