Review Open Items and Aging in SamBooks
10 min read
Open items brings together unpaid invoices, F24 tax payments and expense note reimbursements, with the aging of every due date and quick access to receipts, payments and reminders.
What it's for
Open items is where SamBooks keeps track of what the company still has to collect and what it still has to pay, one due date at a time: every sales invoice not yet fully collected, every purchase invoice not yet fully paid, the reimbursement owed to an employee for an approved expense note, and every F24 tax form generated but not yet paid all show up here as their own row, with the outstanding amount and how many days early or late each one is. Every receipt, payment, reminder and F24 payment posting starts from this page — it's the hinge between the document that creates a receivable or payable and the journal entry that closes it.
Before you start
- Every user in the company can view Open items. Only a Manager or Administrative role can record a receipt, a payment, an F24 payment, a reversal or a reminder: a Viewer sees the same rows, but the actions are rejected.
- Under the flat-rate scheme (RF19) the Deadlines entry is not shown in the sidebar: that regime keeps a minimal set of sections, and this one is not part of it, unlike Bank and F24 which stay visible.
- Rows aren't created from this page: they appear on their own when you issue a sales invoice, record a purchase invoice, generate an F24, or approve an expense note. If a due date you expect is missing, either the underlying document doesn't exist yet, or it has already been fully settled — so it's no longer an "open" item.
Step by step
1. Open the Open items page
In the left-hand menu, under the Finance block, the entry is labeled "Deadlines"; once open, the page itself is titled "Open items", with the subtitle "Receivables to collect and payables to pay, with aging."
2. Read the two aging rows
At the top you'll find two separate rows of cards, never merged: the first for Receivables — sales invoices still to be collected — the second for Payables — purchase invoices, F24 taxes and reimbursements still to be paid. Each row has 5 cards, one per aging band: Overdue, 0-30 days, 31-60 days, 61-90 days, Over 90 days. Amounts you expect to receive are green, amounts you expect to pay out are red; the Overdue card stays red even on the receivables side, because a late collection is a warning regardless of the sign.
3. Filter by type, status or counterparty
Below the cards are three filters side by side: Type (All / Receivables / Payables), Status (All / Overdue / Upcoming) and Counterparty, a text search field (placeholder "Customer or supplier") that applies when you press Enter or leave the field, not on every keystroke. With at least one filter active, a "Clear filters" button appears to reset them all at once.
4. Read the table
Columns are Counterparty, Type (badge "Receivable"/"Payable"), Document (with an "F24" badge when the row is a tax payment), Due date, Outstanding and Aging. The Due date and Outstanding headers are clickable to sort (the default order is by due date, soonest first). In the table too, payables are shown negative and in red, receivables positive and in green: this is a display convention only — the amount the system stores is always an absolute value.
5. Open the detail of a due item
Click the row (not the icons) to open its detail: it repeats counterparty, type and aging band in the header, then a grid with Source, Document, Due date ("overdue by N days" or "due in N days") and, when known, Payment method, Beneficiary and IBAN; below, Amount, Paid and Outstanding side by side. At the bottom are the same actions as the row: Open document, Send reminder (receivables only), Reverse (if applicable) and the settlement button.
Where due items come from
Every row comes from one of these sources, shown in the detail under Source:
- Sales invoice — an issued sales invoice not yet fully collected.
- Purchase invoice — a recorded purchase invoice not yet fully paid.
- Expense note — the reimbursement owed to an employee for an approved expense note.
- F24 — an F24 tax form generated (periodic VAT, withholding tax, other taxes) and not yet paid: always shown as a payable, marked with the "F24" badge on the row.
- Imported item — an opening balance brought into SamBooks through a data migration or import: it has no SamBooks document behind it, so the "Open document" icon stays disabled with the message "No linked document — item imported from the opening balance."
The sign of an amount is a display convention, not a data change
A payable is shown as a negative amount, a receivable as a positive one, so the expected cash-flow direction reads at a glance. Nothing changes in the underlying data: the system always stores the amount as an absolute value, both in the table and in the bucket totals.
Recording a receipt or a payment from here
On the row of an open item, the banknote icon opens the settlement dialog: it's titled "Record receipt" on a receivable, "Record payment" on a payable owed to a supplier. The fields are Date (defaults to today), Amount (defaults to the full outstanding amount — reducible for a partial receipt or payment, never above the outstanding amount), Account (the cash account the money leaves or arrives on, with a + button to add one on the fly) and an optional Note. Toggling "Offset with another account" turns the Account field into a search across the whole chart of accounts: SamBooks then records a journal transfer instead of a bank transaction, and the hint says so explicitly — "A journal transfer will be recorded: no bank movement." This is the way to offset a receivable from a customer against a payable to the same party, or to close a due item against an advance already recorded. No feature finds and nets a receivable and a payable for the same party on its own: you record two separate journal transfers, one for each item, against the same chart-of-accounts account (for example a dedicated clearing account; you choose and type its code yourself, the field doesn't suggest one). Press "Record" to confirm.
