What to pay first, honestly

Every aging report answers pay-what-first, and most answer it on the wrong clock. This one ages 41 open invoices on the due date, as of a stated day, and its 684,550.00 total is the roll-forward’s closing balance to the cent.

RuleAge open payables on the due date, as of a stated date, from stored open items, and reconcile the total to the roll-forward’s closing balance.

Neverage on invoice date and call it priority. What matters for paying is what is due, and invoice-date aging makes fresh-but-due invoices look safe.

Aging answers pay-what-first. The due date is the clock that matters, and the total must be the balance, always.

◆ Open payables, 31 May41 invoices, aged on the due date.

Bucket	Invoices	Amount
Not yet due	28	512,340.00
1 to 30 days past due	9	118,200.00
31 to 60 days past due	3	44,890.00
Over 60 days past due	1	9,120.00
Open payables	41	684,550.00

The total is the roll-forward’s closing balance to the cent, which is the reconciliation most aging reports quietly fail. The one invoice over 60 days is a story worth one phone call; the 118,200.00 recently past due is the pile that becomes stories if this week ignores it. Sample values are illustrative, never client data.

◆ The basis, stateddue date, and why it is stated on the page.

Ageing on invoice date measures how long paper sat; ageing on due date measures what is actually owed now. The two orderings disagree wherever terms differ, and a report that does not state its basis gets read as the other one. This page states it: due date, as of 31 May, from stored open items, joining the as-of family so last quarter’s question answers the same way.

◆ The owned answeropen items stored daily, the total pinned.

Open items are stored per day on the supplier star, so as-of aging is a filter, the basis is a column choice made in the open, and the total is pinned to the roll-forward nightly. An aging that equals the balance is the whole point.

Use case

Problem

Aging reports age on invoice date, drift from the ledger balance, and cannot answer as of any date but today, so payment priority runs on folklore.

What we build

Due-date aging over stored daily open items, as of any date, with the total pinned to the roll-forward closing and the basis stated on the page.

What you get

Payment priority from the clock that matters, an aging the controller can reconcile in one glance, and past dates that answer exactly as they did then.

Does your aging total match your ledger?

We build the due-date aging that pins to the balance every night.

Talk to us

Terms on this page

AP: Accounts payable, the money owed to suppliers.
due-date aging: Buckets by when payment is owed; the paying clock.
invoice-date aging: Buckets by paper age; a workload view, not a priority view.
open item: An invoice not yet fully paid, stored per day.
the basis: Which date the buckets use; stated, never assumed.