Payment Advisory

Payment Advisory analyzes your open bills and suggests what to pay now, what to schedule, and what can wait. Recommendations are grouped by urgency with a short explanation for each bill — useful when cash is tight or you want a second opinion before a pay run.

Requires the AP Automation add-on.

Key capabilities

• Bills grouped into four priority bands: Overdue, Due this week, Due this month, and Can defer
• Plain-English reasoning on each recommendation (due date, amount, contract match)
• Summary metrics: total outstanding, overdue balance, and counts per band
• Available on Bills → Smart Pay in Books and Payment Guidance in the client portal
• Firm AP summary on the practice dashboard — overdue and outstanding totals across all clients

How it works

DayZero reads each open bill's balance, due date, payment terms, and contract-match status, then assigns a priority band and suggested action.

flowchart LR
  bills["Open bills"] --> analyze["Analyze due dates & terms"]
  analyze --> bands["Group by priority"]
  bands --> guidance["Pay now / schedule / defer"]

How to use it

1. Open Bills and switch to Smart Pay (or Payment Guidance in the client portal).
2. Review the summary strip — total outstanding and overdue amounts.
3. Work Overdue and Due this week first; each row shows vendor, balance, due date, and reasoning.
4. Use Can defer to see bills that are safe to push out when preserving cash.
5. Advisory firms: open the practice Dashboard for a consolidated AP summary across clients.

Pro tips

• Run Smart Pay before a weekly pay run — it surfaces overdue items you might miss in a long bill list.
• Pair with vendor contracts so contract-match status informs whether a bill should move ahead in the queue.
• Can defer is not "never pay" — revisit when cash position improves or terms tighten.
• Client-portal users see the same guidance read-only; your team still records payments in Books.
• Payment Advisory complements AP aging — aging shows buckets, advisory adds a suggested order of operations.

In-depth guide

Priority bands

What influences reasoning

• Days until or past due
• Open balance vs. original bill amount
• Contract match status when vendor contracts are enabled
• Payment terms on the bill or vendor record

Firm consolidated view

The firm AP summary rolls up outstanding and overdue balances per client business, sorted by overdue amount — a quick triage list for practice managers monitoring client cash and vendor obligations.