How to read an aged payables report in Xero

Short answer

1. Run Aged Payables Summary at the date you need.
2. Age it by due date.
3. Read the overdue columns first.
4. Check the total against Accounts Payable on the balance sheet.

Before you start

• Enter all bills up to the report date.
• Reconcile your bank accounts to the same date. A payment that is in the bank but not applied to a bill will make a bill look unpaid.
• Know your user role. Reports need a role that can view them.

The manual way in Xero

1. Go to Accounting > Reports and search for Aged Payables Summary. The Aged Payables Detail report lives in the same place.
2. Choose the report date. Xero shows bills that were awaiting payment on that date, even if you paid them later. Source: Xero Central, Aged Payables Summary report.
3. Choose to age by due date or invoice date. Due date is the one that shows what is overdue.
4. Click Aging Periods to set the number and length of the columns. Tick Include report date in current column if you want bills due on the report date in Current.
5. Click Update.
6. Click a supplier to see its bills. In the detail report, click an invoice reference to open the bill.

Limits:

• A payment dated before the bill date can reduce the total in an odd way when the date range leaves out the bill date. Xero warns about this on its help page.
• Xero shows the report. It does not tell you why a bill is overdue.

How to read it

Column	What it means
Current	Not yet due
1 to 30	Up to 30 days overdue
31 to 60	31 to 60 days overdue
Older	Check these first
Total	What you owe that supplier

Start with the oldest column. Ask for each bill: is it disputed, unapproved, a duplicate or just not paid? Then look at suppliers with several small bills. They are often missing a credit note.

The Pulsify way

Pulsify does not replace this report. It helps you explain it.

1. Forward the supplier’s statement to your Pulsify address.
2. Pulsify matches the statement line by line to your bills in Xero.
3. It shows which invoices the supplier says are unpaid that you do not have.
4. Fix the gap, then re-run the Xero report.

Worked example

Example Plumbing Supplies shows $9,800 across the report: $4,000 current, $3,200 at 1 to 30 days, $1,100 at 31 to 60 and $1,500 older.

The $1,500 is two bills from February. One is a $1,200 duplicate keyed twice. The other is a $300 bill with a $300 credit note that was never allocated. Void the duplicate and allocate the credit. The older column falls to $0 and the total to $8,300. The supplier statement now matches.

Common mistakes

• Running it by invoice date. You will not see what is overdue.
• Ignoring the report date. The same bill looks paid or unpaid depending on it.
• Not checking the total against the balance sheet. The difference is where the errors are.

Next step

Try an invoice and let Pulsify reconcile a supplier statement. See the supplier statements guide. Build your own report with the free AP aging report generator.