A Commercial Account Summary message enables the transmission of commercial data concerning payments made and outstanding items on an account over a period of time. The message may be exchanged by trading partners or may be sent by parties to their authorised agents (e.g. accountants).

A Commercial Account Summary may;

• refer to Invoices, Credit Notes, Debit Notes, or payments over a period of time.
• refer to only one commercial account, in one payment currency.
• be initiated at any time by a party, depending upon agreement between the parties involved.
• provide information on a commercial account over a period of time. When the message is used in this way both payments made and amounts outstanding may be detailed.
• be used to provide aged analysis details on payments made and, or, amounts outstanding over periods defined by the parties.
• be used as a reminder of payment due for the current accounting period.
• be used as a demand for payment and detail penalties for amounts outstanding from previous accounting periods.
• be used to help in the reconciliation of commercial accounts when detailing payments made.
• be used to summarise other forms of commercial data such as pro-forma invoices.

The Commercial Account Summary can also be used as a response to a previous Commercial Account Summary. In that way it may be:

• An acknowledgement of receipt and understanding of data;
• A confirmation of acceptance;
• A notification of non-acceptance of all or part of the message;
• A COACSU response may refer to one or more outstanding items (e.g. Invoices);
• A COACSU may be responded to by one response message.

The Commercial Account Summary message is a status zero EDIFACT message in D.96A.

This subset is based on the content of the message available in March 1997 and contains only EDIFACT segments which appear in the D.96A directory.