Your Accounts Payable Ledger

Each supplier from whom your business purchases goods or services for later payment should have a separate page (or pages) in your accounts payable ledger. The names of these suppliers should be arranged alphabetically and filed in a separate book or binder.

This type of ledger is inexpensive to buy and is available at most stationery stores. The following is a sample page from an accounts payable ledger.

As you can see from this example, an accounts payable ledger looks very similar to an accounts receivable ledger. In this example, your business charged $910 worth of merchandise on October 13, and a further $312 on November 7. On November 30, you send a payment cheque of $416, leaving you a balance owing of $806.

You can see at a glance how much you owe each supplier and when the last cheque was sent. Any disputes regarding payment (or non-payment) of invoices can be quickly solved if you maintain up-to-date accounts payable records.

To find the total owing to all your suppliers, add the balances owing to each supplier.