Glossary
Client ledger
The complete record for one client: the agreed fee, every payment received, and the resulting balance.
What it means
A client ledger brings everything about one client's billing into a single place — who they are, what was agreed, what has been received and what remains.
The term comes from bookkeeping, where a ledger is an account holding all transactions of a particular kind. In small-business billing it is used more loosely, and usually just means the client file.
What makes a ledger useful rather than merely tidy is that the summary is derived from the detail. If the balance is calculated from the payment entries each time it is read, the two can never disagree. If the balance is a separate number that someone maintains, it will eventually be wrong and nothing will indicate when.
A ledger per client also gives follow-up somewhere to start. The figures a reminder needs are already assembled, which is the difference between sending one and meaning to.
What a client ledger holds
Client: Priya Mehta. Mobile: +91 98765 43210. Reference: Website redesign. Agreed fee: $50,000.
Payments: $20,000 on 12 January (advance on signing), $10,000 on 4 February (milestone 1), $5,000 on 19 February (part payment).
Derived: $35,000 paid, $15,000 outstanding, status Partially Paid. From here an invoice or a reminder can be produced without looking anything else up.
Illustrative example. Names and amounts are made up.
How this works in Umikflow
- Each client file is a ledger: details, agreed fee, payment history and derived balance on one page.
- Invoices and WhatsApp reminders are generated from that page, so documents and messages always match the record.
- Access to your ledgers is enforced by Row Level Security policies in the database, so no other merchant can read them.