Accounts Payable Aging Report Checklist

Verify the AP clerk has entered every received bill with an invoice date on or before the cutoff. Check Hubdoc / Dext / Bill.com inboxes for unposted items, and confirm no bills sit in the QBO 'For Review' queue. Missing bills are the single most common reason an aging report misses obligations and trips a late payment.

Confirm the most recent ACH and check runs in Bill.com / Ramp / QuickBooks have synced to the GL with cleared status updates. Unposted payments leave bills in the aging that have actually been paid, inflating the >30 bucket.

Check QBO / Xero / Sage Intacct user permissions for AP reports, vendor records, and bill detail. If running multi-entity through Bill.com, confirm you are scoped to the correct entity before pulling the report.

Pull the aging summary as of the period-end date — not today. In QBO this is Reports → A/P Aging Summary with the report date set to the last day of the close period. Save the PDF to the close workpapers folder.

Use the firm's standard buckets so month-over-month comparisons are valid. Many software defaults are 1-30 / 31-60 / 61-90 / 91+ measured from invoice date — confirm whether your client policy ages from invoice date or due date and document the choice in the workpaper.

Run the A/P Aging Detail report, grouped by vendor, exported to Excel. The detail is what you actually work — the summary is just the cover page. Sort each vendor's bills oldest-first inside the export.

Compare the aging summary total to the AP balance on the trial balance as of the same date. They should tie to the penny. A mismatch usually means a journal entry hit the AP account directly (bypassing a bill) or a bill was entered to the wrong AP sub-account.

Run a transaction detail on the AP GL account filtered to journal entries and check transactions (anything that is not a Bill or Bill Payment). Each non-bill posting is a candidate for the variance. Document each line, get an AJE approved if a reclass is needed, and re-run the aging.

For any vendor with a payable balance, confirm a current W-9 is on file and the 'Track 1099' flag is set correctly in the vendor record. Catching missing W-9s in the monthly aging avoids the January 1099-NEC scramble — services-vendors over $600 paid in the calendar year need a 1099 unless they are a corporation.

Negative aging balances mean the vendor either has an unapplied credit memo or was overpaid. Apply credits against the oldest open bill for the same vendor, or contact the vendor for a refund check if there are no open bills to apply against.

Scan for the same invoice number entered twice (a Bill.com sync hiccup or a bill keyed manually after the OCR also created one). Also watch for one invoice split into two bills with the same date and vendor. Void the duplicate, do not delete it, so the audit trail is preserved.

Bills sitting in the 91+ bucket are usually one of: a disputed invoice, a vendor on payment hold, or a stale bill that should have been voided. Each one needs a written explanation in the workpaper before sign-off — partners and reviewers will ask.

Filter the detail for vendors with 2/10 net 30 or similar terms. Taking a 2% discount for paying 20 days early is a 36% annualized return — never leave these on the table when cash allows.

In Bill.com or Ramp, stage payments for: (1) bills past due, (2) bills with discount windows closing within 7 days, (3) bills due before the next scheduled run. Capture the proposed total so the controller can confirm cash availability before approval.

Send the staged payment-run total against the operating-account balance and 13-week cash forecast. Hold the run if covered cash drops below the controller's reserve threshold; do not partially release without written approval.

One-page memo: total AP, % current vs. >30 vs. >60 vs. >90, top five vendor balances, any disputed items, and the proposed payment-run total. Flag whether anything needs the controller's attention beyond a routine sign-off.

Schedule a 15-minute review with the controller or fractional CFO. Cover the >90 bucket vendor-by-vendor, recommended actions, and any vendors threatening to put the account on credit hold. Capture decisions in the workpaper memo.

Save the aging summary, detail export, reconciliation workpaper, and approved memo to the period folder in SmartVault / ShareFile / TaxDome. Lock the close period in QBO with the close-date password so prior-period bills cannot be back-dated into the locked aging.

Pick one concrete item: a new bank-feed rule, a vendor whose terms should be renegotiated, a bill-coding error pattern to coach the AP clerk on, or a workflow rule in Bill.com. Trying to fix everything at once means nothing changes — one item per cycle is the discipline.