How to conduct accounts receivable aging analysis to avoid distortion?

An accounts receivable aging report may look like it's just categorized into 30, 60, and 90-day buckets, but in reality, it's easily skewed by a few small things: unapplied payments, un-cleared credit memos, customers combining two invoices into one payment, and sales teams counting disputed invoices as normal overdue items. I once fell into a trap where the report showed a terrible amount of…