Customers & Receivables reports

The Customers & Receivables reports answer the questions every business asks about the money customers owe it: who owes what, how late is it, when will it come in, and how does each customer pay? Use them before a collections session, at month-end to prove the Accounts Receivable balance on your Balance Sheet, and whenever a customer disputes a statement.

Open them from Reports ▸ Customers & Receivables, or from the Customers & Receivables category in the Report Centre. Ctrl+B opens Money to Collect by Due Date from anywhere, in a window over what you are doing. Setting dates, narrowing to one customer, drilling down and printing work the same on every report: see Running a report and Drilling down from a report.

Which report do I want?

How these reports work out what is owed

The aging, open-invoice, collections, due-date and balance-summary reports all start from the same list of open customer documents as of the chosen date. Knowing how it is built explains every figure on them.

• What is included: saved (final) invoices dated on or before the date; credit memos; customer opening balances brought forward (for example from QuickBooks); and General Journal lines on Accounts Receivable that name a customer.
• What is left out: estimates, sales orders, held or pending sales, and Amazon order records (Amazon's settlements carry that money, not Accounts Receivable).
• The open balance is the document's total less the payments dated on or before the "as of" date (a refund given back counts against the payments). Documents with nothing left open are dropped.
• Credits are negative. A credit memo or journal credit not yet used shows as a negative amount: the customer holds credit and does not owe it.
• The due date comes from the invoice's terms, or the customer's default terms when the invoice has none. Terms in months use calendar months. With no terms at all, the invoice is due on its own date (On receipt).
• Aging bands count days past the due date: Current (not yet due, or due today), 1 – 30, 31 – 60, 61 – 90 and > 90.
• Walk-In Customer gathers every sale made without a named customer into one line.
• The control-account check. When your Accounts Receivable account is set in Accounting Setup, the Aging Summary, Customer Balance Summary and Money to Collect compare their total with the ledger and say either Agrees with the Accounts Receivable control account in the ledger. or The Accounts Receivable control account in the ledger reads … but the open documents total … — a difference of … One of the two is wrong; check for documents posted without a journal entry. Narrowed to one customer, they say Showing one customer only, so this total is not compared against the Accounts Receivable control account.

A/R Aging

A/R Aging Summary

What it answers: how much each customer owes as of a date, spread across the aging bands, with the biggest balances first. It is the report that proves the Accounts Receivable figure on your Balance Sheet.

Rows and totals: one row per customer with an open balance, largest total first, then a TOTAL row. Unused credits reduce the band their credit memo falls in, and a customer holding more credit than they owe has a negative total.

Drill-down: a customer opens the A/R Aging Detail for that customer, as of the same date.

Related: Customer Balance Summary gives the same balances without the bands; Money to Collect by Due Date groups the same documents by when they fall due.

A/R Aging Detail

What it answers: every open invoice and credit, grouped by how overdue it is, so you can see exactly which invoices make up each band.

Rows and totals: a heading per band (Current, 1 – 30, 31 – 60, 61 – 90, > 90), the documents under it in date order, and Total Current, Total 1 – 30 and so on. The last row is TOTAL.

Drill-down: each line opens the invoice or credit memo.

Invoices and Payments Received

What it answers: each invoice in the period with every payment set against it, whenever it arrived, and what is still owed after each one. On the Reports menu it is Invoices and Received Payments.

Rows and totals: for each invoice, its heading line, its payments in date order, then Paid in full or Still owed with the total paid and the balance. The last row reads TOTAL — invoiced … with the total paid and the total still owed.

Drill-down: the invoice's name opens the invoice; a payment line opens the invoice it was paid against.

Open Invoices

What it answers: everything unpaid as of a date, oldest first, in one list: QuickBooks Desktop's Open Invoices report.

Rows and totals: one row per open document, oldest first; the last row shows TOTAL and the total open balance.

Drill-down: each row opens the document, where you can Receive Payments against it (see Receive Payments).

