How to know who you owe and when it's due
On this page
- 1.How to know who you owe and when it's due
- 2.How to track business expenses (the no-shoebox method)
Not knowing what bills are coming is how cash flow surprises you. Here's how accounts payable should work — every bill captured, every due date visible, matched to your bank — so you always know who you owe and when.
The pain: bills you forgot were coming
A supplier emails an invoice. You glance at it, think "I'll pay that nearer the date," and carry on. It joins three other emailed invoices, two PDFs in a folder, and one you're pretty sure exists but can't find. Then one morning a £1,400 payment you'd half-forgotten lands — right after you'd mentally counted that cash as spare.
That's the problem with bills. They arrive scattered — email, post, PDF, "I'll send the invoice over" — and there's no single place that says: here's everyone you owe, here's how much, here's when each one is due. So you carry it in your head, badly.
The cost isn't just stress. It's two specific failures. You pay something late and get a chased email or a supplier going cold on you. Or you get surprised by a payment you forgot was coming and your cash flow lurches. Both come from the same gap: you don't have a clear, current list of what's owed and when.
Knowing who you owe and when it's due — that's accounts payable (the money your business owes to suppliers). Here's how to actually have that view, instead of carrying it in your head.
The hard way today: a folder, a calendar, and a lot of hope
Most founders cobble together a system that mostly works, right up until it doesn't.
The email-and-memory method. Invoices live in your inbox. You pay them when you remember, or when the supplier chases. There's no list, no due dates, no total. You genuinely don't know at any moment how much you owe — and you find out the hard way, one payment at a time.
The spreadsheet method. A tab with supplier, amount, due date. Better — now there's a list. But you have to type every bill in by hand, keep the due dates updated, tick off what's paid, and remember to look at it. The day you stop maintaining it, it lies to you. And it never tells you whether a bill's actually been paid; you have to cross-check the bank yourself.
The Xero method. You enter bills properly, so there's a real payables list and an aging view. Solid. But you're still keying in each bill, still manually matching payments to bills to mark them paid, and still the one who has to log in and look. The structure is there; the upkeep is all on you, and a bill you never entered simply doesn't exist in the system.
The thread running through all three: the list is only as good as your discipline in maintaining it. And discipline is exactly what runs out in a busy week.
How it's automatic in Ledgers: every bill captured, every due date visible
Ledgers builds the payables list for you and keeps it true on its own — so "who do I owe and when" is always one glance, never a reconstruction.
Here's how it works.
Bills get captured, not retyped. Forward an emailed invoice or snap a paper one, and Ledgers reads it — supplier, amount, due date — and creates a bill automatically (using the same receipt OCR that reads your receipts: software reading text off the document). You're not transcribing invoices; you're forwarding them.
Every bill lands in one payables view, sorted by due date. All your outstanding bills sit in a single list — who, how much, due when — ordered so the next thing due is the next thing you see. That's your accounts payable, built and current, without you maintaining a spreadsheet.
It matches payments to bills automatically. When you pay a supplier and that payment appears in your bank feed, Ledgers matches it to the bill and marks it paid by itself. The list stays honest with no ticking-off on your part — what's still showing as due genuinely is due. (How that matching works, and why it stops double-payments, is its own piece — see matching bills to bank payments.)
It surfaces what's due soon. Because every bill has a due date and the list keeps itself current, Ledgers can show you what's coming — this week, next week — so a £1,400 payment never ambushes you. You see it coming while you can still plan around it.
What you'd see and do
Open Ledgers and the question "who do I owe?" has a one-screen answer: a list of every outstanding bill, sorted by due date, with the total at the top. No inbox archaeology, no spreadsheet you stopped trusting.
You can see at a glance what's due this week, what's overdue, and what's coming next month. When you've paid something, you don't tick it off — the bank feed matches the payment and it drops off the list on its own. New invoices you forward turn into bills and slot straight into the view.
And because every bill links to its document and its payment, nothing's vague. You can see the original invoice, the due date, and the exact bank payment that settled it — all joined up, all traceable, nothing disappearing.
That's the whole shift. "Who do I owe and when" stops being a worry you carry and becomes a list you check — current, complete, and built without you maintaining it. Your cash flow stops surprising you, because you can finally see what's heading for the door before it leaves.
Ready to always know who you owe? In Ledgers, every bill is captured automatically, sorted by due date, and matched to your bank payments — so your accounts payable list is always current and nothing ambushes your cash flow. See your numbers without learning accounting → start free.
Want to stop double-paying or paying late? Stop double-paying suppliers: matching bills to bank payments →
This is also why profit can look fine while cash gets tight: Profit vs cash — why you can be profitable and still broke →
Frequently asked questions
What is accounts payable?
Accounts payable is the money your business owes to suppliers for goods or services you've received but not yet paid for — your outstanding bills. Keeping a clear, current list of what's owed and when it's due is how you avoid late payments and cash flow surprises.
How do I keep track of bills to pay?
Capture every bill in one place with its due date, and keep it updated as you pay things off. The reliable way is software that reads incoming invoices into a payables list and matches your bank payments to them automatically, so the list stays accurate without manual upkeep.
How do I know how much my business owes right now?
You need a single payables view that totals every outstanding bill. In Ledgers, bills are captured automatically and matched to bank payments, so the running total of what you owe — and when each bill is due — is always current at a glance.
What's the difference between accounts payable and accounts receivable?
Accounts payable is money you owe to suppliers; accounts receivable is money customers owe you. One is bills to pay, the other is invoices to collect — and you want a clear view of both.
See your numbers without learning accounting
Ledgers does the bookkeeping — bank feeds, VAT, year-end — and keeps your accountant in the loop. Free for pre-revenue founders.
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