Total open accounts receivable right now. The live working-capital top-line and the denominator behind DSO and every aging ratio.
At a glance
The total open accounts receivable balance at this moment: the sum of every posted Invoice that has not yet been paid, net of applied receipts and credit memos. This is the live top-line working-capital figure, the single number that answers “how much do our customers owe us right now,” and it is the denominator that DSO, the aging shares, and the bad-debt provision all sit on top of. It moves in real time as Invoices post and receipts apply, so it is the heartbeat of the AR cycle. The card reads the AR sub-ledger directly, dimension-tagged in Sage Intacct so finance can pivot the live balance by Customer, Class, Department, or Entity and see exactly where the working capital is parked.
| What it counts | The current sum of all open AR: posted Invoices not yet fully paid, minus applied receipts, minus applied credit memos, plus any open debit memos. The card reads the AR sub-ledger live rather than as of a period boundary. |
| Live behaviour | Updates as activity posts. A newly posted Invoice raises it; a posted-and-applied receipt lowers it. This is a real-time balance, not a period snapshot. |
| Unapplied receipts | Cash received but not yet applied to specific Invoices reduces the net balance but may leave individual Invoices showing open in detail views. The headline reflects the net customer balance. |
| Deferred revenue | Invoices tied to ASC 606 deferred-revenue schedules contribute to AR because the customer owes the cash, independent of when the revenue is recognised. |
| Currency | Multi-Entity Console: each entity’s open AR in base currency, summed in reporting currency at the configured FX cadence per entity. |
| Entity scope | Card respects the dashboard entity filter. |
| Dimensional cut | Each open dollar carries Intacct dimensions through. Pivot by Customer to see who owes the most, by Class to see which brand or channel carries the balance, by Department to attribute AR to the originating sales team. |
| Time window | RT |
| Alert trigger | None by default. This is a top-line reference figure, not an alarm. The alarms live on the ratios derived from it (DSO, aging shares). Configurable per workspace if you want a hard ceiling. |
| Roles | owner, finance |
Calculation
Calculated automatically from your Sage data. The card sums all open AR sub-ledger balances live, netting applied receipts and credit memos against posted Invoices. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.Worked example
A UK B2B coffee-roastery brand on Sage Intacct, single entity, GBP base currency, roughly 9M GBP annual revenue selling wholesale to cafes and grocers on Net-30 terms through a BigCommerce B2B portal, plus a small Shopify DTC line. Snapshot 14 Apr 26, mid-afternoon. The live AR Balance reads 1,180,000 GBP. Finance pivots it by Customer to understand the composition.| Customer cohort | Open AR (GBP) | Share of live balance |
|---|---|---|
| Top 5 chain accounts | 612,000 | 52% |
| Independent cafes (long tail) | 348,000 | 29% |
| Grocery distributors | 168,000 | 14% |
| DTC and misc | 52,000 | 4% |
| AR Balance, live (this card) | 1,180,000 |
- 1,180,000 GBP is the working-capital number the whole AR story hangs on, which is why it is a Hero with no alert. On its own it is neither good nor bad: 1.18M GBP of open AR on a 9M GBP business is roughly 48 days of sales tied up in receivables, which is reasonable for Net-30 wholesale. The card has no alert because a large AR balance is not inherently a problem; a large and aging AR balance is. The job of this card is to be the reliable, live denominator that makes the aging cards and DSO meaningful. When Days Sales Outstanding or AR Aging 60+ Days move, this is the base they moved against.
- The live behaviour is the point. This is a heartbeat, not a month-end photo. Watch it through a single day and you see it tick up as the morning’s Invoices post and tick down as the afternoon’s receipts apply. That live quality is what lets finance answer cash-flow questions in the moment rather than waiting for a period close. Before a Friday Bacs reconciliation, the live balance tells you exactly what is still outstanding; a static month-end aging report cannot.
- Concentration is the first thing to read off the Customer pivot. Here the top 5 chain accounts hold 52% of the live balance. That concentration is a double-edged signal: it makes collections efficient (chase 5 accounts, recover half the book) but it also means a single chain going into difficulty puts a large slice of working capital at risk at once. Pair this card with Sage Top Customers by Revenue to see whether your AR concentration matches your revenue concentration, which is healthy, or exceeds it, which means a few accounts are paying disproportionately slowly.
- The live balance is the bridge between revenue recognised and cash collected. Read it alongside Invoiced Revenue and Cash Collected: invoiced revenue flows in, cash collected flows out, and this balance is the reservoir level in between. If invoiced revenue is steady but the AR balance is climbing, cash is collecting slower than you are billing, which is the earliest possible warning of a working-capital squeeze, visible here before it shows up in DSO.
- Unapplied receipts can make the live balance look better than the Invoice detail suggests. On this account a 38,000 GBP customer payment had landed in the bank but was not yet applied to its Invoices. The net AR Balance already reflected the lower figure, but a Customer-level aging detail still showed those Invoices open. That gap is a Cash Application Rate issue, not a collection issue, and reading the live net balance against the open-Invoice detail is exactly how you catch it. Once applied, the detail and the headline reconcile.
Sibling cards merchants should reference together
| Card | Why pair it with AR Balance (live) |
|---|---|
| Days Sales Outstanding | This balance is the numerator behind DSO. The two move together. |
| AR Aging 60+ Days | The at-risk slice of this live total. Read the share against the whole. |
| AR Aging Detail | The full bucket breakdown of this balance. |
| Cash Collected | The outflow from this reservoir. Collections drain the balance. |
| Invoiced Revenue | The inflow into this reservoir. Billing fills the balance. |
| Cash Application Rate | A low rate means the live balance and the Invoice detail disagree. |
| Sage Top Customers by Revenue | Tests whether AR concentration matches revenue concentration. |
| Customer Credit Utilisation | The live balance per customer against their credit limit. |
Reconciling against Sage
Where to look in Sage: The native Sage Intacct views to run side by side with this card:Reports → Accounts Receivable → AR Aging Report (total open AR is the sum of all buckets, run as of right now) Reports → Accounts Receivable → Customer Ledger (the open-Invoice and applied-receipt detail per customer) General Ledger → Trial Balance (the AR control account balance, which should tie to the sub-ledger total) Reports → Accounts Receivable → AR Ledger (the transaction-level open-item detail) Interactive Custom Report (ICR) built on the AR data source summing all open Invoice balances net of applied receipts, pivoted by Customer and Class dimensionsThe single most important reconciliation is sub-ledger to GL: the live AR Balance on this card should tie to the AR control account balance in the Trial Balance. If they diverge, there is an unposted item, a direct journal to the control account that bypassed the sub-ledger, or a timing gap between posting and the report. For Multi-Entity Console accounts, run the aging by entity at the same scope as the dashboard filter so FX does not shift the reporting-currency value of remote-entity AR between runs. Common reconciliation pitfalls:
- Sub-ledger vs GL timing. The card reads the AR sub-ledger live; the Trial Balance reflects posted GL entries. A few minutes of posting lag can make them differ momentarily.
- Direct journals to the AR control account. A manual journal posted straight to the AR control account (rather than through an Invoice) breaks the sub-ledger-to-GL tie. These should be rare and investigated; see Manual JEs as % of Total.
- Unposted Invoices and receipts. Draft Invoices not yet posted are excluded; a large batch waiting to post will lift the balance the moment it does.
| Reason | Direction | Why |
|---|---|---|
| As-of timing | Either | Card reads live; a report run earlier today reflects a slightly different moment of posting and application. |
| Unposted items | Card may understate | Draft Invoices not yet posted are excluded until they post. |
| Unapplied receipts | Either | Cash received but unapplied reduces the net balance; whether a given report nets it depends on its configuration. |
| Credit and debit memos | Either | Open credit memos reduce the balance, open debit memos raise it; report netting settings vary. |
| Direct GL journals | Card may differ from GL | A journal posted directly to the AR control account moves the GL without moving the sub-ledger. |
| Deferred-revenue invoices | Either | These contribute to AR (cash owed) regardless of recognition timing; some revenue-centric reports treat them differently. |
| FX cadence per entity | Small | Multi-Entity Console: card uses current-day FX, Intacct reports may use period-end. Differences usually under 2%. |
| Intercompany AR | Either | On consolidation, intercompany receivables may be eliminated; the per-entity card shows them, the consolidated view may not. |
| Card | Expected relationship | What the comparison reveals |
|---|---|---|
| Invoiced Revenue | Inflow | Invoiced revenue adds to the AR reservoir. Rising invoiced revenue with a flat balance means collections are keeping pace. |
| Cash Collected | Outflow | Collections drain the reservoir. The balance equals prior balance plus invoicing minus collections minus credits. |
| Revenue Gap vs Commerce | Upstream | If commerce orders are not flowing into Intacct Invoices, AR will understate what customers actually owe. |
| Customer Credit Utilisation | Per-customer | The live balance divided by each customer’s credit limit is their utilisation; high utilisation plus aging is a default profile. |
| Sage Health Score | Context | The AR balance in isolation is neutral; the score weights it against DSO and aging to judge whether the level is healthy. |