The Unpaid Bills Report in QuickBooks Online

The Unpaid Bills report lists every bill you have entered in QuickBooks and not yet paid, grouped by vendor, with the due date and open balance for each one. Where the Vendor Balance Summary gives you a single total per vendor, Unpaid Bills goes a level deeper and names the actual bills that add up to what you owe. The report is stated as of a date you choose, so it shows the bills that were still outstanding on that day.

What the Unpaid Bills report shows

Under each vendor, the report lists every open bill: the bill date, the reference or bill number, the due date, the number of days past due, the original amount, and the balance still owed. Bills that are due later show without a past-due count, and overdue bills show how many days late they are. Each vendor subtotals, and the report totals to your full accounts payable as of the report date. It reads much like the A/P Aging Detail, the difference being that Unpaid Bills groups the same open bills by vendor rather than sorting them into aging brackets, so it is the easier report to read when you want to know what is owed and when it is due.

The Unpaid Bills report is a date-based report. It does not toggle between cash and accrual basis the way the ledger and the statements do; what it reflects is the set of open bills and their due dates as of the date you choose.

Why a CPA or auditor asks for it

The report total will often tie to the accounts payable line on an accrual-basis Balance Sheet for the same date, so it is a common way to check that the payables balance is made up of specific, dated obligations. At year end it helps confirm that bills owed before the cutoff were recorded, which matters for an accrual-basis return and for cutting off the period cleanly. In due diligence before a sale, a buyer reads it to see the exact bills that would come due after they take over. It is the working document a bookkeeper uses to decide what to pay next, which is why a copy of it at the point you close the books is worth having.

How to run and export the Unpaid Bills report in QuickBooks Online

1. Go to the Reports menu and type "Unpaid Bills" into the report search box, then open it.
2. Set the report date. Because it is stated as of one date, run it as of each fiscal year-end you want to keep, and as of your cancellation date for the final list.
3. Run the report and confirm the total matches the accounts payable you expect for that date.
4. Use the export control at the top of the report to export it to Excel or PDF. The file downloads to your computer.
5. Repeat for any other as-of dates you need, such as each prior fiscal year-end.

Because the list depends on the date you pick, one run does not preserve your whole history. Our guide to exporting all your data from QuickBooks covers how the payables reports fit with the rest of your records.

Keeping the Unpaid Bills report after you cancel

You can include the Unpaid Bills report in your Books Backup archive on request, and you can also export it yourself before you cancel. Saving it is worth the moment it takes, because a cancelled paid QuickBooks Online company goes read-only for 12 months and is then permanently deleted, a trial only 90 days, and the IRS generally expects business records to be kept for at least three years, and longer in some cases. A record of which bills were open, and what they cost, on a specific date is easy to keep now and hard to reconstruct after the company is gone.

Frequently asked questions

How is Unpaid Bills different from the A/P Aging Detail?

They list the same open bills from different angles. The A/P Aging Detail sorts every bill into aging brackets by how overdue it is, while Unpaid Bills groups them by vendor with the due date on each line. If your question is how late the bills are, use the aging detail; if it is what you owe each vendor and when, Unpaid Bills is the clearer read.

Does the report include bills I have already paid?

No. It lists only bills with an open balance as of the report date. Once a bill is paid in full it drops off, which is why running the report as of a past date, such as a year-end, is the way to capture the bills that were open then.

Should I keep this alongside the Vendor Balance Summary?

Keeping both is useful. The Vendor Balance Summary gives the total you owe each vendor, and Unpaid Bills breaks those totals into the individual bills behind them, so together they cover the payables balance from the top line down to each bill.