Aged Receivables Report: How to Read It and Review It Weekly in Slack
Run the aged receivables summary every Monday, as of today and aged by due date. Read the 61 to 90 and 90+ columns first, give every customer past 30 days one named owner and one recorded cause, and keep the calls and judgment calls with a person. We recommend tracking the share of your balance that is more than 60 days old next to the dollar totals, because totals grow with sales and the share does not. The report knows dates and amounts, not why a balance is late, so treat each old line as a question for the customer.
Most 5 to 100 person firms have nobody who owns receivables full time, so the review falls to whoever notices that cash is tight. The aim is fewer balances reaching 90 days, without hiring someone just to look at the report.
What the report shows, bucket by bucket
An aged receivables report (in the US usually called an accounts receivable aging report, or AR aging) lists what each customer owes you and how long it has been outstanding, grouped into time buckets. QuickBooks describes aging reports as an overview of which customers are falling behind on payments, how much is still due and how long it has been past due. Both QuickBooks and Xero group open balances into periods. The QuickBooks blog lists the common ranges as Current, 1 to 30 days past due, 31 to 60, 61 to 90, and 91 or more, and both products let you change the periods.
| Bucket | What it usually means | Typical action |
|---|---|---|
| Current | Not yet due | Nothing, unless the customer is new and large |
| 1 to 30 days | Normal slippage, often a missed payment run | A polite reminder |
| 31 to 60 days | A pattern is forming | A direct follow-up and a check for paperwork problems |
| 61 to 90 days | Real risk | A call or a formal payment request |
| 90+ days | At risk of becoming bad debt | Immediate outreach and a decision on next steps |
The actions in the right column follow the Xero guide to reading the AR aging report: a 90+ balance needs immediate outreach rather than a routine reminder, and a 61 to 90 day balance needs a direct call or a formal payment request.
There are two versions of the report. The summary shows one line per customer with a total in each bucket, and the detail report shows which customers have past due balances and how long each transaction is past due. Read the summary to decide where to look, then open the detail for the customers you will act on.
One setting changes what you see. Xero Central explains that you can age balances by Due Date or by Invoice Date. Age by due date, because that shows how late the money is, which is what a follow-up review needs. Pick one setting and keep it, or your week-to-week comparison will move for no real reason.
How to run it in QuickBooks Online and Xero
QuickBooks Online. Go to Reports, then Standard reports, open the "Who owes you" section and select Accounts receivable aging summary (or aging detail), as the QuickBooks help article describes. Use General options to set the aging periods, then Save as so you can reopen the same layout next week.
Xero. In the Reporting menu, select All reports and open the Accounts Receivable Aging Summary (called Aged Receivables Summary outside the US). Choose the date, set Aging Periods and Aging By, then click Update. Clicking an amount opens the detail for that contact. Xero Central also notes that only certain user roles (for example administrator, sales or viewer) can open this report, so check the reviewer's access before the first review.
A scheduled copy. QuickBooks can email a saved AR aging report on a schedule: find the report in Standard reports and choose Create a schedule from its Action menu, as the QuickBooks help page on scheduled reports walks through. The schedule sends numbers. It does not assign anyone to follow up.
Read it in a fixed order
Plooto suggests reading the report top-down in about ten minutes: shape first, then risk, then root cause. A version of that order for a small firm:
- Oldest money first. Total the 61 to 90 and 90+ columns. That number is the problem; everything else is context.
- Concentration. The Xero guide says to check the total column for concentration risk. If one or two customers carry most of the overdue amount, this week's work is two conversations with those customers. Dash makes the same split: concentrated exposure calls for a few focused conversations, while overdue amounts spread across many small accounts call for automation.
- Change since last week. Compare the two oldest totals with last week's.
An aging report is an as-of snapshot, and Xero Central notes that outstanding transactions show as of the report date and can include invoices paid since. One report cannot show direction, so keep each week's numbers and compare them with the weeks before.
Write down three numbers every week: the 61 to 90 total, the 90+ total, and the share of everything outstanding that is more than 60 days old. Dollar totals grow when sales grow and the share does not, so the share separates a growing firm from a collecting problem. Dash treats a rising share of receivables in the 61+ buckets as a sign that collections is not keeping pace with billing.
A 90+ total that is flat but large is a write-off decision. A 61 to 90 total that grows every week means invoices are aging faster than anyone follows up.
What the report cannot tell you
The aged receivables report knows dates and amounts. It does not know why a balance is late, who is handling it, what was said last time, or what you have not invoiced yet.
The cause of the delay. Before anyone chases a 61 to 90 day balance, call the customer's accounts payable team and ask what is missing: a purchase order, a billing contact, an approval or the invoice itself. A reminder does not fix an administrative gap on the customer's side. Plooto reports that an Atradius survey found administrative inefficiency in the customer's own payment process to be the leading cause of late B2B payments in the United States. A practitioner on Hacker News describes the same call from the other side: ask what the problem is, ask for a payment date, and ask again before the next invoice falls due. That is one author's report, and it matches the causes Plooto lists.
