Asking the books who is behind on paying, and whether Friday is covered

Finance is where an assistant earns trust or loses it for good. A wrong figure in a sales pipeline is an awkward meeting; a wrong figure in a cash position is a supplier who does not get paid. So these are the questions we test Rutba Assistant against hardest — the ones a finance team asks every week, answered from the ledger rather than from anybody’s memory.

“Who is furthest behind on paying us?”

A credit controller, first thing on Monday. The assistant starts with the aged debt report — who owes money, bucketed by how overdue — then the overdue list, which carries each invoice’s age and how far up the chasing ladder it has already gone, then the statement of the customer at the top: balance, overdue, credit headroom and the documents behind them.

GET /acc-journal-entries/reports/ar-aging
GET /acc-dunning-notices/overdue
GET /acc-invoices/statement/customer/{customer}

The answer names the customers in order, and against each one says whether they have already been chased and how firmly. “Have we already written to them?” is answered before anybody picks up the phone, which is the question that makes a collections call awkward when nobody knows.

One trap is worth mentioning because the suite itself warns about it. The aged debt report has a mirror — who we owe — and reaching for the wrong one of the two is the usual mistake. The description the assistant reads when choosing a call says so in as many words, which is why those descriptions are written for a reader rather than generated from a route.

“Is Friday’s supplier run covered?”

A finance lead on Wednesday. The assistant reads the cash-flow forecast, the payment runs waiting to go out, and who we owe by how overdue:

GET /acc-bank-accounts/forecast
GET /acc-payment-batches
GET /acc-journal-entries/reports/ap-aging

The forecast is worth describing, because it is the reason the answer can be trusted. It starts from the bank position in posted journal lines and projects forward over what customers owe and what we owe, week by week as each falls due. Nothing in it is estimated — no forecast sales, no assumed collection rate — and it lists every document and account it left out, and why.

Where no bank account is mapped to a ledger account, the opening balance comes back as unknown rather than zero. A confident zero for a business with money in the bank is worse than saying it cannot tell, and an assistant told never to invent a figure repeats “cannot tell” rather than papering over it.

The answer sets the projected balance on Friday beside the run’s total and lists what falls due the week after. It does not release the run. From the panel the assistant only reads; releasing payments is a change, and a change happens only as a plan a person approved.

“Why has this bill not been paid?”

An accounts payable clerk with a supplier on the phone. The assistant reads what is blocking payment: the open exceptions where a bill, its purchase order and the delivery disagree, the three documents compared side by side, and the bill’s approval state.

GET /acc-match-exceptions/open
GET /acc-match-exceptions/match/{purchaseOrder}
GET /acc-bills/{bill}/approval

The answer is a sentence the clerk can read out: the delivery recorded forty units, the bill charges for forty-eight, and payment waits on that difference being resolved. Nothing is matched or approved by asking.

“Which cost centres are over budget — and is it bad news?”

The month-end pack. The assistant reads budget against actual and spend by cost centre:

GET /acc-budgets/variance
GET /acc-projects/by-cost-centre

The variance report signs each difference by the account’s own direction and marks it favourable or not by the account’s type, because revenue ten per cent under budget and spending ten per cent under budget are opposite news. The assistant reads that judgement from the report rather than subtracting two numbers itself, so it never tells a manager that a sales shortfall is a saving. Lines with no cost centre get their own Unallocated row instead of disappearing from the total.

Press Report instead of Ask and this becomes a spreadsheet in your Drive for the board pack, with a native chart and a Sources sheet — none of its figures typed by a model.

Where it hands back to a person

• Posting to the ledger. A posting is an accounting event, and reversing it is another one an auditor sees. It is on the short list of things Rutba Assistant will never be allowed to do, whoever approves.
• Closing the year. It can read what closing would do — every revenue and expense account and the net that would land in retained earnings — but closing is a person’s act.
• Chasing a customer. A letter that reaches a customer in your name is yours to send.
• Matching the bank. It can read what a bank line probably is; the suite’s own suggestions match nothing until a person says so.

And it sees what the person asking sees. A salesperson who asks for the aged debt report without a role in Books is told they do not have access — not handed a figure their role would never show them. Why that answer is worded the way it is, is its own post: three different noes.