Finance & Billing includes four built-in reports for common questions about receivables, deferred revenue, and the general ledger. This article shows you where to find those reports and export their rows.
When to Use This
Use these reports when you need a quick answer to a common finance question: who owes money and for how long, when deferred revenue will be recognized, what to enter in your accounting system, or whether a closed period’s books balance. If you need a question these reports do not answer, use Ask and Export Questions in the Query Center instead.
Prerequisites
- A business unit must be set up for your Rhythm account, so the report has data to show.
- Your Rhythm administrator may need to grant access to these reports, so check with them if you do not see a report you expected.
Find the Reports
- Go to Finance & Billing › Reports.
- Rhythm shows the four built-in reports with a one-line description for each one, along with any reports you or your team saved with your own filters.
- Select a report’s name to open it.
Result
The report runs for your current working business unit and shows the results.
Tip
You can also open any of the four reports directly from the Reports side menu, without opening the full list first.
Warning
These reports, along with other finance records such as open invoices, store credits, batches, and journal entries, are available only in the Rhythm console. They do not appear inside Rhythm Payments.
What Each Report Answers
- A/R Aging. Who owes us money, and for how long? This report lists every customer with an open invoice balance in your working business unit, including pro forma invoices that carry a balance. If you compare this total to an invoice query that excludes pro forma invoices, the totals will not match unless your query uses the same filters. The report splits balances into age buckets: not yet due, then up to 30, 60, 90, and over 90 days late. Only invoiced amounts count, so future pledge installments do not appear until a billing run creates their invoices. A/R Aging follows invoice status, not order status, so an invoice left Open after its order was voided keeps appearing until the invoice itself is resolved. Select a customer’s name to open their record. A/R Aging is a standard report and cannot be customized with extra fields, including G/L codes. To report on those details, run an Invoice Line Items query in the Query Center and add the product’s Accounts Receivable G/L account from its financial configuration as an output field, filtered by invoice date, status, or balance due as needed. Aging uses your own computer’s clock, so staff in different time zones can see the same invoice in a different bucket around midnight.
- Deferral Waterfall. Based on current deferrals, how will revenue be deferred over time? This report shows revenue recognition schedule entries in a grid, based on your configured deferred revenue liability accounts. Each row is the month a transaction was recorded, each column is the month its revenue is recognized, and each cell shows how much of that row’s transactions becomes revenue in that column’s month. Filter the report to one product, such as a membership package, to see only that product’s deferrals, or leave the filter blank to include every product. A product only shows deferral activity here when deferred revenue recognition is turned on in that product’s setup. Filtering by product also helps you track deferral categories, such as longer-term and shorter-term membership products, without creating a separate deferred revenue account for each one. Once a fiscal period closes and its deferred revenue is recognized, that period drops off the waterfall. The report shows what is still scheduled to be recognized, not what has already been recognized, and closing the fiscal period is what moves the revenue from deferred to recognized on your books. Select a cell to open the individual schedule entries behind it. That drill-down cannot be downloaded, so review it on screen or use the Query Center’s revenue recognition queries if you need a file. To see the specific product behind an entry, open that month’s entry from the drill-down. To find its deferred revenue G/L account, open the underlying transaction and review its revenue recognition schedule. Because the waterfall totals only your designated deferred liability accounts, its numbers can differ from the Subledger Entries report, which can include other deferral-related adjustment entries. It can also differ from Membership's Revenue Summary, which totals membership revenue sold in a date range rather than revenue scheduled to be recognized from it.
- Subledger Entries. What are the debits & credits I need to enter into my financial system? For one fiscal period, this report lists each general ledger account by name, not just by code, with its total debits and credits. You can view the totals by batch or combined for the whole period. Select a total to open the individual entries behind it. If an invoice includes more than one product, its posted entries and the amounts you send to your accounting software combine revenue from every product on that invoice. Because of that, a total for one product elsewhere can differ from what this report shows for the same transaction. In multi-currency transactions with bundled products, double-check the currency label next to an entry’s amount. The label can occasionally show the wrong currency even though the amount itself is correct elsewhere in the transaction. This report is a reporting and drill-down tool inside Rhythm, which is different from downloading a posted batch to your accounting software. A transaction missing here is a separate issue from a batch that failed to download. When a deferred revenue batch download looks wrong, compare it with this report filtered to the same batch and fiscal period to confirm which totals are correct. In general, this report, your batch’s contents, and what you send to your accounting software for that batch should match.
- Trial Balance. How have G/L account balances changed during an accounting period? For one closed fiscal period, this report lists every account that had activity or a balance in your working business unit. It includes the account’s starting balance, total debits, total credits, and ending balance. You can change which accounting period it covers instead of always viewing the current one. Select a debit or credit total to open the subledger entries behind it. From there, each entry shows details like the invoiced customer, product, and debit or credit amount, with a link to open the related invoice directly. For finance purposes, use the amount on the report’s own G/L line. The drill-down lists every receivable transaction before it is netted, so its individual entries will not always add up to the same total shown above. Use the drill-down to see who paid what, not for the net figure. Balances are credit-positive, so an asset account with money in it shows as a negative balance. Because Rhythm is a subledger rather than your full general ledger, a cash account’s Trial Balance total can still differ from an external accounting system that also records payables or other cash activity that never passes through Rhythm.
Warning
The Trial Balance report only shows its table for a closed fiscal period. For an open period, Rhythm still calculates the figures, but it hides the table behind a warning until the period closes. No subledger detail is available to drill into until then.
