Most contractors already have AR reports. QuickBooks will give you an aging summary in two clicks. The problem is that an aging report tells you who owes you money. It doesn't tell you who is actually chasing it, what was said last, or which invoices nobody has touched in three weeks.
That gap is where AR reporting software earns its keep. This guide covers what contractors should look for, the questions to ask in a demo, and how to tell whether you need a dedicated tool at all.
Get a demo and see AR reporting built for contractors who run on QuickBooks Online.
QuickBooks Online is good at recording what happened: invoices sent, payments received, balances open. Its A/R aging summary and detail reports are a solid starting point, and plenty of small contractors run their collections off them for years.
The cracks show up when more than one person touches collections, or when invoices start sitting in the 60 and 90+ day buckets. At that point the questions you need answered aren't accounting questions:
Answering those from QuickBooks means spreadsheets, sticky notes and asking around the office. That's the job AR reporting software should take off your plate.
Your reporting is only as good as the data under it. Look for a tool that syncs customers, invoices, payments and credit memos both ways with QuickBooks Online, so a payment collected in the tool posts back to QuickBooks without anyone re-keying it. Ask how quickly changes show up and what happens when the sync misses something.
Standard 0–30, 31–60, 61–90 and 90+ buckets are table stakes. Contractors also need aging rolled up the way the work is structured: by customer, by job or project, and by parent account. For a restoration company, that might mean seeing every open job under one insurance carrier in a single view.
This is the report most tools don't have, and it's often the most useful one. It shows the open balance that has no follow-up plan on it: invoices nobody is chasing. If a tool can show you that number and let you put those invoices on a follow-up sequence in one step, you'll find money you didn't know was slipping.
Good collections reporting logs every touch against the invoice and the customer: emails, texts, voicemails, calls, notes and promises to pay. When an adjuster says "we never got it," you should be able to see exactly what was sent and when, and whether the invoice was viewed.
If more than one person works your AR, you need to see how each of them is doing: open balance assigned, cash collected, average days to get paid, and their activity history. This isn't about policing people. It's about knowing who needs help and which approaches work.
Restoration and roofing contractors don't have one kind of payer. A carrier, an adjuster, a homeowner paying a deductible and a mortgage company all behave differently. Look for reporting that lets you separate these contact types and see where each kind of payer stalls.
Owners and controllers shouldn't have to log in to know where cash stands. Check that the tool can schedule key reports, like A/R overview, cash collected and promise-to-pay status, to arrive on a regular cadence.
The best AR reporting turns into a to-do list. Instead of reading an aging report and deciding who to call, your team should open a ranked list of who to contact today and what to do next. That's the difference between knowing your AR is aging and actually doing something about it.
Accounting software reports. QuickBooks and similar systems. Free with what you already pay for, accurate on balances, but they don't track follow-up activity or tell your team what to do next.
Enterprise AR platforms. Built for large finance teams, often on ERPs like NetSuite or SAP. Deep analytics, but long implementations and pricing aimed at much larger companies. Most don't speak the language of jobs, carriers and adjusters.
Contractor-focused collections tools. Built on top of QuickBooks Online for small and mid-sized contractors. Reporting is paired with the follow-up itself, so the report and the action live in one place.
AR Workflow is collections software for contractors on QuickBooks Online. AR reporting is built into the daily work rather than bolted on:
And because the follow-up runs in the same place (email, two-way text, ringless voicemail and calls from your own number), every report reflects what your team actually did, not what someone remembered to log.
AR reporting software shows what customers owe, how long it's been owed, and what is being done to collect it. Collections-focused tools add activity tracking, follow-up status and team performance on top of the balances your accounting system already reports.
Yes. QuickBooks Online includes A/R aging summary and detail reports. What it doesn't track is the follow-up on each invoice: who contacted the customer, how, and what's scheduled next.
At minimum: aging by customer and job, invoices with no follow-up scheduled, promises to pay coming due, and cash collected for the week. If more than one person works collections, add performance by person.
Days sales outstanding (DSO) is the average number of days it takes to collect after invoicing. For contractors who front labor, materials and equipment on every job, a high DSO means payroll and new jobs are being funded out of pocket while earned money sits in receivables.
Yes. Any contractor that invoices from QuickBooks Online and chases payment after the work is done can use it. Insurance-driven trades benefit most from payer-type reporting, but aging, follow-up tracking and team performance apply to every trade.