Implement accounts receivable, credit, collections, and subscription billing
Order-to-cash setup
Customer groups feed posting profiles, which control the summary accounts for receivables, cash discounts, and write-offs. Payment terms carry cash discount definitions; methods of payment carry the file format, remittance format, and the payment attributes used for electronic payment. Invoices can come from sales orders, free text invoices, or recurring/periodic invoices - know which of these supports workflow and which posts directly.
Credit management
Enabling credit management is a chain: parameters → credit limit and tolerance → blocking rules (which documents are blocked) → credit hold rules → workflow for limit increases. The trap: a credit limit is only enforced for customers that sit in a credit management group and have the credit check enabled; excluding a customer silently bypasses the entire mechanism, and a limit of zero with 'unlimited' checked behaves very differently from a zero limit.
Collections
Aging period definitions drive every aging report and the Collections page; if the buckets are wrong, the report is wrong. Collection letters use a sequenced letter set with fees. Interest codes calculate interest notes (percent per month or by amount range) - interest posts as its own transaction, it does not edit the invoice. Write-offs go through a bad-debt journal with a dedicated write-off account.
Subscription billing
Billing schedules define start/end, frequency, billing day, invoice date offset, and consolidation. Deferral templates on the item drive revenue deferral schedules; price escalation handles mid-term increases; billing schedule groups allow several schedules to be invoiced together.
Worked example
Terms 2/10 net 30 on 10,000. Paid on day 9 → 200 discount, settles at 9,800. Paid on day 12 → settles at 10,000. Cash discount administration parameters decide whether a partial payment earns a proportional discount.
Rule of thumb: a credit limit is a hard stop only when the blocking rule and workflow make it so; otherwise it is a warning.