Where to find a real debtors age analysis
The Accounting Reports library makes an empty debtors age analysis today. Where a recruitment agency finds real ageing, statements and management accounts.
By Achekam · · 4 min read · For Recruitment businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
Ask any agency director what keeps them awake and the answer is usually the same: clients who pay late while temps must be paid on time. So the debtors age analysis is the report a recruitment business opens most, often before the bank balance. It shows which clients owe what, and for how long.
If you go looking for it in Achekam's Accounting Reports library, you will find a report with exactly that name. Generate it, and you get an empty report. This article explains why, where the real figures are, and how to put together a monthly pack your directors can rely on.
What the Reports library does today
The Accounting Reports library lists report types such as a management pack and a debtors age analysis. Generating one of them today creates an empty report in your browser; it does not read your ledger.
In other words, the library is a list of report names waiting to be connected to the books. Nothing in it is wrong, but nothing in it is yours yet either. Until it reads the ledger, treat the library as a menu to skip, and tell anyone who prepares month-end figures to do the same, so nobody sends a client or a lender a blank report by mistake.
The good news is that every figure the library promises already exists elsewhere in Achekam, built from your actual invoices, receipts and journals.
Receivables ageing from the real ledger
The receivables screen ages what each client owes into five buckets: 0-30, 31-60, 61-90, 91-120 and over 120 days, with overdue totals. That is your debtors age analysis.
For a recruitment agency, reading it well means knowing what sits in each bucket:
- Weekly temp invoices are many and small. A client who pays on monthly terms will normally show several weeks in the first bucket and perhaps one in the second. A temp client with anything past the second bucket deserves a call this week, because you have been paying their temps' wages out of your own cash in the meantime.
- Placement fees are few and large. One unpaid permanent fee in the 61-90 bucket can matter more than a dozen weekly invoices. Find out why it is late: a dispute over a candidate who left during the guarantee period is a different conversation from a client with cash trouble.
- Retained search instalments fall due at stages. If a shortlist instalment is ageing, check whether the client thinks the stage was reached.
AccountingTools explains in its definition of an aging schedule how sorting receivables into date buckets shows which items are overdue; the receivables screen does that sorting for you from posted invoices.
Credit control runs alongside the ageing. It is on for new workspaces and, once a day, e-mails overdue reminders and a monthly statement to customers with a balance, by default at 7, 14 and 30 days overdue with the invoice PDF attached. It never charges anyone, it records whether each e-mail went out, and it needs working e-mail settings.
Statements of account per client
Achekam's server produces a customer statement of account as a PDF that can be e-mailed, and the screen tells you whether it was sent.
A statement is the document a client's finance team actually works from. When a large client pays a lump sum against a month of weekly invoices, they will reconcile it against your statement, not against individual invoices. Before you chase a client on the phone, send the statement first, so both of you are looking at the same list. If they dispute a line, you find out which one instead of arguing about a total.
Management accounts as PDF or CSV
Management accounts show an income statement for a period you choose, beside the period before it, and a balance sheet at period end. Both are added up from your own journals and export as PDF or CSV.
One setting to watch: the year-to-date preset starts on 1 January, not on your own financial year start. Agencies with a year end at the end of February or June should pick the dates themselves for year-to-date figures, or the comparison will cover the wrong months.
The balance sheet shows trade receivables at period end. That total should agree with the receivables ageing on the same date. If it does not, something has been posted to receivables outside an invoice or receipt, and your accountant should find it before the pack goes out.
Building your monthly pack from these
A practical monthly pack for an agency, built only from screens that read the ledger:
| Pack section | Where it comes from |
|---|---|
| Income statement for the month, with the prior month | Management accounts, PDF |
| Balance sheet at month end | Management accounts, PDF |
| Debtors age analysis | Receivables ageing |
| Statements for the clients over 60 days | Statement of account, PDF per client |
| Detail for your own analysis | Management accounts, CSV |
Add a short page of commentary: which clients moved into an older bucket, which disputes are open, and what is being done. Directors read the comments first and the tables second.
If late-paying temp clients are your main concern, two related articles go further: invoicing clients weekly for temp hours shows how to keep weekly invoices readable on a statement, and funding weekly temp wages while clients pay later shows how to see the cash gap the ageing creates.
This month, skip the Reports library entirely. Open the receivables ageing, export the management accounts, and check that receivables on the balance sheet match the ageing total before the pack reaches anyone.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
