- Glossary
- Accounts payable aging
Cash & working capital
Accounts payable aging (AP aging)
An accounts payable aging report groups unpaid supplier bills by how long they are past due, so you can see what you owe, to whom, and how late.
Each open bill is placed in a bucket by days past its due date: current, 1–30, 31–60, 61–90 and over 90 days.
Worked example
| Current | $100,000 |
| 1–30 days past due | $40,000 |
| 31–60 days | $15,000 |
| 61–90 days | $5,000 |
| Over 90 days | $0 |
$20,000 of $160,000 (12.5%) is more than 30 days late, and those suppliers are the ones most likely to hold orders or add fees.
Why it matters
Paying on time protects supplier terms and pricing; paying early spends cash you may need. Aging shows which bills can wait and which are putting a relationship at risk.
Common mistakes
Where it misleads
Aging from the bill date instead of the due date, which makes long-term bills look late.
Forgetting vendor credits and unapplied payments, so a supplier you have paid still looks overdue.
Reading a clean aging as healthy cash when it is clean only because bills have not been entered yet.
Related terms
Keep reading
- Days payable outstanding (DPO)Days payable outstanding is the average number of days a company takes to pay its suppliers after receiving their bills.
- Accounts receivable aging (AR aging)An accounts receivable aging report groups unpaid customer invoices by how long they are past due, so you can see which money is at risk of never arriving.
- Working capitalWorking capital is the money tied up in running the business day to day: current assets such as cash, receivables and inventory, minus the current liabilities due within a year.
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