Money to Collect by Due Date

What it answers: what customers owe, arranged by when it falls due: overdue, today, this week, this month and later. Where aging asks "how late is it?", this asks "what should come in, and when?"

Rows and totals: sections in this order, each with its documents soonest first and a subtotal such as Total overdue with the number of documents: Overdue, Due today, Due in the next 7 days, Due in 8 to 30 days, Due later, and Credits not yet applied (unused credits, listed on their own rather than netted into a week). The last row is TOTAL, which equals the A/R Aging Summary total for the same date.

Drill-down: the customer's name opens their ledger; anywhere else on the line opens the invoice.

Collections Report

What it answers: who to call about overdue money, with their phone number and email in the heading: QuickBooks Desktop's Collections Report.

Rows and totals: a heading per customer reading Name · phone · email, their overdue invoices under it, and Total with the customer's name. Customers with the most overdue come first. The last row is TOTAL OVERDUE.

Only invoices past their due date with money still owing appear. Walk-in sales are left out, since there is nobody to call. The note reads Only invoices past their due date appear. Terms come from the invoice, or the customer default.

Drill-down: each invoice opens it.

Related: the Collections Center works through the same overdue customers with email reminders.

Average Days to Pay

What it answers: how long each customer actually takes to pay, from the invoice date to the day the last payment arrived: QuickBooks Desktop's Average Days to Pay.

Rows and totals: slowest payers first; the last row, ALL CUSTOMERS, gives the overall count, value, average and slowest.

Only invoices raised in the period and since paid in full are counted. Anything still outstanding is left out, because it has no payment date yet.

Drill-down: the customer's name opens their ledger; the rest of the line opens their Customer Balance Detail.

Customer Balance

Customer Balance Summary

What it answers: each customer's balance as of a date, one line each.

Rows and totals: largest balance first, then TOTAL.

Walk-in counter sales are not listed, since there is no account to collect from; a note says how much is on them. That amount is still included in the check against the Accounts Receivable account. To see it, choose Walk-In Customer with the customer chip.

Drill-down: a customer opens their Customer Balance Detail. It opens on the year to date; change its dates if you need another period.

Customer Balance Detail

What it answers: how each customer's balance moved in the period, document by document and payment by payment, with a running balance: the report that reads like a statement.

Rows and totals: a heading per customer (alphabetical), their lines in date order, and Total with the name. The last row is TOTAL.

It lists documents dated in the period and payments made in the period, whatever the date of the invoice they settle. A payment in March against a February invoice appears in March.

Drill-down: each line opens its document; a payment opens the invoice it was paid against.

Related: Create Statements prints the same kind of movement, with an opening balance, to send to the customer; the customer's ledger shows every document and payment with the all-time running balance.

Transaction List by Customer

What it answers: everything that happened with each customer in the period, grouped by customer, without a running balance.

Rows and totals: a heading per customer, their documents in date order, Total with the name, and a final TOTAL. Only saved invoices count; estimates and held sales are left out.

Drill-down: each line opens its document.

Customer Activity

Customer Ranking

What it answers: which customers are your best, which are new, loyal or big spenders, and which good customers have gone quiet, scored on recency, frequency and spend (an RFM analysis).

Rows and totals: a heading per segment with its count, the customers in it by sales (highest first), a Total per segment and a final TOTAL. The segments, in order:

Only customers who bought in the period are ranked; walk-in sales have no customer and are not ranked. Customers who bought nothing in the period are on Inactive Customers.

Drill-down: the customer's name opens their ledger; the rest of the line opens Sales by Customer Detail for that customer and period.

Inactive Customers

What it answers: named customers who have bought before but not in the 90 days up to the chosen date, largest lifetime value first: the people most worth a call.

Rows and totals: largest lifetime sales first; the last row reads TOTAL — N customers. Walk-in sales and deleted customers are left out.

Drill-down: a customer opens their ledger.

Common problems

Related articles

• Customer Centre
• A customer's ledger and balance (Dr / Cr)
• Receive Payments
• Customer Balances
• Create Statements
• Collections Center
• Sales reports