Resource Library
Accounts Receivable Resources
Understand A/R aging and practical strategies for reducing outstanding balances.
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Accounts Receivable explained
Accounts receivable is the money a practice has billed and not yet collected, grouped by how long it has been outstanding — usually in 30-day buckets counted from the billing date. The figure that matters most is the share sitting beyond 90 days, because that is the portion closest to ageing out of the payer's appeal and filing windows altogether.
A/R gets harder to collect with time for practical reasons rather than procedural ones. Appeal deadlines close, documentation trails go cold, the staff who remember the encounter move on, and the claim sits further down every queue it is in. The claim does not become invalid; it becomes expensive to prove.
Two figures describe A/R health together: days in A/R, the average time between billing and payment, and the percentage of the balance over 90 days. Neither has a single correct value, because specialty, payer mix and patient responsibility all move them — so both are read as a trend against the practice's own baseline and broken out by payer.
If aged balances have gone unworked for a while, the clean-up described here is our accounts receivable management service.
Terms that keep coming up
- Aging bucket
- A band of outstanding balances grouped by age — commonly 0–30, 31–60, 61–90 and over 90 days from the billing date.
- Days in A/R
- The average number of days between billing a claim and being paid for it. Read as a trend, not against a fixed benchmark.
- Timely filing limit
- The contractual deadline for submitting a claim after the date of service. Past it, a claim is generally not appealable on its merits.
1 article
Articles and guides on accounts receivable
Each piece opens with the direct answer and then shows the working. For the wider library, return to the medical billing resource hub.
- Article
What Is a Good Days in A/R for a Medical Practice?
How to calculate days in accounts receivable, the benchmark ranges most practices are held to, and the aging buckets that reveal what the headline number hides.
5 min read
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Topics next to accounts receivable
The revenue cycle is one connected process, so the hub next door usually explains the number you are looking at. The full resource library lists every topic, and the billing services we manage show where each one turns into work.
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