Who owns it. Nothing in the report assigns a customer to a person. In a firm without a credit controller, the founder, the account manager and the ops generalist each assume another one is on it.
What happened last week. Promises to pay live in email threads and in someone's memory, so next week's review starts from zero unless someone writes them down where the team can see them.
Work you have not invoiced. The report starts counting from the due date of an invoice you have already sent, so a job that was finished and never invoiced does not appear in it. Keep a second short list of finished work with no invoice yet, with each delivery date, and read it in the same Monday review. A job that has waited 30 days for an invoice is the same cash problem as an invoice 30 days overdue, and it is the one you can fix without asking anyone for money.
The QuickBooks scheduled email leaves all of these gaps open. It delivers numbers, not decisions: each overdue customer still needs a named owner and a next step, or the report gets read and nothing changes.
A Monday review that fits a small team
The routine below is an illustration with made-up times.
Monday, 9:00. The summary as of today, aged by due date, arrives in the finance channel. Only customers more than 30 days past due are listed, oldest first, with the weekly totals and last week's figures beside them.
Monday, 9:20. Whoever runs operations replies in the thread with an owner for each line. The client lead takes the customers they talk to every week, and operations takes the rest.
During the week. Each owner records the cause in the thread: "waiting on a PO number", "wrong billing contact", "disputed line item" or "no reason given". Paperwork problems get fixed, and unexplained balances go into the reminder process.
Friday. A one-line status per customer: paid, promised with a date, disputed, or escalated to the founder. Post the line even when the answer is "no change", or the review turns back into a list.
Three decision rules keep the meeting short:
- 1 to 30 days: no discussion. These go into your normal reminder sequence. One practitioner on Hacker News described a simple version: invoice on time, mention the previous past-due invoice when sending the next one, and send a polite second reminder after a week.
- 31 to 90 days: an owner and a cause, every time.
- 90+ days: the founder decides. Another commenter sends reminders every two weeks and files a small claim at 90 days. Your threshold may differ. Write yours down before you need it.
If a customer insists they have paid, check in QuickBooks or Xero that the payment was recorded against the right invoice before anyone chases. The report is as of its date, so a payment made this morning may not show yet.
For the chase itself, the reminder drafts and the approval before anything is sent, see how to chase overdue invoices from Slack without hiring a bookkeeping VA.
Where each option stops
| Option | What it does well | Where it stops |
|---|---|---|
| Open the report yourself | Free, complete, always current | Depends on you remembering, and nobody else sees it |
| QuickBooks scheduled email | Arrives on time without anyone remembering | Lands in an inbox; no owners, no thread, no record of follow-up |
| A slash-command reminder in Slack | Nudges the team on a schedule | Posts text only; it does not read your books, as covered in what /remind cannot do |
| A bookkeeping VA | Reads the report, chases, makes calls | Costs hourly pay every month and still needs you for disputes and write-offs |
| An agent in Slack | Runs the report on a schedule and posts it where the team works | Does not make calls or settle disputes; a person still decides |
The last row is where Kipwise fits. The Kipwise agent can run an aged receivables report from a connected Xero organisation or QuickBooks company using your own access, and it says which organisation or company it read. You can ask it in plain language to run that request on a schedule, for example every Monday at 9 am; it uses your Slack timezone when available and posts the result in the channel. Creating the scheduled task needs approval once, and later runs do not ask again. You can list or cancel the job and ask what happened on earlier runs, including failures. If someone asks it to record a payment, add a note to an invoice or draft a reminder email, an Approve or Deny card appears first, and only the person who asked can use it. Nothing in this setup categorizes transactions or reconciles the bank; that stays with your bookkeeper.
If you are weighing a hire, Before you hire a virtual assistant covers which parts of a VA's week to put in Slack first. For receivables: put the weekly report and routine reminders in Slack, and hire when calls and disputes take more time than you have.
Two companies, one report. Each Xero organisation you connect to Kipwise is a separate grant, and a QuickBooks connection is one company at a time. If you run two entities, review them as two lists and name the company on each.
How to tell it is working, and what to do next
This week, run the aged receivables report as of today, aged by due date, and write down the 61 to 90 total, the 90+ total and the share of the balance older than 60 days. Then name one owner for every customer past 30 days. After four weekly reviews, check three things:
- The 61 to 90 total is flat or falling from week to week.
- Every customer past 30 days has an owner and a recorded cause, with no blank lines.
- Fewer balances move from 61 to 90 into 90+ than in the month before you started.
If the first number keeps growing while every line has an owner, the problem is upstream: payment terms, deposits or who you extend credit to. The Hacker News thread on clients who don't pay on time collects practitioners' upstream fixes, such as upfront payment, firm payment terms and holding work after a set delay, which is a different decision from the weekly review. For loose ends beyond invoices, see keeping follow-ups from falling through the cracks in Slack.
If you want the report to arrive in Slack each Monday instead, connect your QuickBooks or Xero account to the Kipwise agent and ask for one weekly aged receivables post. The agent costs $10 per user per month with a 3 user minimum, and the trial is $2 for 7 days on install, or $10 for 14 days with a saved card or a paid Slack plan.
