Accounts receivable is a balance sheet asset that indicates money owed to a business in the short term.
Fremont, CA: Accounts receivable is the amount of money owed to a corporation for items or services given or used but not yet paid for by customers (AR). On the balance sheet, accounts receivables are current assets, and AR refers to any amount owed by customers for purchases made on credit.
Overdue invoices or money owing by consumers are known as accounts receivable. Accounts that a firm is entitled to receive as a product or service are accounts payable. Accounts receivables, or receivables, are a sort of credit that a company gives to its customers, and they usually have terms that require payments within a certain amount of time. It might range from a few days to a whole fiscal or calendar year.
Companies list accounts receivable as assets on their balance sheets since the customer has a legal obligation to repay the loan. Accounts receivable are also considered current assets, which indicates the debtor must pay the account balance within a year or less. Receivables imply that a company has made a credit sale but has not yet received payment from the customer. In essence, the corporation has accepted a client's short-term IOU.
Accounts receivable aging schedules are used by many firms to maintain track of the condition and health of their AR accounts.
Advantages of using Accounts Receivable
Accounts receivable is a critical component of a company's basic analysis. As a current asset, accounts receivable reflects a company's liquidity or ability to meet short-term obligations without generating new cash flows.
Accounts receivable gets frequently analyzed in the context of turnover, also known as the accounts receivable turnover ratio, which indicates the number of times a company's accounts receivable amount has got collected within an accounting period. Days sales outstanding study, for example, evaluates the average collection timeframe for a company's receivables balance over a specific period.
