Chapter 17
Who owes me, and who do I owe?
The customer side of this — who has not paid you — already has its own answer elsewhere in this guide; this is about the other direction: what you owe your own suppliers, and by when.
The same idea runs both ways: a balance outstanding for a few days is normal trade, and one going stale for months is a decision nobody has made yet. The payables list groups what you owe by how long it has been open, exactly the way the receivables list already does for what is owed to you — so a fresh delivery you have not paid for yet and an old invoice going quiet sit in obviously different columns.
One party, sometimes both directions at once
A supplier you also sell to is one party with one running position, not two separate relationships to track by hand — so what you owe them and what they owe you net against each other rather than sitting as two unrelated numbers.
What can wait: paying the moment something is owed is not expected, and the system does not treat an open balance as a problem on its own — only a balance that has sat far longer than the rest of the list is the thing worth a second look.