How to email the Xero aged receivables report every week
Overdue invoices are the one report most owners want in front of them every week, not just at month end. Xero will show you the aged receivables report whenever you log in, but it won't email it to you or to the person who chases payments. This page covers how to get it out of Xero by hand, and how to stop doing that.
Summary or detail?
Xero has two versions. The Aged Receivables Summary lists each customer with columns for how long the amount has been outstanding. It fits on one page and is what most directors want to see. The Aged Receivables Detail lists every invoice, which is better for whoever is making the phone calls. Reportpost can send both: the Aged Receivables Summary, and an Unpaid Invoices list with each invoice and how many days overdue it is.
The manual way in Xero
- Go to Reports, then All reports, and open Aged Receivables Summary.
- Set the date. Leave it on today for a live position, or pick a month end if you are doing a period close.
- Choose whether ageing runs from the invoice date or the due date. Due date is usually the more useful view for chasing.
- Click Update, then Export and pick PDF or Excel.
- Open your email, attach the file, add the recipients and send.
That's five minutes if nothing goes wrong. The trouble is that it only happens when someone remembers, and a weekly job gets skipped in busy weeks, which are exactly the weeks when invoices slip.
Why weekly rather than monthly
A monthly debtors report tells you about invoices that have already been overdue for up to a month before anyone looks at them. Weekly means a 7-day-late invoice is seen at 7 days. It also gives the business a rhythm: Monday morning, the list lands, someone makes the calls. It doesn't need anything clever, just a report that turns up without anyone remembering to send it.
Setting it up in Reportpost
With Reportpost you sign in with Xero (read-only), choose the organisation, and create a schedule:
- Pick Aged Receivables Summary as the report. You can add others to the same schedule, such as the bank summary, and they are combined into one PDF or Excel workbook.
- Choose weekly, a day, an hour and a timezone. Monday at 8am in the owner's local time is a common choice.
- Add recipients for this schedule. The owner, the finance manager and the person who chases payments can all be on it.
- Write a short subject and message if you want one, for example "Debtors this week". Replies go to you, not to a no-reply address.
- Use Send test to email yourself a copy, and Preview to check what it looks like before the first real send.
Each send pulls fresh figures from Xero at the time it runs, so the report is never a stale file from last week.
A few practical notes
- The report is only as accurate as your Xero data. If payments aren't being applied to invoices promptly, customers will show as overdue when they have paid.
- Weekly reports look best when sent to the person who will act on them. A report that goes to six people is often acted on by nobody.
- If you run a second business in Xero, add it as another organisation with its own schedule and recipients.
Cost
The Solo plan is $12 a month for one Xero organisation, with a 14-day free trial and no card needed to start. If you manage several organisations, the Bookkeeper plan covers 10 for $39 a month. You can see what a pack looks like in our sample PDF.
If you also want a full monthly pack for directors, see sending monthly management accounts from Xero.