Payables systems will produce dozens of reports and organisations act on about four. The test for whether a report is worth building is simple: would anybody do something differently as a result. Applying that test usually shortens a reporting pack considerably and improves what remains, because the survivors get read.
The two weekly ones
Counts of invoices by state, and the age of the oldest item in each state with an owner's name against it. Together they show where work is accumulating and who is holding the oldest items, which is a five-minute management routine that catches problems while they are small and specific rather than general.
The month-end one
Goods received but not invoiced. This is the accrual in operational form, it is finance's most-wanted report from a payables system, and it exists only if receipts are recorded at line level. Where it cannot be produced, somebody rebuilds it by hand every month, usually at the least convenient moment.
The monthly improvement one
The exception reason mix, by count and by department. This is the only report that changes what other teams do rather than describing payables to itself, and it is the one that identifies which upstream problem is generating the workload. Presented as a shared measure rather than a complaint, it tends to get acted on.
Questions people ask about accounts payable report
What about supplier spend analysis?
Useful to purchasing for negotiation, rarely acted on operationally by payables. Build it if somebody will use it.
Should we report days payable outstanding?
To finance as a cash measure, yes. As a payables performance measure it mostly reports somebody else's payment policy.
How long should producing these take?
Minutes. If it takes an afternoon, the underlying data structure is the thing to fix.