Behind with suppliers before a loan? What your aged payables report tells a lender

Most owners know their aged debtors report — the list of who owes them. Fewer look closely at its mirror image until a lender asks for it. If you’ve been stretching supplier accounts to get through a slow quarter, a late-paying customer or the pre-Christmas stock build, that report is where it shows. The good news: a stretched payables list is one of the most common things in business lending, and it can usually be explained and funded.

What is an aged payables report, and why does a lender want it?

An aged payables report (also called aged creditors) lists every unpaid supplier bill in your accounting software, grouped by age: current, then 1–30, 31–60, 61–90 and 90-plus days past due. One page shows how much the business owes its trade suppliers and how long they’ve been waiting.

A lender asks for it because it answers a question bank statements can’t: is cash tight because of timing, or because the business is quietly borrowing from its suppliers to stay afloat? Your bank balance might look fine on statement day precisely because three suppliers haven’t been paid. The payables report shows the other side of that ledger.

It’s most often requested for:

• Lines of credit and cash flow loans, where the lender is sizing a working capital buffer
• Trade and supplier finance, where the facility pays suppliers directly
• Consolidation requests, where part of the loan will clear overdue creditors
• Larger unsecured facilities, where the lender wants the whole working capital picture

Smaller unsecured facilities are often assessed mostly on bank statements, so not every application needs it. But if your bookkeeper knows supplier accounts are behind, it’s better to prepare the report before anyone asks.

How do lenders read the columns?

Credit assessors aren’t shocked by a payables list. Every trading business owes suppliers money. What they look for is the shape of it.

What they see	How it’s commonly read
Most of the balance in “current”	Normal trading; suppliers are paid on terms
Some 1–30 days overdue	Usually fine, particularly near month-end or BAS time
A growing 31–60 and 61–90 column	Working capital strain that’s building, not easing
Large 90-plus balances with one or two suppliers	Possible dispute, payment arrangement, or a supplier funding the business
Bills paid in round amounts that don’t match invoices	Paying “something” to keep supply going
Total payables rising faster than sales	Costs outrunning revenue, or cash being diverted elsewhere

They’ll also put it side by side with other documents. Payables compared with your aged debtors report shows whether you’re late paying because customers are late paying you — a classic, very fundable timing gap. Compared with your bank statements, it shows whether the account looks healthy only because bills are being held back.

Which signs make a lender cautious?

Some patterns line up closely with the warning signs regulators publish. ASIC’s information sheet for directors, Insolvency: a guide for directors (updated December 2024), includes “creditors unpaid outside usual terms”, “suppliers placing your company on cash-on-delivery terms”, “special arrangements with selected creditors” and “payments to creditors of rounded sums that are not reconcilable to specific invoices” in its list.

A lender will notice the same things. None of them is an automatic no on its own — plenty of sound businesses have one supplier on cash on delivery after a disagreement, or a payment plan with a single creditor. But two or three together, with no explanation, read as a business under pressure. The fix is rarely to hide anything. It’s to show the cause, show it’s being dealt with, and show how the funding closes the gap.

Upstream pressure is real, too. The Payment Times Reporting Regulator’s January 2026 update reported that, for 1 January to 30 June 2025, the number of days it took reporting large businesses to pay 95 per cent of their small business invoices rose to 64, from 58. If a big customer pays you slowly, your own suppliers often wait too — and that’s a story a lender understands.

If you’d like someone to look at a stretched payables list before you apply anywhere, start a short enquiry and mention that your bookkeeper can supply aged debtors and payables.

What should your bookkeeper tidy before the report goes out?

A messy report can make a manageable position look worse than it is. These are the checks we’d ask a bookkeeper or BAS agent to run first:

1. Age by due date, not invoice date. Many packages let you choose. Ageing by invoice date makes a supplier on 60-day terms look overdue when nothing is late. Note the setting on the report.
2. Run it at the same date as the other documents. Month-end payables, month-end debtors and the bank statement for that month should line up.
3. Clear stale and duplicate bills. A bill entered twice, or one paid by card but never matched, inflates the 90-plus column.
4. Apply supplier credits. Unapplied credit notes and prepayments sitting separately overstate what’s owed.
5. Flag disputed invoices. A bill you’re not paying because the goods were faulty isn’t the same as one you can’t pay. Mark it, with one line of explanation.
6. Note any payment arrangements. If a supplier has agreed to a plan, say so and show it’s being met.
7. Separate personal or related-party bills. A director’s loan or a related company’s invoice shouldn’t sit among trade suppliers without a label.

