14 accounts payable reports to track performance

Your accounts payable (AP) department is an integral part of your business operations. It controls nearly all cash outlays and collects financial information that helps your team make important business decisions. With the right mindset, you can strategically leverage your AP team, using AP reports and metrics to further business goals and boost your bottom line.

Is account payable reporting necessary?

Accounts payable reporting is more important than you might think. Yes, you can perform your AP tasks without running these reports—it’s certainly possible, and many businesses do.

‍

But choosing not to ignores a significant opportunity for growth, especially if you can run AP reports with just the click of a button. Reports help you maintain healthy AP processes, ensure accurate financial statements, build better supplier relationships, and improve financial decision-making.

Accounts payable reports worth knowing

Regularly running AP reports is a great way to see whether your accounts payable department is on track. If you learn to use the 14 reports below, you’ll know exactly how your department is performing.

1. Accounts payable aging report

Your AP aging report helps you see the status of your unpaid invoices and outstanding payments. The report lists all your company’s unpaid invoices, grouped by their due dates and how long they’ve been outstanding.

‍

Typically, these aging buckets are 0–30 days, 31–60 days, and so on. When viewing this report, you’ll know right away which invoices must be paid first, and you can plan your cash outlays accordingly.

2. Accounts payable reconciliation report

When you reconcile accounts payable, you’re verifying that the amount owed to suppliers and vendors matches what’s listed in your financial statements. In other words, you’re verifying that the AP balance is accurate. Ideally, you’d reconcile accounts payable at least monthly to catch discrepancies early and correct your outstanding balances.

‍

AP reconciliation reports can look different from one company to the next, but in general, it should show a beginning account balance, invoices (that increase the balance), vendor payments (that decrease the balance), and an ending account balance.

‍

You can then compare that ending account balance to the records your vendors and suppliers sent. If there’s a discrepancy between your balance and the amount your vendors reported, you can do some digging to figure out why.

3. Disbursement report

An accounts payable disbursement report is a list of all the entries you’ve created when you process payments to your suppliers. In other words, it shows all payments leaving your AP account over a specified period of time.

‍

This includes disbursements made via handwritten checks, electronic payments, bank transfers, money transfers, credit card payments, etc. This can help if you’re searching for payments made within a specific date range, or if you simply want to see what left your account in a given period.

4. Vendor analysis report

Your vendor analysis report shows the total amount that each of your suppliers has billed you over a given period. This gives you a better idea of where your money is going.

‍

Not only can a vendor report help you prioritize payments (and, by extension, vendor relationships), but it also shows you where you can get the most bang for your buck if you want to negotiate better payment terms.

5. Open invoices report

The open invoices report lists all unpaid invoices for a specific period. If you have an effective invoice processing workflow, you can pull this report on demand to understand your current cash needs, learn which vendors are waiting for payments, and so on. You can also ensure that you have invoices for all your outstanding purchase orders.

6. AP transactions listing

A transactions listing is a compiled list of all debits and credits in your general ledger (GL) for a specific period. Therefore, your AP transactions listing lists only debits and credits that hit your accounts payable account. This report can be helpful if you need to see individual journal entries in your GL accounts.

‍

This lets you spot-check entries to see if there are any outliers. For example, you might notice that one of the opposing accounts in your AP transactions listing was made to an account that’s not typically associated with AP. This could indicate the entry was coded incorrectly, whether due to human error or fraud.

7. History of payments report

The history of payments report categorizes your spending from a specific period into different buckets. Those buckets might look something like:

‍

• Supplies
• Raw materials
• Finished goods
• Utilities
• Equipment

‍

With your expenditures categorized, you can monitor your spending at both a micro and macro level, checking that you’re adhering to operating budgets. As a bonus, you’ll be better prepared to report your deductible expenses during tax time.

‍

Building this AP report is straightforward if you already have a business expense tracker. Expense management software like Ramp is quick and easy to use and can help you easily build your history of payment report.

8. Credit memo report

A credit memo is a document from a supplier or vendor that either adjusts an invoice, corrects an invoice, or provides a credit you can apply against future purchases. Typically, your supplier will issue credit memos if delivered goods were damaged on arrival or if there was a billing error. 

‍

A credit memo report lists all your available credit memos. This report serves as a reminder to use those credits and can even remind you to prioritize certain vendors to make use of your available credits.

9. Discount report

A vendor discount report lists all the different discounts you receive (or could be eligible to receive) from suppliers and vendors. This information can be helpful when making payment decisions and reviewing pricing.

‍

For example, if you see that one of your suppliers offers an early payment discount, perform a few quick calculations to see if your cash flow can handle making that payment early.

10. Accrual report

An accrued expense is an expense your business has incurred but hasn’t yet paid. When it comes to AP, accruals matter. Expenses that have been accrued will hit your AP account, showing that you have a liability for those accruals. The accruals will be reversed once you make a payment, and your AP account will shrink.

‍

Your accrual report will show all your accrued expenses for a specific period, irrespective of payment activity. You’ll often have invoices for each of these accrued expenses, but in some cases, you might not.

‍

For example, let’s say you pay for a SaaS subscription monthly on the 5th of the month. Even before you receive a formal invoice, your AP department might accrue that expense since it’s a recurring expense they know is coming. You can use this accrual report alongside your recurring invoice report (see below) to help ensure all recurring expenses are accounted for.

11. AP turnover

Your AP turnover measures how frequently your business pays off its AP balance within a given period. This number is typically reflected as a ratio. You can calculate your AP turnover ratio by dividing net credit purchases by your average AP balance.

‍

A high AP turnover ratio means you’re paying your suppliers quickly, whereas a lower ratio shows that you pay suppliers back more slowly. Most businesses build a report that tracks this ratio every month or quarter to see a trendline, which can provide insight into your cash flow management and financial position.

12. Recurring invoice report

You can generate a recurring invoice report manually, but many business owners use accounts payable automation solutions to build theirs. This report shows which invoices recur from month to month, quarter to quarter, or over some other period.

‍

Software subscriptions, automatic supply reorders, rent, and utilities are common recurring invoices. Knowing which of your invoices are recurring (and the amounts that are typically billed) can be used to:

‍

• Detect outliers
• Project or forecast costs
• Make sure you receive all the bills you expect

13. Voucher activity report

Like the history of payments report, the voucher activity report tabulates expenses into certain buckets. The difference is that you can filter the voucher activity report by additional criteria, like expenses for a specific project, department, business location, etc.

‍

You’ll likely use this report when you want more targeted information. Individual departments tend to use these reports to compare their payment activities against their operational budget.

14. Audit Report

One of your most important AP reports is your audit report. An audit report is a document generated by your auditors that reviews your company’s financial records. A formal audit will ensure that your financial statements are prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles, or GAAP.

‍

In most instances, you won’t generate an audit report; your auditors will do that for you. But you can prepare for your audit by cleaning up operations and protocols. When auditors look at accounts payable, they’ll want to see that you’re following AP best practices. Following these guidelines can make the auditing process go a lot more smoothly.

How to build and manage your AP reporting process

Reporting is an essential part of the AP process. Without reports, your data will be nothing more than numbers on a screen. Put those numbers to use by building reports that help you better understand your company’s financial health and cash position.

‍

Ramp’s AP automation software may be just the solution you need. With Ramp, you can generate all the reports you need and view them in a single dashboard, making it easy to do your monthly financial reviews. You can combine Ramp’s real-time financial data with your accounting software or ERP data to help you make better business decisions.

‍

Want to try Ramp for yourself? Check out an interactive demo environment to see what Ramp’s financial reporting features can tell you about your business.