A billing cycle specifies a time interval at which you perform some type of processing (such as charging interest, issuing statements, or printing reports) for groups of customers.
Example: You can process some customer accounts on a monthly basis, and others quarterly.
You must create at least one billing cycle before you can add customer records.
By default, the billing cycle for a customer group is assigned to customer and national account records in the group (for example, when you add a new customer to a customer group, or change a customer's group). However, you can change the billing cycle for a customer.
Note: National account customers use the national account's billing cycle. You can change a customer's billing cycle only by changing the billing cycle for the corresponding national account.
Accounts Receivable keeps track of the date when you last printed statements and posted interest invoices for each cycle (if you printed statements or processed interest by billing cycle). When you use the A/R Year End screen, Accounts Receivable warns you if you have not completed processing of interest invoices by billing cycle.
The information displayed for each billing cycle includes the last dates when statements were printed and interest invoices were posted. Accounts Receivable enters these dates automatically when you print statements by billing cycle and post interest invoices that were created by billing cycle.