Credit accounts¶

Credit accounts in the main menu is the city ledger — money owed to the property by a company rather than by a guest in a room. Corporate bookings, travel agents and event clients are usually billed this way: the guest leaves, the bill goes on account, and somebody pays it weeks later.

It answers one question, and it exists because that question is the one owners ask first: how much does Acme owe us, and how old is it.

Billing a company at check-out¶

Nothing new to learn at the desk. Settle the bill as usual and pick Credit — on account.

What changed is that the mode now asks who. A Bill to company picker appears and must be filled in — a credit settlement can no longer mean "owed by nobody in particular", which is how the money used to disappear into the pile of unsettled invoices.

The Credit accounts screen¶

Every company you bill on credit, with its balance, sorted by what is owed rather than alphabetically — the screen exists to tell you who to chase, and alphabetical order buries that under everyone who has paid.

The footer totals what the property is owed across all accounts.

A balance can be negative, and it reads as In credit: the company has paid you more than they have been billed, usually a round advance against several bookings. It is not an error, and the next bill absorbs it.

Add company, top right, is the same form the settle dialog offers.

What a company record holds¶

The standard address-book fields — name, phone, email, address, and the tax number (GSTIN, VAT number) that has to appear on their invoices. It is kept separate from your guest address book and from the vendors you pay: a vendor is who the property pays, a credit account is who pays the property, and the two never belong in the same list.

A company's ledger¶

Tap a company to open it. The ledger is everything that has happened on the account, oldest first, not only what is still open — reconciling a balance means seeing the payments that got it there.

The footer shows Open bills — the total still unpaid — and the account Balance due.

Recording a payment¶

Acme's cheque arrives. Open the account, tap Record payment, and enter the amount, how it came in, and a reference.

Zitlin applies it oldest bill first, automatically. There is no matching screen, no list of checkboxes and no invoice to hunt for: the payment lands, the oldest open bills close, and the ledger redraws showing what is left.

A payment larger than the balance is fine — the extra sits on the account as a credit and the next bill absorbs it.

Writing off a bad debt¶

Some money never arrives. On an open charge in the ledger, the Write off action gives up on what is outstanding and asks for a reason.

It does not edit or delete the charge. The bill was real and was issued, so it stays exactly as it was and a separate write-off entry closes it — a ledger that can quietly shrink a charge cannot be reconciled against the invoices behind it.

Writing off is Admin, and re-asks for the PIN.

Statement of account¶

Statement of account on a company's ledger produces the document you send them, or hand to whoever does the property's real books: every charge and every payment, the ageing of what is still open, and the closing balance.

This is the deliverable of the whole feature. Larger properties keep their accounts in Tally, Xero or a spreadsheet; Zitlin's job is not to replace that but to hand it a clean statement instead of somebody re-typing invoices.

Accounts receivable — the ageing report¶

Credit accounts → Accounts receivable is the owner's morning question, answered: companies down the side, the age of what they owe across the top.

Two things about the numbers are worth knowing:

• It ages open bills, not the balance. A company sitting in credit from an over-payment has nothing open and correctly appears nowhere — there is nothing to chase.
• There is no date picker. Ageing is a statement about right now; asking it as of last Tuesday would mean replaying every charge and payment to that date, which is a different question from the one this answers.

What this deliberately does not do¶

Zitlin is not trying to be your accounting system. It records who owes what and how old it is, and stops there:

• No credit limits or payment terms. Nothing blocks a booking because an account is over a limit.
• No numbered receipt for a company payment. The ledger entry carries the reference you typed — cheque number, UTR — which is what reconciliation actually needs.
• No manual matching. Payments apply oldest-first and that is the only behaviour.
• The invoice still carries the guest's name. The company is recorded when the bill is settled, at which point the tax invoice has already been issued, and rewriting the bill-to on an issued invoice is not something to do casually. If the company needs the invoice in their name, raise it that way before generating.

Who can use it¶

Adding or editing a company and recording a payment need Zitlin Pro. Reading — the list, a ledger, the ageing report — does not, so a property whose trial has lapsed can still see and print everything it is owed.

Settling a bill to credit is never gated, on Pro or anything else. It sits on the check-out critical path, and a lapsed trial stranding a corporate guest at the desk would be a far worse failure than one that refuses a new company.

Once staff sign-in is on, a company's ledger will not open on an unattended terminal — it is the property's receivables on a screen facing the lobby, and the invoice book is closed the same way.

Common questions¶