Accounts payable aging report: Examples and a free template

An accounts payable aging report lists every unpaid vendor bill as of a specific date, typically grouped by how long it's been outstanding: current, 1–30, 31–60, 61–90, and 90+ days. You use it to decide what to pay now, what to hold, and how much cash you'll need over the next few weeks.

What is an accounts payable aging report?

An AP aging report is a point-in-time snapshot of what you owe each vendor, sorted by how many days each bill sits past its due date. Your accounting or enterprise resource planning (ERP) system generates it from the open bills in accounts payable.

Two groups on your finance team rely on accounts payable aging most:

• AP specialists and clerks: Run it before every payment run to choose which bills go out and which stay on hold.
• Controllers and finance leads: Use it to forecast cash outflows and to tie out AP at month-end close.

The report covers only bills on credit terms. A software subscription you pay by card at checkout or a cash purchase never enters AP, so it never ages. Enter every vendor invoice in AP as soon as it arrives, or your aging totals will understate what you owe.

AP aging report vs. AR aging report

AP aging shows what you owe vendors, while AR aging shows what customers owe you. Read together, they show the timing gap between cash coming in and cash going out, which is the gap your days sales outstanding (DSO) and days payable outstanding (DPO) measure. You can read most other accounts payable reports on their own, but AP aging makes the most sense next to AR aging because both use the same buckets.

Say your customers pay in 45 days on average while your vendors expect payment in 30. You're funding that 15-day gap from cash on hand, so plan your payment runs around it.

What's included in an AP aging report?

Every AP aging report comes in two versions, summary and detail, built from the same open-bill data. Most teams use both, depending on whether they need totals or invoice-level answers.

Summary AP aging report

The summary version shows one row per vendor, with each vendor's balance split across the aging buckets and a grand total at the bottom. You can scan it in a minute to see total exposure and which vendors hold the oldest balances. Use it for weekly cash reviews and leadership updates.

Detail AP aging report

The detail version lists every open invoice on its own line, grouped under each vendor. Each line typically carries seven fields:

• Vendor name: The supplier you owe
• Invoice number: The vendor's reference, used to match statements and catch duplicates
• PO number: The purchase order the bill ties to, if you use POs
• Invoice date: The date printed on the vendor's bill
• Due date: The invoice date plus the payment terms
• Payment terms: The agreed terms, such as net 30 or 2/10 net 30
• Open balance: The unpaid amount, placed in its aging bucket

Pull the detail version when you're investigating a vendor or building a payment run. Your auditors will usually ask for it at year-end.

Adjustments to vendor balances

Credit and debit memos and partial payments change a vendor's open balance before it lands in a bucket. Each one moves the balance in a specific direction.

• Credit memos: Show as negative amounts and reduce what you owe, for example after a return or a billing error
• Debit memos: Show as positive amounts when a vendor issues one, for example to bill an extra freight charge
• Partial payments: Reduce the open amount on the invoice. The remainder stays in the bucket set by the original due date.

Unapplied credits sitting on their own lines distort a vendor's bucket totals. Apply every memo to the invoice it relates to.

How aging buckets are calculated

Days past due start at the due date, which is the invoice date plus the payment terms. A net 30 invoice dated May 1 is due May 31, so on June 30 it's 30 days past due and lands in the 1–30 bucket. Counting from the invoice date would push that same bill into 31–60 and overstate how late you are.

Most systems default to 30-day intervals. Some teams add 91–120 and 120+ buckets once more than 10% of their balance sits past 90 days. Keep your intervals the same every month so trends stay comparable.

Accounts payable aging report example

Lakeside Supply Co., a fictional distributor, runs its AP aging report as of June 30, 2026. Fulton Raw Materials is its main supplier, and Cedar Software's $9,000 net 60 invoice is dated June 10, so it falls due August 9.

Apex Packaging's $6,400 invoice is dated June 25 on 2/10 net 30 terms. Delta Office Supply issued a $350 credit memo for returned items. Brightline Logistics' $5,000 in the 31–60 bucket is what's left of an $8,000 invoice after a $3,000 partial payment.

1. Fulton holds most of the overdue balance: $19,100 of the $41,400 past due, about 46%, sits with Lakeside's main supplier.
2. Apex still qualifies for a discount: Paying the $6,400 invoice by July 5 saves $128 under 2/10 net 30 terms.
3. Granite's $7,800 looks like a dispute: It's the only 90+ balance, a single net 15 invoice with no newer activity from the vendor.
4. About $57,500 goes out in the next 30 days: That covers every balance except Granite's disputed bill and Cedar's August invoice. Taking the Apex discount brings it to $57,372.

For Lakeside, paying Fulton's oldest invoices first protects its main supply line. Hold Granite's bill until the dispute is resolved.

Accounts payable aging report template

You can rebuild an invoice-level aging report in any spreadsheet with nine columns and two formulas. Paste the columns starting in cell A1 and enter your report date in cell K1, which is June 30, 2026, for the sample rows. Enter the due date in column E yourself, using the invoice date plus the payment terms. Only the next two columns use formulas.

