Glossary · Accounting
Sales ledger
Also called Accounts receivable ledger, Debtors ledger, Customer ledger
A sales ledger is the detailed record of every customer’s invoices, payments and credits, which together add up to the accounts receivable balance.
The sales ledger keeps one account per customer, recording each invoice, credit note and payment. The total of all customer accounts equals the accounts receivable figure in the general ledger.
It is the source for customer statements, aging reports and the collection worklist. If the ledger is wrong — payments unapplied, credit notes missing — everything built on it is wrong too, including the reminders customers receive.
In UK businesses, “sales ledger” is also the name of the role or team that manages it: sales ledger clerks handle invoicing, cash allocation and collections.
Example
A customer’s sales ledger account shows three invoices of €2,000, a credit note of €500 and a payment of €2,000: a balance of €3,500, all of it current.