How to Track Unpaid Invoices in QuickBooks Online
Accounts receivable (A/R) is the money your clients owe you but haven't paid yet. If you take payment at the time of service, you probably don't have much A/R. If you invoice clients (for coaching packages, corporate wellness contracts, retail wholesale, anything where the work or product goes out before the money comes in), A/R is the pile of money that exists on paper but isn't in your bank account yet.
Knowing exactly what's in that pile, and how long it's been sitting there, is one of the simpler things QuickBooks can do for you. Most people just don't use it.
The report you want is the A/R Aging Summary
In QuickBooks Online, click Reports in the left sidebar. You'll usually find the A/R Aging Summary in your Favorites section at the top, or you can type the name into the Find report by name search bar.
The report sorts every unpaid invoice by how overdue it is: current, 1 to 30 days late, 31 to 60, 61 to 90, and 90+. Each row is a client. Each column is a window of time. At a glance you can see who owes you, how much, and how long they've been sitting on it.
You can adjust the report to show different aging windows. Use the Days per aging period and Number of periods boxes to change the increments. If your payment terms are Net 15, for example, you might want periods of 15 days instead of 30. Click Run report to refresh.
How to read it
The first column (current) is invoices that aren't overdue yet. Those don't need action. The rest are sorted by how late they are.
What counts as "real" overdue depends on your payment terms and your industry. For most service businesses, anything more than a week past due is worth a polite nudge. Anything over 30 days is a real collection issue. Anything over 60 is a client who has a cash flow problem or a follow-through problem, and you need to decide how to handle them.
Sending payment reminders
For invoices 1 to 14 days late, a single friendly reminder usually gets it done. Most late payments aren't people refusing to pay. They're people who forgot, whose invoice got buried in email, or who meant to pay last Tuesday and it slipped their mind. A short email that says "Hey, just following up on invoice #XXXX, with a balance of $XXXX, that was due on [date]. Let me know if you need me to resend it" works for most situations.
Whatever you send, include the invoice number and amount so there's no ambiguity about which invoice you're asking about, the original due date (not just "overdue," the actual date), and clear payment instructions or a direct link to pay if you have one set up.
For invoices over 30 days late, you need a firmer note. Something that still assumes good intent but makes clear the clock is running. If you have late fees in your agreement, this is the time to apply them. If you don't, this might be a signal to add them to your standard terms going forward.
When a client is chronically late
If the same name keeps showing up in your 60-to-90 column, you've moved past "how do I get paid faster." This is a client who either has cash flow issues or follow-through issues, and you need to decide how to keep working with them (or whether you want to).
A few things to consider: whether you're willing to require payment up front next time, whether you want to switch them to a prepaid package model, and whether the cash flow stress this client creates is worth whatever you're earning from them. For a lot of my clients, the answer to that last question turns out to be no.
If you want someone else to handle this
Running the A/R Aging report is quick. Actually staying on top of it, writing the reminders, following up on the follow-ups, and having a consistent system for handling late payers is the part that takes real time. If that's the part that keeps falling off your plate, book a free call and we can talk about what ongoing bookkeeping support looks like.