• Days past due (column F): =$K$1-E2 subtracts the due date from the report date. Format the column as a number so negative results show as days until due.
• Bucket (column G): =IF(F2<=0,"Current",IF(F2<=30,"1–30",IF(F2<=60,"31–60",IF(F2<=90,"61–90","90+")))) assigns the bucket from days past due.

A spreadsheet stops being reliable once invoices arrive faster than you can key them in, payments clear before anyone updates the sheet, or one dragged formula breaks a column. Past about 50 invoices a month, the accounts payable aging report template turns into a second ledger you have to reconcile. Run the report from your accounting system once you reach that volume.

How to prepare an accounts payable aging report

Most teams pull this report from their accounting system instead of building it by hand, but the steps are the same either way. Most accounting systems and ERPs include a standard AP aging summary and detail report, often labeled A/P aging or aged payables. Choose the as-of date and the bucket intervals before you run it.

1. List open vendor bills on credit terms

Pull every unpaid vendor bill with an invoice date on or before your report date. Enter any bill still sitting in an inbox first, or the report will understate what you owe.

2. Apply payments and memos

Subtract partial payments and apply credit and debit memos to the invoices they relate to. An unrecorded payment keeps a paid bill in the overdue buckets.

3. Assign each bill to an aging bucket

Subtract each due date from the report date to get days past due, then place the bill in its bucket. Use the due date every time.

4. Add vendor and bucket totals

Subtotal each vendor across the buckets, then total each bucket across all vendors. If the two grand totals differ, a formula or a bill is missing.

5. Reconcile the report to your general ledger

Your report total should match the AP balance in the general ledger (GL) as of the same date, and your largest vendors' balances should match their statements. Track down any gap before your next payment run.

How to read an AP aging report

Work from the top down: bucket totals first, then the oldest balances, then each vendor. Bucket totals show whether your payables are getting older month over month, and the oldest balances show where the problems sit.

Four patterns usually point to a data or process problem:

• Duplicate invoices: The same vendor, amount, and invoice number appear twice, often after a vendor resends a bill.
• Negative vendor balances: A credit memo or overpayment was never applied, or a payment posted to the wrong vendor.
• Paid invoices still open: The payment cleared your bank, but nobody recorded it against the bill in AP.
• Large 90+ balances with a critical vendor: Any 90+ amount over $5,000 with a supplier you can't easily replace puts future shipments at risk.

Sort every item older than 60 days into one of two groups. A legitimate hold has a documented reason, such as an open dispute, goods you haven't received, or a bill waiting on approval. Pay everything else in the next run and fix what held it up.

What the aging report tells your controller

Controllers start cash planning from the aging report because it shows when committed cash leaves the business. It also shows where vendor relationships are under strain.

Where overdue balances concentrate

Check what share of your past-due total sits with your top two or three vendors. When one or two vendors hold more than 40%, you're either short on cash for those suppliers or their bills are stuck in approval. Find out which before the next payment run.

Vendor risk

Critical suppliers with balances past 60 days can put you on credit hold or delay your next shipment. Rank vendors by how hard they'd be to replace, and weigh that against the cash you'd hold by paying late. Pay critical suppliers first when cash is tight.

Early-payment discounts

Your current bucket shows which invoices still sit inside a discount window, such as 2/10 net 30. Taking 2% for paying 20 days early works out to roughly a 37% annualized return. Take the discount whenever cash on hand still covers your next 30 days of outflows.

When manual aging stops working

Your aging report loses accuracy when bills and approvals move faster than your process can record them. Three signs show up first:

• Rising invoice volume: You're entering more than 50 invoices a month by hand.
• Off-system approvals: Approvers sign off by email or Slack, so bills sit unentered until someone forwards them.
• Slow reconciliation: Tying the report to the general ledger takes more than a day at every month-end close.

Two or more of these signs mean the report lags your real payables. Move bill intake and approvals into the same system that records payments.

Keep your AP aging report accurate with Ramp Bill Pay

Your AP aging report is only as accurate as the bill data underneath it. An invoice stuck in someone's inbox never reaches the report, and a payment missing from your ERP leaves a paid bill in the overdue buckets.

Ramp Bill Pay captures, codes, routes, and pays your vendor bills in one place, then syncs each payment back to your ERP. AP specialists process invoices 2.4x faster and with 86% fewer clicks than with legacy software. Controllers open a view of payables that matches what's been paid.

Each step that feeds your aging report runs inside Bill Pay:

• Capture and code invoices with AP Agent: OCR reads invoice headers and line items with 99% accuracy. AP Agent codes each bill from your own history and learns from your corrections.
• Route approvals with AI recommendations: Bills follow your custom approval rules, and approvers accept AP Agent's recommendations about 90% of the time.
• Pay vendors by ACH, check, card, or wire: Send every payment from the same workflow that approved the bill.
• Sync payment status with your ERP: Bills marked paid in your ERP update in Ramp with the ERP payment date, so your buckets match your general ledger.

Experience what Ramp Bill Pay can do for your AP reporting, or try an interactive demo to see how more than 85,000 businesses use Ramp to save time and money.