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How to Create an Accounts Payable Dashboard in Google Sheets with ChatGPT

Cody Schneider•

Wrangling your accounts payable can feel like a full-time job of dodging late fees and deciphering stacks of invoices. Keeping track of who you owe, how much, and when it's due in a basic spreadsheet often turns into a messy, error-prone chore. This guide will show you how to build a smart, semi-automated accounts payable dashboard using the powerful duo of Google Sheets and ChatGPT, turning your chaotic data into clear, actionable insights.

Why Build an Accounts Payable Dashboard?

Before we get into the nuts and bolts, let's be clear on the benefits. A dedicated AP dashboard isn't just about making things look pretty, it's a strategic tool for managing your business's cash flow. When built correctly, it gives you an at-a-glance command center to:

  • Improve Cash Flow Visibility: Instantly see your total outstanding payables, what’s due soon, and what’s already overdue. This allows you to plan your cash outflow and avoid surprises.

  • Prevent Late Fees: With clear visibility on due dates, you can stop wasting money on preventable late payment penalties.

  • Strengthen Vendor Relationships: Paying your key suppliers and vendors on time is crucial for a healthy business partnership. A dashboard helps you prioritize payments and maintain a strong reputation.

  • Spot Errors and Trends: Is one vendor’s invoicing creeping up month over month? Did you get a duplicate invoice? A visual dashboard makes anomalies and patterns much easier to spot than scrolling through hundreds of rows in a spreadsheet.

Step 1: Structuring Your Data in Google Sheets

Your dashboard will only be as useful as the data you feed it. The "garbage in, garbage out" rule is especially true here. The first step is to create a clean, organized "data-entry" tab in Google Sheets that will act as the engine for your entire dashboard. This is where all your raw invoice information will live.

Create a new Google Sheet and name the first tab "AP_Data". Then, set up the following columns. Consistency is your best friend here.

Essential Columns for Your AP Ledger:

  • Invoice ID: A unique identifier for each invoice (e.g., INV-1054).

  • Vendor: The name of the company or person you need to pay.

  • Category: (Optional but recommended) The type of expense, like "Software," "Marketing," "Contractor," or "Office Supplies."

  • Invoice Date: The day the invoice was issued.

  • Due Date: The day the payment is due.

  • Amount: The total amount of the invoice.

  • Status: The current state of the invoice. We'll automate this later, but the categories will be something like "Paid," "Due," and "Overdue."

  • Date Paid: The day you actually paid the invoice. Leave this blank for unpaid invoices.

Make sure to format the date columns (Invoice Date, Due Date, Date Paid) as Format > Number > Date and the Amount column as Format > Number > Currency. A clean data foundation will make the next steps much smoother.

Your sheet should look something like this:

Step 2: Using ChatGPT to Supercharge Your Formulas

Now for the fun part. Instead of wrestling with complex spreadsheet formulas, we’re going to use ChatGPT as our expert formula-writing assistant. ChatGPT is fantastic at translating plain English requests into precise Google Sheets syntax.

The goal here is to automate as much of your data table as possible to reduce manual work and potential errors.

Automating the "Status" Column

Manually updating the status of every invoice is tedious. Let’s create a formula that automatically sets the status based on the Due Date and Date Paid columns.

Jump over to ChatGPT and use a prompt like this:

"I need a Google Sheets formula for cell G2 in my 'AP_Data' sheet. The logic should be: if there is a date in the 'Date Paid' column (H2), the status should be 'Paid'. If the 'Date Paid' column is empty AND the 'Due Date' in column E2 is in the past, the status should be 'Overdue'. Otherwise, the status should be 'Due'."

ChatGPT will likely return a formula like this:

=IF(H2<>"", "Paid", IF(AND(H2="", E2<TODAY()), "Overdue", "Due"))

Simply copy this formula, paste it into cell G2 of your sheet, and then drag the small blue square at the corner of the cell all the way down your column. The status for every invoice will now update automatically every day.

Adding Conditional Formatting for Quick Visuals

To make overdue invoices impossible to miss, let’s add some color. Ask ChatGPT for help with this, too.

"Explain how to use conditional formatting in Google Sheets to make any cell in a column that contains the text 'Overdue' turn red."