Our guide for bookkeepers on preparing a client’s loan file covers the rest of the pack, and the Link-up checklist builder splits the documents between what the owner provides and what the adviser provides.

What about the ATO — does it show up here?

Usually not. GST, PAYG withholding and income tax normally sit in separate liability accounts, not in the trade payables ledger. That means a clean-looking payables report can sit alongside a growing ATO balance — and lenders know it. They’ll check your ATO statement of account separately.

Timing matters this month. The September-quarter BAS is due on 28 October for businesses lodging themselves, and some owners hold back supplier payments to cover it. If both supplier and ATO balances are stretched, say so plainly in one note. Our adviser page on explaining red flags to lenders shows how to connect several issues into one coherent explanation.

Which loan does the report point to?

This is where the report earns its place in the file. The shape of your payables helps link the request to the right type of facility.

What the report shows	Facility it often points to
Regular, repeating gap — suppliers paid late each month while customers pay at 45–60 days	Line of credit sized to the gap
Seasonal stock build, paid back as stock sells	Cash flow loan or trade finance for the season
One or two large overdue balances from a one-off event	Term loan to clear them, with creditors often paid at settlement
A large overdue total plus other expensive debt	Consolidation, possibly property-secured to bring repayments down

For scale: lines of credit, cash flow and other unsecured options generally sit between $5k and $500k, sized on turnover and bank statements. Where property is offered — a first or second mortgage, or a caveat, over residential or commercial property — business loans run from $20k up to $5m. Your payables report doesn’t decide the amount on its own, but it shows the lender what the money is for and whether it solves the problem.

A worked example

Here’s a hypothetical case. A family-run building supplies business in regional Victoria has strong sales but two large commercial customers paying at 60 days or more. Its bookkeeper runs month-end reports as at 30 September:

• Aged debtors: $310,000, with $140,000 more than 30 days overdue from the two commercial accounts
• Aged payables, aged by invoice date: $265,000, with $120,000 showing as 61–90 days
• Re-run by due date, after clearing a $9,000 duplicate bill and applying $6,000 of supplier credits: $250,000, with $55,000 genuinely more than 30 days past due
• One supplier recently moved the business to cash on delivery after a missed payment

On first glance, the original report looked alarming. The tidied version, with a short note — “overdue payables reflect two commercial customers paying slowly; both remain current in their own terms and continue to order” — tells a different story. A lender might look at a line of credit sized around the debtors gap, so suppliers can be paid on terms and the cash-on-delivery account restored. The figures are illustrative only, and every lender’s view differs.

Advisers: raising it with the client

If you’re the bookkeeper or accountant, you often see a payables list stretching months before the owner thinks of it as a funding issue. A useful way in is the comparison: “Your customers are taking 58 days to pay you, and you’re taking 70 to pay suppliers. That gap is costing you supplier goodwill — should we look at funding it properly?” Referrals come through the same enquiry form, with a note that an adviser referred the client; our page on how to refer a client explains what to include.

Late with suppliers? Let’s link the gap to the right lender

Falling behind with suppliers is stressful, and it’s easy to feel the report will count against you. In our experience, it’s one of the clearest documents in the file — it shows exactly what the money is for. Owners juggling slow customers and impatient suppliers are exactly who we help.

The enquiry form is short — around a minute — and asking leaves your credit file alone: no credit check when you first enquire. Your details don’t get blasted out to a pile of lenders, so your phone stays quiet; instead your file is read and linked to one lender that suits. A real person reviews how your payables and debtors fit together, then rings you, and your bookkeeper or accountant is welcome to join the call. Fill the form in accurately — including roughly what’s owed to suppliers and how late it is — so the first match is the right one.

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