If the amount covers the full outstanding balance, the item leaves Open items and its internal status becomes "paid" — but it's the due item that closes, not the invoice: no sales or purchase invoice in SamBooks ever gets a "Paid" status, because that status doesn't exist for the document itself. If the amount is partial, the row stays with the new outstanding balance. The full detail of settling a due item, including how to reverse a receipt or payment, is in the dedicated guide.
Sending a reminder for a late-paying customer
On receivables only, the send icon opens "Payment reminder". On the left you choose the Tone (Polite, Formal, Demand), can add an optional note for the customer, and must confirm or enter the Recipient: if the customer has a contact email on file it's prefilled, otherwise the field stays empty and sending is blocked until you fill it in. On the right you see a live preview of the email the customer will receive, with the subject line and — when the invoice has a PDF — a note that it will be attached. Press "Send reminder": the click itself is the confirmation, the email goes out immediately, and it cannot be undone.
Registering an F24 payment from Open items
A row with the "F24" badge has neither the Send reminder icon nor a reversal: the banknote icon instead opens "Register F24 payment", with a preview of the payment journal entry (one account per tax line, proposed automatically and editable) and a Payment date field. Confirming with "Register payment" shows the outcome "F24 {period} paid on {date}. The payment due date has been closed." — if the payment is a zero-balance one (fully offset by credits), the outcome flags this explicitly, with no bank transaction at all; if any tax line is left without a chosen account, the confirm button stays disabled.
Reversing a receipt or payment recorded by mistake
The reversal icon only appears on items that originated from an invoice (sales or purchase) with at least one receipt or payment already recorded — not on expense notes, F24 taxes or imported items, which close in a different way. Confirmation is explicit — "Reverse this payment?", "The due date reopens at its original outstanding amount and the journal entry linked to the last recorded receipt/payment is removed." — and the button reads "Reverse payment".
Ask Sam
You can have the situation described to you instead of reading the table: "which customer invoices are more than 30 days overdue?", "how much do I still owe suppliers this month?", "what's the total overdue from customers?" Actions follow the same rules as the UI too — a visible confirmation before anything executes, never a silent run: "collect the full invoice for Rossi Srl", "record a €500 payment on the invoice from [supplier] from the checking account", "send a formal reminder to [customer] for the overdue invoice." A reminder sent by Sam is just as irreversible as one sent from the page.
If something goes wrong
"The amount must be positive and not exceed …" — in the receipt/payment dialog, you entered an amount larger than the outstanding balance: the confirm button stays disabled until you fix it.
The reminder recipient is empty and you can't send it — the customer has no contact email on file. SamBooks flags this under the field and lets you type an address on the spot, but that reminder won't update the email saved on the customer's record.
The "Register payment" button stays disabled on an F24 payment — at least one tax line has no proposed account: pick one from the list for that line.
You can't reverse a receipt or a payment — either the item didn't originate from an invoice (for example it's an F24 or an expense note, which close through a different action), or there's no recorded payment left to undo.
There's no way to offset a receivable and a payable for the same party directly — there isn't one: it has to be done manually with two separate journal transfers, as described above.
You imported the bank statement but the due item is still open — a match found during the import flags the bank transaction as reconciled, but it writes no journal entry and closes no due item. Close it from here, with Record receipt or Record payment.
You're looking for due items in a specific period — Open items has no date-range filter, only Type, Status and Counterparty; you can narrow down with a counterparty search, or sort by due date.
Frequently asked questions
Where do I see all invoices not yet collected? In Open items, with the Type filter set to Receivables: every row is a sales invoice with an outstanding amount above zero.
What do the 0-30, 31-60, 61-90 day bands mean? They're the aging of a due date relative to today: how many days have passed since it was due, or how many are left if it isn't due yet. "Overdue" groups everything past its due date and still unsettled.
Why do I see an F24 row in Open items? Because an F24 generated but not yet paid is, in every practical sense, a payable with a due date: it shows up here alongside invoices, marked with the "F24" badge.
Does the invoice become "Paid" after I record the receipt? No: no invoice in SamBooks ever gets a "Paid" status. It's the due item that closes and leaves Open items; the invoice keeps its own issuing/sending status.
What does the minus sign in front of an amount mean? It's a display convention: payables are shown negative and in red, receivables positive and in green. The amount stored by the system is always an absolute value.
Do employee expense notes show up in Open items? Yes, as a payable to the employee, with "Expense note" as the source shown in the detail.
Can I filter due items by a date range? No: the available filters are Type, Status and Counterparty. There's no date-range filter yet.
How do I open the original document from a row? With the eye icon on the row, or the "Open document" button in the detail: it takes you to the invoice, expense note or F24 form it came from. It stays disabled on items with no SamBooks document behind them (import/migration).
Can I offset a receivable and a payable for the same customer/supplier? Not with a dedicated action: record two separate journal transfers, one on the receivable and one on the payable, against the same chart-of-accounts account.