What are customer and vendor accounts (cari hesap)?

Not every sale or purchase is paid on the spot. With customers and vendors you trade with regularly, amounts build up in a separate account for each counterparty and are settled by a receipt or a payment when they fall due. That account records what is owed in each direction, and in Turkey it’s called the cari hesap.

The closest English terms are customer accounts (accounts receivable) and vendor accounts (accounts payable). They’re among the core records of day-to-day bookkeeping (ön muhasebe).

In the general ledger, they map to the Turkish Uniform Chart of Accounts. Under Accounting System Implementation General Communiqué No. 1, account 120 Alıcılar (customers) tracks receivables from sales of goods and services that aren’t backed by promissory notes, and account 320 Satıcılar (vendors) tracks payables from purchases of goods and services that aren’t backed by notes. Customer and vendor accounts give the per-customer and per-vendor detail behind those totals.

How do customer and vendor accounts work?

A sales invoice debits the customer’s account and a receipt credits it; a purchase invoice credits the vendor’s account and a payment debits it. For example, if you collect 60,000 TRY against a 100,000 TRY invoice, the customer still owes you 40,000 TRY. The same company can be both a customer and a vendor, in which case movements in both directions are tracked for the same counterparty.

A balance on its own doesn’t show how long an amount has been outstanding. Aging analysis groups open amounts by the number of days since they fell due, for example 0-30, 31-60, 61-90, and more than 90 days. A credit limit (risk limiti) sets the maximum open balance a customer can carry.

Statements and balance confirmation

A statement of account (cari ekstre) lists every movement with a counterparty over a given period, in date order, with a running balance. In a balance confirmation (mutabakat), both sides compare the balance in their own books and confirm it. Common reasons for a difference are an invoice that was never recorded, a payment in transit, or an FX difference.

The Turkish Commercial Code (Türk Ticaret Kanunu, TTK) also defines a running-account agreement (cari hesap sözleşmesi, Article 89). The parties agree not to claim each receivable separately; instead, they record them item by item as debits and credits and claim the difference once the account is closed. The agreement is valid only if made in writing.

If no agreement or commercial custom sets the account period, the last day of each calendar year counts as the closing day. A party that receives the statement showing the balance is deemed to accept it unless it objects within 1 month by notary, registered mail, telegram, or a document with a secure electronic signature (Article 94).

In everyday use, cari hesap usually means tracking customer and vendor balances, not this agreement. To object to the content of an invoice, the 8-day period in Article 21 of the Code applies.

Customer and vendor accounts in IWB

In IWB, customers and vendors share the same contact record, so one company can hold both roles. A record can be shared across group companies or kept for a single company. When you save a record, IWB checks that the tax ID (VKN) and national ID number (TCKN) are valid, and that the MERSİS number (Turkey’s central trade registry number), IBAN, and KEP address (registered email) are in the right format.

The credit limit, payment terms, and price list are stored on the record, and you can’t open new sales or purchasing documents for a blocklisted contact. The contact record shows the balance, overdue amount, and credit limit for each company.

In Finance, you can pull a statement of account for a date range, limit it to open items, show it in the transaction currency, and download it as PDF or CSV. Each receipt is matched to an invoice: a partial amount leaves the invoice open, and any excess becomes an advance.

Matching pairs the oldest debit with the oldest credit, and IWB warns you about FX differences when you match foreign-currency items. You preview and approve bulk matching, and you can undo it if needed. When a contact goes over its credit limit, IWB warns you or blocks the transaction, depending on your settings.

Contacts with overdue balances appear on the collections list, and IWB prepares two-level dunning letters as PDFs. You can import your existing contact list from an Excel or CSV template, up to 5,000 rows per file, with a preview first.