Warning
If a fiscal period includes transactions in more than one currency, a report total can add those amounts together without converting them to one currency first. Treat a mixed-currency total as a rough figure rather than an exact one, and check individual transactions by currency if a balance looks wrong.
See a Past Month's A/R Aging Instead of Today's
If your Rhythm account keeps historical invoice snapshots, the A/R Aging report can show who owed money at the end of an earlier month instead of today.
- Open the A/R Aging report.
- Choose A date in the past and select the month you want.
- Update the report.
Result
Rhythm shows that month’s aging instead of today’s. The report reflects each invoice’s balance after any payment, credit memo, or similar transaction already recorded by that date, so an invoice paid down to zero by the snapshot date will not show as open. The earliest month available is April 2023.
If your account does not keep historical snapshots, A/R Aging always reflects invoices exactly as they stand right now. You can still adjust the report’s date-range filters, but that does not change the Show A/R as of date. An invoice that was open on a past date but has since been paid will not appear if you rerun the report later. Filtering by a batch date works the same way: it narrows which batches are considered, but it does not recreate a historical snapshot because the report still uses each invoice’s current status. The same historical snapshot data is also available as the Historical Invoice Snapshots query type in the Query Center, which is useful when you need a relative date parameter or a recurring date range instead of one fixed month.
Tip
There is not one built-in report that shows every invoice status for a full audit trail. Use the Subledger Entries report for the complete transaction trail, and use historical invoice snapshots, here or in the Query Center, for point-in-time invoice status.
Warning
Snapshot data refreshes on its own schedule rather than continuously, so a very recent change might not appear yet. How far back snapshots exist depends on what has been captured or restored for your account. If a past month returns no results even though you expect data, that can mean no snapshot was captured for that month rather than there being nothing to report. Try a nearby month, or contact Support if the gap persists. Snapshots are also dated using a fixed reference time, so one taken very late in the evening in some U.S. time zones can occasionally be tagged with the next calendar day. If a month-end snapshot looks off by a day or includes an invoice you did not expect, that is the likely reason.
Export a Report's Rows
- Open any of the four reports and let it finish loading.
- Use the report toolbar’s export option.
Result
Rhythm downloads a file with the rows the report is currently showing. The file includes only what the report displayed. It does not include the underlying transactions behind a total, so select the total to drill down first if you need those transactions, or open the same question in the Query Center. Even after you drill down, the Deferral Waterfall does not provide full line-item reconciliation detail, such as invoice, product, or customer billing and shipping information. For that level of detail, use the Query Center’s revenue recognition queries. In the Deferral Waterfall’s own export, the Total column sits at the far right of the file, and amounts show up to two decimal places. A deferral entry is not a payment record, so its export leaves some columns blank on purpose. Details like card information, payment method, or event dates do not apply to a deferral row.
Troubleshoot the Reports
- A membership record doesn't show a deferral you expect. If a deferral is missing from a membership-facing page but the invoice and its subledger entries already show it correctly, the membership page is not displaying it. That does not mean posting failed. Check the invoice or the Subledger Entries and Deferral Waterfall reports first. Many “missing” deferrals turn out to be in a different place than expected.
- A deferred revenue batch and the Deferral Waterfall don't seem to agree. Confirm that you are comparing the same fiscal period and the same report view before assuming there is a calculation error. A mismatch often means two different periods are being compared. Also check whether the transaction is dated into the next accounting month. An invoice or credit memo with a system date in the next month lands in that month’s deferred revenue batch, even if you expected it in the current month’s waterfall, which creates an apparent variance between the two.
- A recognized deferral you know has subledger entries doesn't appear on the Deferral Waterfall. The report’s coverage of already-recognized periods can vary. If a deferral seems to be missing, confirm the amount through the Subledger Entries report, and contact Support if it still does not add up.
- Deferral totals for older data look overstated, or don't reconcile with the Subledger Entries report or a revenue recognition query. A past data issue could have created duplicate deferral entries for some accounts, which appears as an inflated Deferral Waterfall total for the affected period. A specific deferral could also have been left out of a deferral batch export even though it exists elsewhere. If your numbers still do not reconcile after you check the fiscal period and report context, contact Support with the transaction in question.
- A Subledger Entries total for a shared G/L revenue account still looks wrong after a known issue was fixed. A correction to how shared G/L revenue accounts display in this report does not rewrite report output you already generated. Check against a new example rather than an old one.
- The Subledger Entries report looks blank for a batch you know has posted. Processing can occasionally lag briefly right after a batch posts. Check again in a few minutes before assuming the batch’s entries are missing.
- Trial Balance's overview total and its drill-down details don't quite agree, especially for entries dated the very last day of the fiscal period. This can happen when the overview and the drill-down pick up slightly different entries for that boundary date, rather than because of a calculation error. Check the fiscal period on the entries in question before escalating it as a discrepancy.
- A row in A/R Aging opens to a "not found" error. The invoice behind that row may have been deleted after the report calculated its balance. Refresh the report instead of treating this as a report error.
Related Reading
For a custom question the built-in reports do not cover, such as a different combination of fields or a record type like installment schedules or products, see Ask and Export Questions in the Query Center. If you are reconciling installment-plan activity for an audit, a report built around order date and payment date, like A/R Aging, does not line up cleanly with how installment plans bill over time. Use the Query Center against installment schedules instead.