ChatGPT will guide you through the process:

  1. Select your entire "Status" column (column G).

  2. Go to Format > Conditional formatting.

  3. Under "Format rules," choose "Text is exactly" from the dropdown.

  4. In the value box, type "Overdue".

  5. Under "Formatting style," choose a red fill color.

  6. Click "Done." You can repeat this process to make "Paid" cells green and "Due" cells yellow.

Step 3: Building Your Dashboard View

Now that your data is clean and automated, it's time to build the visual dashboard. Create a new tab in your sheet and name it "Dashboard". This tab is for summaries and charts only - no manual data entry should happen here.

Creating Key Performance Indicator (KPI) Widgets

Your dashboard should show you the most important numbers right at the top. Let’s create summary boxes for Total Payables, Amount Overdue, and Amount Due in the Next 30 Days.

We’ll again turn to ChatGPT to write the formulas for us.

  1. Total Amount Payable:

Prompt:

"Write a Google Sheets formula to sum the 'Amount' in column F of my 'AP_Data' sheet, but only for rows where the status in column G is not 'Paid'."

Formula:=SUMIF('AP_Data'!G:G, "<>Paid", 'AP_Data'!F:F)

  1. Amount Overdue:

Prompt:

"Give me a formula to sum the amount in column F of the 'AP_Data' sheet only for rows where the status in column G is exactly 'Overdue'."

Formula:=SUMIF('AP_Data'!G:G, "Overdue", 'AP_Data'!F:F)

  1. Total Due in the Next 30 Days:

Prompt:

"This is trickier. I need a Google Sheets formula that sums values in 'AP_Data' column F if two conditions are met: the status in column G is 'Due', and the date in column E is within the next 30 days."

Formula:=SUMIFS('AP_Data'!F:F, 'AP_Data'!G:G, "Due", 'AP_Data'!E:E, ">="&TODAY(), 'AP_Data'!E:E, "<="&TODAY()+30)

Organize these three formulas on your "Dashboard" tab with clear labels. Now you have a snapshot of your most critical AP metrics.

Visualizing Data with Charts

Charts provide a much faster way to digest information. Let’s add a couple of essential visuals: a breakdown of payables by vendor and an "aging" table to group amounts by urgency.

Payables by Vendor Chart

A pie or bar chart is perfect for seeing which vendors make up the biggest slice of your payables.

Prompt for ChatGPT:

"How do I create a pivot table and a pie chart in Google Sheets to show the total amount I owe each vendor from my 'AP_Data' sheet? I only want to include unpaid invoices."

ChatGPT will tell you to:

  1. Click on a cell in your 'AP_Data' tab and go to Insert > Pivot table. Choose to create it on your "Dashboard" sheet.

  2. In the Pivot table editor:

    • For Rows, add "Vendor".

    • For Values, add "Amount," summarized by SUM.

    • For Filters, add "Status," and deselect "Paid" to filter for only what you currently owe.

  3. Select your pivot table data, and go to Insert > Chart. Google Sheets will suggest a chart type - a Pie chart works great here.

A Few Words of Caution: Limitations of this Method

While this dashboard is a huge step up from a basic spreadsheet, it’s important to be honest about its limitations:

  • It's Still Manual: The biggest drawback is that you still need to manually enter every single invoice into the 'AP_Data' sheet. Getting data in is the real bottleneck.

  • The Data Can Be Stale: The dashboard is only as current as the last time you manually entered invoices. It's not a live, real-time reflection of your accounting software.

  • ChatGPT Can Make Mistakes: AI is a powerful assistant, but it's not infallible. Always double-check formulas to ensure they're calculating correctly. If a formula breaks, you have to be ready to debug it yourself.

  • It Doesn't Scale Well: This system is great for freelancers, solopreneurs, and small businesses. But once you're processing dozens or hundreds of invoices a month, this manual spreadsheet method will quickly become unmanageable.

Final Thoughts

You’ve just learned how to structure accounts payable data in Google Sheets, team up with ChatGPT to generate smart formulas, and build a dashboard that gives you a much clearer picture of your financial obligations. It’s an empowering, low-cost way to get control over your payables without needing a degree in finance or spending hours wrestling with complex software.

While the Google Sheets method is a major improvement over manual tracking, much of your time is still lost to data entry or downloading CSV reports from Xero or QuickBooks just to get them into the sheet. This is the exact pain point we built Graphed to solve. We replace this manual process by connecting directly to your financial and sales platforms. Instead of building pivot tables, you can just ask, "Show me my top 10 vendors by total amount owed this quarter," and get an interactive, real-time dashboard built for you instantly, which always stays up-to-date and eliminates the manual spreadsheet shuffle entirely.