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About this lesson

We learn how to locate the various accounts receivable reports, and how to drill down into the reports and related reports.

Quick reference

Accounts Receivable

Accounts receivable is what it's called when a client owes your business money. This is often shortened to A/R.

When to use

If you allow your clients to buy now and pay later, you should keep track of who owes you money and when that money is due. The accounts receivable features of QuickBooks will allow you to see both summary and detailed information about the money you're owed.

Instructions

Accounts receivable reports:

  • Accounts receivable aging detail: detail of the unpaid invoices organized by when they are/were due 
  • Accounts receivable aging summary: summary of of the unpaid invoices organized by when they are/were due 
  • Customer balance detail: detail of the unpaid invoices organized by the client name
  • Customer balance summary: summary of the unpaid invoices organized by the client name

Accessing reports:

  • Click on the word reports in the gray menu on the left side of the screen
  • In the search box on the right (where the faint text reads: find by report name) search "customer" or "accounts" and let QuickBooks supply a list of potential reports to choose from
  • Select the report you want by clicking on it with your mouse

Hints & tips

  • There is not one right accounts receivable report, look at these four common ones to decide what makes the most sense to you.
  • Customize the report if you're not seeing the data you'd like to see.
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  • 00:04 In this video, I want to show you the accounts receivable reports.
  • 00:08 Accounts receivable is what we call it when you send an invoice to your client
  • 00:12 and you ask them to pay you for goods or services.
  • 00:16 Let's generate an accounts receivable aging report.
  • 00:19 On the left hand side of your screen, there's the word Reports.
  • 00:24 Usually in the Favorites box, you going to have accounts receivable aging summary.
  • 00:29 Let's click on that.
  • 00:31 What this shows you is who owes you money.
  • 00:34 How far past due they are, if they're past due at all.
  • 00:38 And what's the total amount of money that they owe.
  • 00:41 So cheesy Chester, for example, owes 15.98.
  • 00:45 It's between one and 30 days past due.
  • 00:48 And they don't owe any other amounts of money.
  • 00:51 What we don't know from looking at this, is if it's one invoice or
  • 00:55 many invoices that total 15.98.
  • 00:58 We can find out by clicking on the number.
  • 01:01 When we click on that number, we can see there are two invoices.
  • 01:05 There's invoice number 1012 and invoice 1003.
  • 01:10 When you're looking at this,
  • 01:12 I want to show you something that maybe happens to you in your QuickBooks.
  • 01:16 Invoice 1012 was originally for 23.97.
  • 01:21 The open balance is 1099.
  • 01:24 What this tells us is that our client paid a partial payment toward
  • 01:28 the money they owed us.
  • 01:30 That's how we get to a total of 15.98 that's currently owed.
  • 01:34 I want you to see it in a different view.
  • 01:36 Let's go over to sales and then the customers.
  • 01:41 We're going to click on Cheesy Chester, and now we can see a list of all
  • 01:46 the transactions, all the invoices, and sales receipts, and payments.
  • 01:51 The status column is where it's going to show us anything that's open.
  • 01:55 I can look by scrolling down, or
  • 01:58 I can just click on status to sort it alphabetically.
  • 02:01 When I click on status, I can see the open balance is the 4.99 plus the 10.99,
  • 02:07 which is a total of 15.98.
  • 02:09 Just like we saw in the report.
  • 02:12 It's not necessary to come to here.
  • 02:14 I just wanted you to see a second place to find the information you're looking at,
  • 02:18 in case this was more familiar, or more comfortable.
  • 02:22 Let's go back to reports.
  • 02:25 And let's look at a couple of different accounts receivable reports.
  • 02:29 So at this time,
  • 02:30 I'm just going to type accounts and then start to type receivable.
  • 02:35 A moment ago I was looking at the aging summary.
  • 02:38 This time I'm going to look at accounts receivable aging detail.
  • 02:44 When I look at the aging detail,
  • 02:46 I can see what I saw when I clicked on the name Cheesy Chester.
  • 02:50 I can see Cheesy Chester owes for these two invoices.
  • 02:53 If I had done the same thing for Sample Customer,
  • 02:56 I would see Sample Customer owes for this one invoice.
  • 03:00 These are two routes to the very same place.
  • 03:05 Similar to the accounts receivable,
  • 03:07 there's a report that I think you might find interesting.
  • 03:10 It's called the customer balance summary.
  • 03:13 In the upper right hand corner where it says find by report name,
  • 03:16 I'm just going to type in the word customer.
  • 03:19 And then I see it, the customer balance summary.
  • 03:22 Let me go ahead and click on that for you.
  • 03:25 When I look at it, I can just see, okay, Cheesy Chester owes 15.00.
  • 03:29 It's not telling me how far past due or what the invoices are.
  • 03:33 It just gives me a snapshot of who owes money, and
  • 03:36 what's the total amount of money that they owe me.
  • 03:38 Hopefully these reports will be helpful for you.

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