What your MIS's open-AR number is hiding

The open-AR total in a print shop's MIS is rarely all money owed. A large share is usually cash that already arrived but was never applied, misapplied payments, or legacy balances. Reconcile against the bank before chasing anyone.

Late payment is real. Intuit QuickBooks' 2025 survey of 2,487 US small businesses found 56% were owed money on unpaid invoices, an average of $17,500 each, and 47% had invoices more than 30 days overdue (source 2). The Credit Research Foundation put median days sales outstanding at 38 days in Q1 2025 (source 3).

But a print shop's MIS adds a second problem on top of slow payers: the open-AR number is often wrong, and wrong in the direction that makes you chase customers who already paid.

Three things that look like open AR

1. Truly open. The job shipped, the invoice went out, no money arrived. This is the only kind worth chasing.
2. Paid and unapplied. The money is in the bank. It arrived as a batched ACH that covered eleven invoices and cited one, or as a check from a payer whose name does not match the customer record, or on a card terminal nobody reconciles. The MIS still shows the invoice open.
3. Misapplied or legacy. A payment posted to the wrong account, a deposit leg recorded as a sale, balances from a system migration years ago. Not collectible and not real.

Why the number drifts

National storefront and corporate customers pay by batched ACH: one deposit covers many invoices and the remittance cites one. Checks arrive from a parent company, a bill-pay service or a trade name that does not match the customer record. A card terminal settles to the bank and nobody posts it. Each of these leaves an invoice open in the MIS with the money already in the bank.

A memo invoice number on the check image is authoritative. Amount-matching alone constantly hits the wrong customer.

How to audit yours

• Export every open invoice from the MIS. Export twelve months of bank transactions, card settlements and ACH detail.
• Match by invoice number first (memo lines, remittance PDFs, check images), then by payer name against a payer-to-customer map, then by amount. Amount last, never first.
• Remember checks clear weeks after their date and may sit inside a remote-deposit batch; search the whole year, not the week around the invoice.
• Label every balance: truly open, paid-unapplied, misapplied. Chase only the first list.

This is the exact procedure behind Found Money.