You can use two types of report for displaying outstanding items:

• Use Custom outstanding items report to see their status. It looks through all posts (see lines of journal entry) belonging to the selected period. Post is any payment and posted receivable or payable. You should enter only end due dates, document dates and/or posting dates (dates to) using this type of report in order to find outstanding items and incorrectly closed documents and payments.
• Use Custom payment analysis by documents to see the status of outstanding items. It looks through all documents belonging to the selected period. Use it to create complex analyses of outstanding items. These analyses are based on issued documents. This is followed by subsequent payments in the later stages of the analysis.

If posts and related documents do not match trying to create an outstanding items report WITHOUT specifying date criteria, it occurs due to incorrect closing of documents or due to the fact that you posted payment whose related document has not been posted.

Trying to display the report including date restrictions, incongruities occur due to invoices that are posted with different due dates.

The distinction between both types of report can best be presented through examples.

Example 1: Incorrectly Closed Document

2. Issued invoice with ID of linked document 07300000024, due date (currency) April 13th, 2007, €1,000 debit
3. Received payment with ID of linked document 001, due date (currency) April 16th 2007, €1,000 credit

Creating an outstanding items report using such data, the report and payment analysis differ:

1.Payment Analysis by Documents

a) Outstanding items type "Customer"

Returns information that the linked document 07300000024 has not been paid. The customer has an outstanding amount of €1,000 pending since payments without documents were not included in the report.

b) Outstanding items type "Include Overpayments"

returns information that the linked document 07300000024 has not been paid. Because you checked Include Overpayments, the report will include all payments which do not close open linked documents. That is why customer's outstanding amount is €0,00. Since the two items are not mutually closed, they both appear in the outstanding items report.

2. Custom Outstanding Items Report (by Posts)

returns information that the linked document 07300000024 has not been paid. Because all payments which do not close open linked documents are included in the report, the customer's outstanding amount is €0,00. Since the two items are not mutually closed, they both appear in the outstanding items report.

Manually closing outstanding items closes the invoice and its payment mutually. Hence both overviews give equivalent results regardless of the selected criteria.

For examples of reports see Incorrectly Closed Document.

Example 2: Invoice Containing Different Due Dates

Issued invoice with ID of linked document 07300000025 in the amount of €6,000 with maturities: