Due payments reports
What this is for
Two reports on money owed to you:
- Outstanding Payment Report — what's still owed.
- Due Payments Received Report — what's been collected against previously-owed orders.
Read together, they tell you whether your debt is growing or shrinking.
Outstanding payments
| Figure | What it is |
|---|---|
| Outstanding Payments | Total owed. |
| Outstanding Orders | How many orders. |
| Average Outstanding | Typical size. |
Then the orders themselves, with the customer and the amount.
Reading it
The total is less useful than its age. A thousand owed on orders from this week is normal trade. The same thousand owed on orders from three months ago is money you're probably not getting.
Sort by date and work from the oldest. Age is the best predictor of whether an amount will ever be collected.
Average outstanding tells you what kind of debt you have. A high average means a few large account customers — manageable, and worth a phone call each. A low average across many orders means "pay later" is being handed out too freely at the till.
Due payments received
What's actually come in against orders that were previously outstanding.
This is the half people skip, and it's the one that tells you whether chasing works. Outstanding alone can look flat while both new debt and collections are running high — that's a very different business from one where nothing moves.
Keeping the list short
Most of this is policy rather than reporting:
- Decide who can leave an order unpaid, and keep it a short list.
- Always attach a customer. An unpaid order with no customer is owed by nobody. See Customer records.
- Agree a term out loud — end of week, end of month — rather than leaving it open.
- Chase weekly, not monthly. Debt is easiest to collect while everyone remembers the meal.
- Separate staff meals and comps. Give them their own order type so they don't sit in your debt list. They're a cost, not a debt.
See Due payments for how orders become due and how to collect them.
Related, but different
Three things that all involve money owed, kept separate on purpose:
| Report | Who owes whom |
|---|---|
| Outstanding payments | Customers owe you, on orders. |
| COD pending | Drivers hold your cash. |
| Expenses outstanding | You owe suppliers. |
Mixing them produces a number that means nothing. Read them separately.
Good to know
- Per branch, and follows your operating shifts.
- An order with payment due can't have items added or removed. Collect first.
- Cancelling an order deletes its payments — never cancel to clear a debt. Collect it, or refund it so the record shows what happened.
- Both export — see Exporting reports.