What is an aged trial balance (ATB) and why yours matters

An aged trial balance, usually shortened to ATB and sometimes called an aged receivables report, is a list of every unpaid customer invoice, grouped by how long each one has been outstanding. It is your entire accounts receivable on one page, and the single clearest picture of who owes you money and how worried you should be about each of them.

How to read the buckets

ATBs group debts into aging buckets: current, thirty days, sixty days, and ninety plus. The buckets matter because collectability decays with age. An overdue invoice in the current column is routine. The same debt at ninety days is a collections project. Watching invoices migrate rightward across your ATB, month after month, is watching your own cash quietly walk out the door.

How to export yours

• ✓Xero: Accounting, then Reports, then Aged Receivables Detail, then Export
• ✓MYOB AccountRight: Reports, then the Sales tab, then Aged Receivables [Detail], then Export to Excel
• ✓MYOB Business: Reporting, then Reports, then Aged receivables, then Export
• ✓QuickBooks: Reports, then search for Accounts Receivable Ageing Detail, then Export
• ✓Reckon, Sage, Zoho, MYOB AccountEdge: look for Aged Receivables, Ageing Detail or Customer Ageing under Reports

Whichever system you use, export it monthly at minimum. Businesses that look at their ATB on a schedule chase sooner, and businesses that chase sooner simply collect more, because they reach the debtor before everyone else in the queue does.

The column most exports leave out

Here is the thing nobody tells you: an aged receivables report is built to show you money, not to show you people. Most of them carry no email address at all. That is fine if you are reading the report yourself, and a problem the moment you want to send anything, because a list of debts with no way to contact anybody is only half a job.

MYOB AccountRight is the one worth knowing about, because the email is in there and it is simply switched off. Before you export, click Insert/Modify, then Show/Hide, and tick Address 1 Email. The customer phone number is already included by default, so that one change gives you a report with the debt and both ways of reaching the debtor on the same line. Worth doing once and saving as a custom report.

In QuickBooks Desktop the equivalent column is called Name E-mail. QuickBooks Online cannot add one at all, so if that is your system, export your customer list once as well and keep the two together.

What actually has to be in the file

Three things, and only three: who owes the money, when it was due, and how much is still owed. Everything else is a bonus. In particular, watch the amount column: most reports carry both the original invoice total and the balance still outstanding, and they are not the same number once somebody has part paid. Chasing a customer for an invoice they have already half settled is the fastest way to lose one.

Column names vary wildly between systems. What one calls Total Due another calls Open Balance, Amount Remaining, Balance Owing or simply Due. You do not have to rename anything or rearrange columns: send the report as it comes out.

From report to money

The ATB tells you the what. The work is the collections process: a payment reminder for every overdue invoice, escalating as it ages, all the way to a Letter of Demand when politeness runs out, every single week, without fail. That consistency is the entire game, and it is also the part humans are worst at, which is why it is the part worth automating.

Put your ATB to work

Mona Collects reads your ATB and runs your accounts receivable collections from it: upload it exactly as your accounting system exports it, or connect Xero and skip the export entirely. She works out which column is which herself, whatever your system calls them. Every overdue invoice gets chased with escalating letters until it is paid, and your morning report shows the money landing. See how it works.