Accounts payable aging
- What approval costs a month
- $4,300.80
- Hours on routine handling
- 120
- Hours on exceptions
- 14.4
Every figure on this page is computed from the inputs entered, by the method stated below it. Monthendly publishes no benchmark close time, no industry average DPO and no accounting standard: the tasks, the minutes, the rate and the exception rate are yours, and the defaults are a worked example to replace with your own figures.
Accounts payable aging is the report that splits what you owe by how overdue it is, and it is the single most useful number in payables because it turns a balance into a decision. A total of what you owe tells you very little; the same total split into not yet due, one to thirty days, thirty-one to sixty and sixty-one plus tells you whether you have a cash-timing question, a process question, or a supplier relationship about to break. This page is how to read an aging report, the two numbers to read alongside it, and what the buckets are actually telling you.
Open the Accounts payable invoice approval process Free to use. No account, no card, no trial clock.
Read the shape, not the total
A large total that is almost all current is a business buying on credit. A smaller total with a fat sixty-plus bucket is a process problem or a cash problem, and it is worth knowing which. The free aging worksheet gives you the shape from your own balances.
Read the overdue share
The proportion overdue is the number to watch month on month, because it moves for reasons you control. On the worked example, $82,700 of payables is 42% overdue, which is a process question long before it is a cash question.
Read days payable outstanding beside it
DPO puts the balance in the context of what you buy: on the worked example, $82,700 against $82,000 of monthly credit purchases is 30.26 days. Rising DPO with a stable overdue share is a deliberate payment policy; rising DPO with a rising overdue share is drift.
Accounts payable aging: common questions
What is a good days payable outstanding?
We will not quote you one. It varies enormously by industry and by the terms you actually negotiated, and a benchmark applied to the wrong business is worse than no benchmark. Watch your own trend and compare it to your own terms.
Should the aging tie to the ledger?
Yes, and reconciling the payables ledger to its control account is one of the checks that has to tie before the month closes. An aging that does not tie is a report about a subsidiary ledger, not about what you owe.
How often should we run it?
At the cut-off, always, because it is audit evidence and the basis of accruals. Weekly is more useful operationally, since the sixty-plus bucket is much cheaper to fix early.
Monthendly Pro
Keeping what you make
The worksheets are free forever. Pro turns them into the record: the close checklist for each month with its owner and its dates, the payables queue that clears before the cut-off, the reconciliations attached to the month they belong to, your team's name on the pack, no watermark, and an export when the auditor asks.
- Download the finished sheet as a file
- Send it without the Monthendly line on it
- Save a close and reopen it next month
- Put your company name and logo on it
- Export every close and reconciliation at once
- Approval chases emailed to whoever is holding the close up
- Connect your own Stripe account and get paid online
- Connect your QuickBooks Online or Xero
$43per month, whole team
Start Monthendly Pro PricingRenews monthly at the price above until you cancel. We email you before any price change.
Will it do what you need for Accounts payable aging?
Tell us how your close runs and we will tell you straight whether Monthendly Pro fits it today, whether it is coming, or whether you need a different product instead. A person reads these and replies.
Cite or embed this figure
On the worked example, $82,700 of payables is 42% overdue with 5% past sixty days, and days payable outstanding is 30.26.
Accounts payable invoice approval process (What approval costs a month): $4,300.80, Monthendly, worked example.
Cite as: "Accounts payable aging, Monthendly", updated 2026-09-04, https://monthendly.com/accounts-payable-aging/.