How to Export Your A/R Aging Report from QuickBooks (and What to Do With It)
Step-by-step: run and export the A/R aging report in QuickBooks Online or Desktop, clean it up, and turn it into a collections list that recovers cash.
Pratheek Adi
Co-Founder & CTO
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Late payments are not an edge case. Intuit’s 2025 report found that 56% of small businesses are owed money on overdue invoices, with the average small business owed about $17,500. The fastest way to see how much of that problem is yours is a report QuickBooks already builds for you: the accounts receivable aging report.
The A/R aging report lists every unpaid invoice grouped by how overdue it is, usually in 30-day buckets (current, 1-30, 31-60, 61-90, 90+). In QuickBooks Online you run it from Reports, then Standard reports, then Accounts receivable aging summary or detail, and export it to Excel from the report toolbar. It takes about two minutes.
This guide walks through both versions of the report, how to export a clean file, the settings that trip people up, and the part most guides skip: turning the export into a collections list that actually recovers cash.
What Is the A/R Aging Report and Why Does It Matter?
The aging report answers one question: who owes you money, and how long have they owed it?
It is the single most useful document in collections because recoverability decays with age. An invoice at 30 days past due is a routine follow-up. The same invoice at 90 days is a negotiation. Industry benchmark data from Credit Pulse puts healthy DSO at 45 to 60 days for manufacturing and 60 to 90 for construction, so where your buckets sit against your industry matters more than the raw total. Compare your own numbers against DSO benchmarks by industry to know whether you have a problem or a crisis.
Run it weekly at minimum. Monthly is too slow: a customer can drift a full bucket between reads.
How Do You Run the Aging Report in QuickBooks Online?
QuickBooks Online ships two versions. Both live in the same place. These steps follow Intuit’s own instructions to run an accounts receivable aging report, current as of August 2026.
The summary report: one line per customer
Go to Reports, then Standard reports.
In the “Who owes you” section, select Accounts receivable aging summary.
Select General options to adjust number format, aging buckets, and header.
Select Save as to keep your customized version.
Use the summary to size the problem and brief leadership. Total per customer, split across aging buckets.
The detail report: one line per invoice
Same path: Reports, then Standard reports, then Accounts receivable aging detail under “Who owes you.”
Every open invoice appears with its date, due date, days past due, and open balance.
The detail report is the one collections actually works from, because follow-up happens invoice by invoice, not customer by customer.
How Do You Export the Report to Excel or CSV?
With the report open, select the Export icon in the report toolbar.
Choose Export to Excel (or Export to PDF for a board pack; Excel for working data).
Save the file somewhere findable, then open it.
If the spreadsheet looks empty or truncated, Excel opened it in Protected View. Select Enable Editing and the data appears.
For QuickBooks Desktop the path differs slightly: Reports, then Customers & Receivables, then A/R Aging Summary or A/R Aging Detail, and export via the Excel button on the report window. The buckets and logic are the same.
Which Settings Should You Check Before You Export?
Five settings quietly change what the report says. Check them before you send the file anywhere.
Report basis: accrual, not cash
A cash-basis A/R report can drop open invoices entirely. Aging analysis is an accrual exercise. If your accountant keeps the books on cash basis, still run this report on accrual.
Aging method: report date vs current
QuickBooks can age invoices as of the report date or as of today. For collections, age as of today. For month-end reporting, use the report date.
Bucket size
Default is 30-day buckets across four periods. Keep it unless your terms are unusual. If you sell on Net 60, a 1-30 bucket is noise; consider 60-day periods.
Columns for contact information
The default export has amounts but not phone numbers or emails. Add customer contact columns where available, or plan to join the export against your customer list. A collections list without contact details is a spreadsheet, not a work queue.
Zero-balance rows
Clear out customers with offsetting credits and zero net balances before you share the report, or filter them in Excel. They inflate the row count and hide the real work.
What Do You Actually Do With the Export?
This is where most teams stall. The report gets run, attached to an email, admired, and nothing changes. Turn it into a work queue instead.
Segment by bucket, then by size
Sort the detail export by days past due, then by open balance within each bucket. The top of the 61-90 bucket is your most urgent recoverable money: old enough to be at risk, young enough to collect.
Assign an action per segment
Current and 1-30: polite reminder by email. Automated is fine.
31-60: reminder plus a phone call on the larger balances.
61-90: calls with escalating firmness, payment plan conversations.
90+: decision time. Escalate internally, negotiate, or write off. Our guide on when to escalate an invoice covers the thresholds.
Track the two numbers that matter
Re-run the report weekly and watch the percentage of A/R past 60 days and total DSO. Those two, tracked over time, tell you whether collections is winning. The other KPIs worth adding are in 9 accounts receivable KPIs worth tracking.
Close the loop
Log every promise to pay with a date, and put the follow-up on a calendar. An aging report that gets worked once and forgotten produces a brief dip, then reverts. Consistent weekly cadence is what moves DSO, and it is possible to lower your DSO this quarter without hiring if the cadence holds.
A Worked Example: Turning a Sample Export into Monday’s Call List
Here is what the segmentation looks like on a real, if simplified, detail export. Ten open invoices, already sorted by days past due and then by open balance:
Customer | Invoice | Days past due | Open balance | Next action |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Canmore Mechanical | 1088 | 96 | $18,400 | Escalation decision this week |
Brightside Foods | 1102 | 84 | $9,750 | Call, propose a payment plan |
Brightside Foods | 1130 | 61 | $4,300 | Same call, bundle both invoices |
Delta Property Group | 1141 | 55 | $12,900 | Call plus written reminder |
Harbourview Clinics | 1155 | 38 | $2,150 | Firm email, call if silent by Friday |
Northgate Retail | 1160 | 33 | $6,800 | Firm email with payment link |
Quarry Ridge Builders | 1171 | 19 | $22,000 | Pre-due-date style reminder now |
Summit HVAC | 1177 | 12 | $1,900 | Routine reminder |
Lakeland Printing | 1183 | 6 | $850 | Routine reminder |
Quarry Ridge Builders | 1189 | 2 | $7,400 | No action yet, note the pattern |
Four reading habits turn that table into a work queue instead of a wall of numbers.
Read top-down, but bundle by customer first
Brightside Foods appears twice, at 84 and 61 days. That is one phone call, not two, and the conversation covers $14,050, not $9,750. Always collapse the detail report by customer before dialing, then discuss every open invoice in a single conversation. Splitting them trains the customer to treat each invoice as a separate negotiation.
The biggest number is not automatically the first call
Quarry Ridge Builders owes the most on a single invoice, $22,000, but at 19 days past due it is the newest problem on the list. A polite reminder now almost certainly resolves it. Canmore Mechanical at 96 days is a fraction of the size and ten times the risk. Work risk-weighted, oldest first within each bucket, and resist the pull of the biggest raw balance.
Notice patterns before they become buckets
Quarry Ridge also shows up at 2 days past due. One late invoice is noise; two open late invoices from the same customer inside a month is the start of a habit. A note on the account now (“second slip this month, watch the next invoice”) costs nothing and catches drift a full bucket early.
What Monday actually looks like
Worked this way, the ten rows become three phone calls, two firm emails, two routine reminders, one watch note, and one internal escalation decision. That is roughly ninety minutes of focused work, and every row has an owner and a next date. The same export, unsegmented, reads as “everyone owes us money” and produces nothing.
Where Automation Picks Up the Report
The manual loop above works. It is also exactly the kind of repetitive, rules-driven work that burns out whoever owns it, which is why it slips the moment that person gets busy.
This is where A/R automation earns its keep. Abivo’s AI employee ingests the same aging export you just created (CSV upload works; QuickBooks connects directly), then works the list: calling, texting, and emailing customers about overdue invoices on a steady cadence, logging outcomes, and escalating to your team only when a customer disputes, resists, or needs a judgment call. In our experience roughly 86% of collections activity runs autonomously and about 14% genuinely needs a human. The follow-up cadence never slips because nobody has to remember it. The difference between autonomous and assisted approaches is covered in autonomous vs assisted A/R collections.
Practical Takeaways for QuickBooks Users
Run the aging detail report weekly on accrual basis, aged as of today.
Export to Excel, enable editing, strip zero-balance rows, and add contact columns.
Sort by bucket then balance; the top of 61-90 is your priority segment.
Give every segment a defined action and log every promise to pay with a date.
Watch percent of A/R past 60 and DSO week over week.
If the cadence keeps slipping, automate the follow-up rather than adding headcount.
FAQ
What is the difference between the A/R aging summary and detail reports?
The summary shows one row per customer with totals split by aging bucket. The detail shows one row per open invoice with dates and days past due. Use the summary for reporting, the detail for collections work.
Can I schedule the aging report to email automatically in QuickBooks Online?
Yes. Save your customized report, then use the report’s schedule option to email it on a recurring basis, depending on your QuickBooks Online plan. A weekly Monday morning send to whoever owns collections is a sensible default.
Why is my aging report missing invoices?
The usual causes are cash-basis reporting, a report date set in the past, or filters excluding certain customers or locations. Switch to accrual, set the date to today, and clear filters.
What aging buckets should I use?
Standard 30-day buckets work for Net 30 terms. If most of your invoices carry Net 60 or Net 90 terms, widen the buckets to match, otherwise the early buckets overstate urgency.
How old is too old to collect an invoice?
Recoverability drops sharply after 90 days. Between 90 and 180 days you can still recover a meaningful share with persistent, polite outreach. Past that, weigh recovery effort against write-off and act deliberately.
Ready to turn your aging report into recovered cash without adding headcount? Get Started.
Curious what this sounds like in practice? Here’s a 98-second sample call: https://abivo.ai/#live-demo
