Learning goals

Describe the accounts receivable cycle that begins the moment a deal is won and an invoice is raised
Name the eight linked sheets of the Cedar & Co. workbook and the question each one answers
Explain why every status, aging bucket, and reminder in this workbook measures against one fixed as-of date

Concepts

Where the CRM ends, AR begins

Cedar & Co. Marketing is a five-person agency in Columbus, Ohio: founder Dana Whitfield, two designers, a copywriter, and a part-time bookkeeper. A CRM course would end with the deal marked Won and a handshake. This course starts at the very next step: raising the invoice. Money earned is not money collected, and the gap between the two is where small service businesses get hurt.

The life of a receivable runs in a straight line: raise the invoice, wait out the terms, remind on the due date, record whatever cash arrives (full or partial), and chase the rest. Accounts receivable (AR) is simply the total your customers currently owe you. For Cedar & Co. at the September 2026 close, customers owe $36,600.00 across nine open invoices - and $22,000.00 of that is already past due.

Every step of that line lives in one linked Excel workbook, and this course builds it sheet by sheet.

💡 Tips:

Service businesses feel late payments more than retailers do: the work is already delivered and cannot be repossessed.

The moment an invoice is raised is also the moment follow-up becomes possible - no register, no reminders.

One workbook, eight sheets, three Friday questions

Dana runs the agency's money with three questions every Friday morning: Who owes me? How late are they? What do I do next? The workbook answers each one with dedicated sheets.

Read Me holds the ground rules. Settings holds the period and the as-of date. Customers holds each customer's terms and credit limit. Invoices is the register: one row per invoice, numbering and PO discipline included. Cash Receipts records every payment against its invoice number. Aging sorts the open balances into 0-30 / 31-60 / 61-90 / 90+ day buckets. Dunning turns lateness into a next action and a date. Collections is the monthly report: invoiced, collected, open, overdue, and days sales outstanding.

The sheets are linked, not copied: change a receipt once and the invoice status, the aging buckets, the credit-hold flags, and the report all move together.

=Settings!$C$7

The AR as-of date lives in one cell (Sep 30, 2026 on the Settings sheet). Every formula that decides 'is this overdue?' or 'which bucket?' reads this same reference instead of asking the clock.

Ground rules for the whole course

Four conventions keep the model honest. First, dates are real dates displayed as Sep 5, 2026 - never text that merely looks like a date. Second, all amounts are US dollars and exclude sales tax; rules vary by state, so confirm the treatment for your services with your state Department of Revenue. Third, standard credit terms are NET 30: the due date is the invoice date plus 30 days, computed by formula rather than typed from memory. Fourth, no formula anywhere uses TODAY() - a report you reopen tomorrow must show the same numbers it showed at the close.

This is a teaching model for a single user: no multi-user permissions, approval workflow, audit log, or automatic backups. It tracks receivables well, but it is not accounting software.

💡 Tips:

Pale-green cells in every exercise are formulas - read them, retype them when a lesson asks, but never paste over them blindly.

Each lesson's practice workbook is a complete copy of the whole system, so a mistake in one lesson never leaks into the next.

Practice

Fixed case: Cedar & Co. Marketing, September 2026 close. The exercise opens on Read Me; every sheet is reachable through the bottom tabs.

Read the ground rules — On Read Me, read the Workflow, Credit policy, and Dunning cadence rows. These three paragraphs describe everything the workbook will do for you.
Confirm the calendar — Switch to Settings and verify C5 (period start) is Sep 1, 2026, C6 (period end) is Sep 30, 2026, and C7 (AR as-of date) is Sep 30, 2026. All summaries measure against these three cells.
Tour the eight tabs in order — Click Customers, Invoices, Cash Receipts, Aging, Dunning, and Collections in order. Do not analyze anything yet - just notice which sheet feels like it answers 'who owes me' (Invoices and Customers), 'how late' (Days Overdue and Aging), and 'what next' (Dunning).
Answer Dana's three questions — On Collections, find the September figures: invoiced $20,300.00, collected $12,950.00, open receivables $36,600.00, overdue $22,000.00. That last number is why this course exists.

Online exercise

The spreadsheet below is editable — follow the practice steps right on this page. Steps that need ribbon menus should be done in your own Excel with the downloadable practice file.

表格加载中…

Checklist

Work through each item; when every box passes, this lesson is done:

☐ Toured all eight sheets and can say which one answers each of the three Friday questions
☐ Verified Settings shows the period Sep 1 - Sep 30, 2026 with the AR as-of date Sep 30, 2026
☐ Can explain why no formula in this workbook uses TODAY()
☐ Noted the baseline numbers for the course: open receivables $36,600.00, overdue $22,000.00 at the September close

🧾 Lesson 01 · From deal won to cash in the bank