The aging report is the most important report in your practice for getting paid, and the most commonly ignored. It shows every unpaid claim, grouped by how long it has been stuck, so you can chase the money before it ages out. This guide covers what it shows, the benchmarks to hit, and the weekly rotation that keeps claims from quietly dying in the over-90 bucket.
Last updated August 2026 · Reviewed by the PracticeAlpha billing team
Here is the short answer. A dental insurance aging report lists every claim you have submitted that has not been paid yet, grouped by how long it has been outstanding, typically 0 to 30 days, 31 to 60, 61 to 90, and over 90. It is the single most important report for getting paid, because it shows you exactly which claims are stalling and how much money is stuck at each stage. Run it weekly, work it oldest and largest first, and your collections stay healthy. Ignore it and claims quietly age past filing deadlines into write-offs.
This guide covers what the report shows, the benchmarks a healthy practice hits, how to pull it in your software, and, most importantly, how to actually work it.
The insurance aging report answers one question: of the money payers owe you, how much is sitting unpaid, and for how long. Every open claim lands in an age bucket counted from the date of service or the date of submission, depending on your setup.
0 to 30 days is the healthy zone. Claims here are simply in the normal adjudication window. Most clean electronic claims pay inside two to three weeks, so a claim in this bucket is not a problem yet, it is just in process.
31 to 60 days is where attention starts. A clean claim should have paid by now. Anything still open past 30 days usually means the payer needs something, has a question, or never received it. This is the bucket where a phone call recovers the most, because the claim is old enough to be stuck but young enough to still be inside every filing window.
61 to 90 days is warning territory. Claims here have a real problem that has not been worked: a denial nobody actioned, missing information, or a claim the payer says it never got. The longer it sits, the closer it drifts to a timely-filing wall.
Over 90 days is the danger zone. Money here is at genuine risk. Some of it is past appeal windows, some is heading toward the filing deadline, and the value of the dollar drops the longer it ages. This bucket is the one to shrink first, and we cover it in depth in dental AR over 90 days.
Industry benchmarks give you a yardstick. Numbers vary by source and by practice, so treat these as targets to move toward, not hard laws.
A common benchmark is total accounts receivable roughly equal to your average monthly production. Much higher and claims are stalling somewhere in the cycle.
The share of your insurance AR sitting past 90 days should stay low, often cited around 10 to 20 percent. A fat over-90 bucket is the clearest sign claims are not being worked.
Your net collection rate, what you actually collect against what you should collect after contractual adjustments, is the outcome a clean aging report produces. See collection rate.
The number that matters most day to day is the over-90 percentage, because it is the one you directly control by working the report. If it is climbing, claims are aging faster than anyone is resolving them, and that is a staffing or process problem, not a payer problem.
Every practice management system produces an insurance aging report, sometimes called an outstanding claims report or an insurance aging summary. The exact menu path differs by software, but the setup that makes it useful is the same everywhere.
Filter to insurance claims, not patient balances. The two ages tell different stories and get worked differently. This report is about what payers owe you; patient balances are a separate workflow.
Age from date of service. Aging from the submission date can hide a claim that was submitted late. Aging from the date of service shows the true clock that timely-filing deadlines run on.
Sort by age, then by dollar amount. You want the oldest and largest claims at the top, because that is the order you will work them in. A single high-dollar claim aging past 90 days is worth more of your attention than a dozen small recent ones.
Run it weekly and keep the prior copies. The trend matters as much as the snapshot. If the over-90 bucket grows week over week, something upstream is broken. If it shrinks, the workflow is holding.
Want to see your real aging report read by people who work them all day? We will pull your numbers and show you exactly which claims are recoverable and how much is at risk.
Get a free AR analysisPulling the report is five minutes. Working it is the job. A simple rotation keeps the whole thing moving without anyone staring at a wall of claims.
These are the highest-yield calls: old enough to be stuck, young enough that every filing and appeal window is still open. Call the payer, find out what is holding the claim, and resolve it on the call where you can.
This is the money at risk. Work it down deliberately, and note which claims are approaching a deadline so nothing crosses the line unworked.
Missing attachment, needs appeal, payer reprocessing, patient info wrong. The reasons become a pattern you can fix upstream, and the notes mean the next person is not starting from zero.
Give each age bucket and payer group a slot in the week. A fixed rotation beats working whatever is loudest, because it guarantees every claim gets touched before it ages out.
If one payer fills your over-90 bucket, or one procedure keeps stalling, that is not a claim problem, it is a process problem. Fix the source and the report gets lighter every week.
The aging report is not ignored because anyone thinks it is unimportant. It is ignored because working it is relentless, unglamorous phone work that competes with a waiting room. When the front desk is verifying benefits, checking patients in, and answering the phone, the aging report is the thing that slips, and it slips silently until the over-90 bucket is a serious number.
That is the exact gap outsourced billing closes. A dedicated team works the aging report on a fixed schedule as its actual job, not the thing it gets to after the lobby clears. Old claims get called on, denials get worked, and the patterns feed back into the revenue cycle so fewer claims stall in the first place. A working claims and AR recovery system is really just a well-worked aging report, every week, without fail.
If you want to know where you stand, the fastest way is to have someone read your actual report. A free AR analysis pulls your aging, calculates your over-90 percentage and days in AR, and shows you which claims are still recoverable. If your report is already lean and worked weekly, you will hear that. If it is not, you will see exactly how much is sitting there.
It is a report from your practice management system that lists every submitted claim not yet paid, grouped by how long it has been outstanding, usually 0 to 30, 31 to 60, 61 to 90, and over 90 days. It shows how much money payers owe you and how long each claim has been stuck, which makes it the primary tool for managing collections and catching claims before they age past filing deadlines.
Weekly. The trend from week to week tells you whether claims are being resolved faster than they age. A weekly cadence also catches claims in the 31-to-60-day bucket, where a phone call recovers the most, before they drift into the over-90 danger zone where money starts being lost to appeal and filing deadlines.
Industry benchmarks commonly put the share of insurance AR over 90 days in the range of roughly 10 to 20 percent, and lower is better. Treat it as a target rather than a hard rule, because it varies by practice and payer mix. The most useful signal is the direction: if the over-90 bucket is growing week over week, claims are aging faster than they are being worked.
From the date of service. Aging from the submission date can hide a claim that was submitted late, which is exactly the claim most at risk. The date of service is the clock that timely-filing deadlines actually run on, so aging from it gives you the true picture of how close a claim is to being denied for filing.
Sort by age and dollar amount, then work oldest and largest first. Start in the 31-to-60-day bucket where claims are stuck but every window is still open, attack the over-90 bucket every week, and log a reason on every claim you touch. Rotate the age buckets and payers across the week so nothing gets skipped, and watch for patterns that point to an upstream process fix.
A widely cited benchmark is total accounts receivable roughly equal to one month of average production. Sitting well above that usually means claims are stalling somewhere in the cycle rather than being collected. As with all benchmarks, it is a yardstick, not a law, but a total AR that keeps climbing relative to production is a clear sign the aging report is not being worked.
Free AR analysis. We pull your aging report, calculate your real collection rate, days in AR, and denial rate, and show you which denials are preventable and which are worth appealing. 30 minutes. No commitment.