AR Aging report

The AR Aging report (accounts receivable aging) shows you who owes the HOA money and how long they’ve owed it. It’s the single most useful document for collections decisions. Print it once a month, run through the 90+ day list with the board, decide which accounts need a notice or a collection lawyer.

Where to find it

Finances > Reports in the admin sidebar, then click the AR Aging tab. Reports are part of Herald Automate; on a plan without it, the screen shows an upgrade prompt instead.

What’s on the report

A table with one row per delinquent property. Properties that are paid up don’t appear (so the report is short and actionable). Each row shows:

• Property (the address, e.g. “203 Cedar Court”)
• Resident (current resident’s name)
• Current (0 to 29 days past due, or not yet due)
• 30-59 days past due
• 60-89 days past due
• 90-119 days past due
• 120+ days past due
• Total owed

Five summary cards above the table show the totals across all properties for each bucket, so the board can see the aging spread at a glance.

Choosing the as of date

Above the table, the As of: date picker controls the snapshot date. By default it’s today. Change it to:

• See what your AR looked like at month end (set to last day of last month)
• Compare prior period AR to current AR (run twice, with different as of dates)
• Generate a year end statement (set to Dec 31)

How aging is computed: FIFO payment allocation

The system uses a standard FIFO (First In First Out) allocation:

1. Walk through the property’s transaction history oldest to newest.
2. For each charge (Dues, Fine, Assessment, Booking Fee), add the amount to a queue of unpaid charges.
3. For each payment or credit, pay down the oldest charge in the queue first.
4. Whatever remains unpaid in the queue at the as of date is the property’s outstanding AR.
5. Each unpaid charge falls into a bucket based on (as of date) - (charge date).

A property’s imported starting balance (the Initial Balance from your roster import) counts as the oldest charge of all: payments retire it first, and whatever is left of it shows in the 120+ bucket, because it has no date of its own.

This is the standard approach to AR aging.

Why FIFO matters

Imagine a property owes:

• January Dues: $250 (charged Jan 1)
• February Dues: $250 (charged Feb 1)
• March Dues: $250 (charged Mar 1)

Then makes one payment of $250 on March 5. FIFO says: that payment knocks out January’s charge. So as of March 31:

• January owed: $0 (paid)
• February owed: $250 (60 days past due)
• March owed: $250 (30 days past due)

Total still owed: $500, distributed across buckets correctly. The opposite (LIFO) would credit the most recent month and leave January looking 90 days late. FIFO is the fairer reading for the resident.

What counts as a charge

Charges that increase AR:

• DUES (regular monthly or annual dues)
• FINE (covenant violations, late fees)
• ASSESSMENT (special assessments voted by the board)
• BOOKING_FEE (amenity rental fees)
• REFUND (a refund issued to a resident increases what they owe back)

What pays them down:

• PAYMENT (cash actually received from the resident)
• CREDIT (bookkeeping credit issued by admin, e.g. “we waived this fine”)

What’s excluded:

• Charges where depositStatus = REFUNDED (the deposit was returned, no longer owed)
• Voided records
• Inter account transfers, processing fees, platform charges (these are HOA side, not resident side)

Sort order

The report sorts most delinquent first:

1. Properties with the most in 120+ days past due
2. Then by 90-119 days
3. Then by 60-89 days
4. Then by total owed

So when you print the PDF, the worst accounts are at the top of the page. Useful for collections triage.

Color coding

In the on screen view:

• Current renders in plain slate (no urgency)
• 30-59 and 60-89 day buckets render in amber (worth a phone call)
• 90+ day buckets render in rose (escalation candidate)

The PDF prints in black and white but preserves the bucket structure.

Export to PDF

The PDF button generates a board ready printout: community name, period label (“As of [date]”), the full table with totals, and a footer with the generating user and page numbers. Hand it to the board at the meeting.

Export to CSV

The CSV button produces a spreadsheet you can manipulate. Useful for:

• Importing into a collections lawyer’s tracking system
• Building a custom mail merge for late notices
• Sorting by resident name instead of delinquency

Common questions

“This property paid last week but they’re still on the report.” Refresh the page. The report computes from the current state of the database every time it’s opened. If the payment is recorded, it should pay down the queue.

“A property shows on the report but I think they’re paid up.” Open the property (Community > Properties > click the property) and walk through its Payment History. The most common cause is a charge that was never offset by a payment, or a payment recorded against the wrong property.

“Can I exclude one property from the report (e.g., the HOA’s own model home)?” Not currently. A property only appears when it owes something, so a property that is never charged never shows up.

“How do I generate a late notice from this report?” Go to Communicate > Formal Letters and pick the Late Notice template. It carries an {AMOUNT_DUE} merge field for the balance. See the formal letters article for setup.

Setting expectations

AR Aging is a snapshot. It changes the moment any payment is recorded. Don’t expect the printed PDF to match your screen if more payments came in between print time and meeting time. Re print right before the meeting if you want fresh numbers.

What’s next

• The companion AP Aging report shows what the HOA owes vendors.
• The full P&L is at Finances > Reports > Profit & Loss.
• For trend analysis (is AR growing or shrinking?), run the report at multiple as of dates and compare.