Accounts receivable aging report: how to read it and act on it

An accounts receivable aging report lists every unpaid invoice and sorts it by how long it has been unpaid, so you can see who owes you money and how late they are. Read it left to right: the further right an invoice sits, the more urgent it is, and each bucket calls for a different action.

This guide shows how the buckets work, how to turn the report into a weekly routine, and what to send in each bucket. The free check above buckets a real A/R Aging Detail export for you in seconds, without signing up.

What does an accounts receivable aging report show?

It shows each customer's open invoices and how far past their due date they are. QuickBooks calls the detailed version "A/R Aging Detail": one row per open invoice with the customer, invoice number, dates, and open balance. The summary version shows only one total per customer per bucket. For chasing, use the detail version, because you need the invoice numbers to put in an email.

What are the aging buckets?

The usual buckets are Current, 1-30, 31-60, 61-90 and over 90 days past due. Current means the invoice is not yet due. The other four count days since the due date, not since the invoice date, so an invoice on net 30 terms is Current for its first 30 days.

Past-Due Invoice Chaser buckets every open invoice this way: Current, 1-30 days, 31-60 days, 61-90 days and over 90 days. It reads the due date and the open balance from your export and works out the days past due itself, so a stale "Past Due" column in the file does not matter.

What should you do with each bucket?

The product follows exactly this ladder: reminder 1 once an invoice is 30 days past due, reminder 2 at 60, reminder 3 at 90 (an invoice first seen just short of 60 or 90 days gets the next one two weeks after the last, never sooner). After the third, the email chase stops and the customer shows up in your Monday summary as needing a call. It does not phone anyone or add late fees.

How often should you review the aging report?

Weekly is enough for most small businesses, as long as every review ends in actions. Check the total past due against last week, look at the customers with the largest balances, then send or schedule the reminders for anything that crossed 30, 60 or 90 days.

The weekly summary Past-Due Invoice Chaser emails on Monday covers those same items: the total past due and the change since last week, the balance by bucket, the top 10 customers by balance, reminders sent that week, promised dates falling due, and the disputed and "needs a call" lists.

How do you get the report out of QuickBooks?

In QuickBooks, run the A/R Aging Detail report and export it to Excel or CSV. The steps are in the QuickBooks aging report guide. Past-Due Invoice Chaser reads that file directly (CSV or Excel, up to 4 MB), guesses the column mapping from the headers and asks you to confirm it once. It handles up to 150 customers and 1,500 open invoices on one report.

Can the reminders go out without you typing them?

Yes. Each customer gets one plain-text email per round, listing every invoice of theirs that is due that reminder, with its due date, days past due and balance. The first batch waits for you to review it and press Send; after that, reminders go out on weekdays from 8:00 in your time zone, at most one email a day to each customer. Every email has a link that stops our emails to that address, and replies go to your inbox. See the wording of all three reminders.

FAQ

What is a good aging report?

One where most of the balance sits in Current and 1-30 and little sits past 60 days. A growing share in the right-hand columns is the warning sign worth acting on.

Is aging based on invoice date or due date?

It depends on the report setting. For chasing, age by due date, because that is when the customer became late. Past-Due Invoice Chaser uses the due date.

Does it know when a customer pays?

Only from your next aging upload or when you mark an invoice paid. An invoice missing from the new file is logged as paid, and a smaller balance as a partial payment. It does not watch your bank or read replies.