Aging Reports
Receivables and Payables Aging: the four controls that define a reading, the tie to the control account, and the by-document list you collect from.
An aging report answers one question — who owes us, and how late (or, on the other side, who do we owe, and how late). Two reports run on the same engine:
| Report | Path | Vocabulary |
|---|---|---|
| Receivables Aging | /reporting/sales/receivables | customer · invoice |
| Payables Aging | /reporting/purchase/payables | vendor · bill |
Everything below applies to both. Each report speaks its own side's words — the same control reads By customer on one and By vendor on the other.
Age Is the Document's Own Date
An invoice is as old as its invoice date; a bill is as old as its bill date; an opening balance ages from its own date. Not the day it was typed, not the day it was imported — the date printed on the document.
There used to be a control offering another basis for age. It is gone. One column measured by two clocks is how a report comes to disagree with the statement a customer is holding, and there is no reading in which that is useful.
The Four Controls
View — by party, or by document
| View | A row is | Use it to |
|---|---|---|
| By customer / By vendor | One party, with a column per age bucket and a total | Reconcile. This is the view whose total equals the control account. |
| By invoice / By bill | One open document, with its number, its own date, its due date, how many days it has run and its balance | Collect. This is the working list you chase from. |
Changing the view returns you to page 1 — page 7 of a list you are no longer reading would strand you past the end.
As at — the point in time
Set As at and the report is rebuilt as at that date: payments and credits applied afterwards are excluded, so last quarter's aging is reproducible next year and every year after. Leave it empty and the report ages as at the end of the period.
Buckets — the age ladder
| Preset | Columns you get |
|---|---|
| 30 / 60 / 90 days (default) | 1–30 · 31–60 · 61–90 · 90+ |
| 7 / 14 / 30 days | 1–7 · 8–14 · 15–30 · 30+ |
| 15 / 30 / 45 / 60 days | 1–15 · 16–30 · 31–45 · 46–60 · 60+ |
| 30 / 60 / 90 / 120 days | 1–30 · 31–60 · 61–90 · 91–120 · 120+ |
A business on 7-day terms reads nothing useful from a 30-day ladder. Pick the ladder that matches how you actually trade.
The ladder is age in days, and the youngest band catches today. A document raised this morning sits in the first bucket, because it is one day old — not in a separate column that would have to be defined against terms the report does not know.
Include archived parties
Off by default, so the report lists exactly the customers or vendors the directory lists. Turn it on to see parties you have archived that still carry a balance.
This switch changes who is listed, never whether the report ties. Archived money is stated in the reconciliation line either way — see below.
The Tie to the Control Account
An accountant checks an aging report exactly one way: does the sum of every bucket equal the Accounts Receivable (or Payable) line on the Trial Balance at the as-at date? Trabalance runs that check for you and states the answer on the report, in words.
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Reconciled | Reconciled to the control account as at <date> — open items + unapplied credits = the report total. Where archived parties hold balances, it adds how much is held by how many of them, and what that makes the control account. |
| Could not be checked | This aging could not be reconciled to the control account — the AR/AP control balance was unavailable, so the figures below are the open documents only and may not equal the trial balance. |
| Does not tie | This aging does NOT tie to the control account as at <date>, with the report total, the control-account balance and the difference, and the instruction: Do not issue this report until the difference is explained. |
It means the subledger and the ledger disagree, and the report should not leave the building until you know why. AR / AP reconciliation exists to find the cause: it lists control-account lines attached to no party, and parties holding a balance who are not in the active directory, each as a row you can open.
The By-Document List
The by-document view is a working list, so it carries controls the by-party summary cannot:
| Facet | What it filters |
|---|---|
| Bucket | One or more age bands, named after the edges you chose — 1–30, 31–60, 61–90, 90+. |
| Balance | A minimum, a maximum, or both. |
| Due from / Due to | A due-date window. |
Each facet is applied in the database over the whole set, then sorted and paged — so the pager and the footer describe the filtered list, not the page you happen to be holding. Sorting a column re-orders every matching row on the server and returns you to page 1.
The moment a facet is in force the report states: Filtered — this list is a subset and does not tie to the control account. That line is the difference between a working list and a statement. Clear the facets before you reconcile.
Reading One Party
On the by-party summary, pressing a customer or vendor expands their open documents inline — one party at a time. A party with a balance but no open documents is holding credit on account: money received (or paid) that has not been applied to anything yet.
What Aging Does Not Have
| Control | Why not |
|---|---|
| Group by | Aging is by party by construction. Any other grouping would break the tie to the control account. |
| Measure | Balance is the only figure an aging report carries. The control still shows, sitting on that single value. |
| Compare | An aging report is a position at a moment, not a flow across a period. As at is its time control. |
Related
- The two neighbours that turn the same balance into a ratio: Collection Days (DSO) and Payment Days (DPO) — see Sales reports and Purchase reports.
- When it does not tie: AR / AP reconciliation.
- Every transaction behind one party's balance: Ledger workbooks.
- The control account itself: General ledger & journals.