Getting paid
The invoices nobody has time to chase, chased properly
Send us an export from Xero, Sage, QuickBooks or whatever holds your invoices, and we chase up to ten accounts a month in your name — email, then text, then a phone call, then a posted letter, escalating on a schedule, with every contact visible to you and to your customer. A flat monthly fee rather than a percentage of what you are owed. We are not a debt collection agency and we do not act like one.
Up to ten accounts a month — a flat fee, never a percentage of what you are owed
- Text
- Phone
- Posted letters
- Up to 10 accounts
- Full contact log
What’s included
Everything in the price
- Up to ten accounts chased each month, with as much contact as the schedule calls for inside each one — the cap is on debtors rather than on dials, so nobody hesitates over the fourth call to the account that most needs it
- An export is all we need to start: Xero, Sage, QuickBooks, or a spreadsheet out of whatever CRM holds your invoices. Nothing to install, nothing to integrate, and no access to your accounting system
- Email, then text, then a phone call, then a posted letter — the intensity rises with the age of the invoice rather than starting at the top
- Everything sent in your name, from your address, with your signature. Your customer is dealing with you, not with an agency
- Visible on both sides at every point: your customer receives it, you get the same thing, and nothing is said on a call that is not in your log the same day
- An escalation built around your own invoicing terms — seven days, thirty days or end-of-month all move the whole ladder, so nothing is chased before it is genuinely late
- Every attempt logged with a timestamp: what was sent, what was said, and what was promised
- Accounts worked in the order most likely to get paid, so the effort goes where the money actually is
- It stops the moment they pay, agree a date, or ask it to — immediately, rather than at the end of a cycle
- A monthly position: paid, promised, disputed, and the ones we would stop chasing
- A clean hand-off when chasing has run out of road — we tell you it is time for a collection agency local to you, and stop there rather than escalating into work we do not do
How a month runs
You send a file. Ten accounts get worked. You watch every contact.
There is no integration to set up and no software for you to learn. The whole thing starts with a report your accounting package already produces, and every part of what happens next is visible to you and to the customer being chased.
- 1Two clicks
You export
Aged receivables out of Xero, Sage, QuickBooks, or whatever your CRM calls that report. Customer, invoice, amount, the date it went out, and your terms. Nothing to install, no integration to wait for, and no login to hand over — we would rather work from a file you produced and read yourself than hold access to your ledger, which we do not need and would rather not have.
- 2Ten a month
We work up to ten accounts
An account is one customer who owes you money, however many invoices that is. You choose the ten, or we choose them on what is most likely to actually pay. Inside an account there is no meter running: email, text, a call and a letter all happen as the schedule calls for them. A per-call allowance would put a price tag on exactly the attempt you are least sure about, which is a strange thing to charge for and a worse thing to talk somebody out of.
- 3Always
Both sides see all of it
Everything goes out in your name, from your address, so your customer knows exactly who is asking and what for — no third party in the conversation, nothing arriving from a name they do not recognise. You get what they get, timestamped, plus what was said on every call and what was promised. Neither of you is ever working from a version of events the other cannot see.
Where we stop, and who takes it from there
We do not take legal action and we do not do the part that comes after chasing. No proceedings, no court forms, nothing purporting to come from a solicitor. When an account has gone past what a call and a letter can do, we say so and hand it back with the full history attached.
Our preference at that point is a debt collection agency local to you — close enough to know the rules and the courts where you and your customer actually are, and instructed by you directly rather than through us. That is a different business with different licensing, and the honest version of this service is one that tells you when you have reached it, rather than carrying on billing you for chasing that has stopped working.
The escalation
It gets firmer on a schedule you can see in advance
Every rung is counted from the day the invoice went past due, not from the day you raised it — so the whole ladder moves with your terms. Seven days, thirty days and end-of-month all produce a different calendar from the same steps, which is why the first thing we ask for is how you actually invoice.
- Due dateNothingSilence
An invoice that has just come due is not late. Chasing on the day it falls due is how a business gets a reputation among the people it wants to work for again.
- 15 days past dueEmailAssumes it was overlooked
A short note with the invoice attached again, because most of the time that is genuinely all it was — the thing went to an inbox nobody checks, or the person who approves it was away.
- 30 days past dueEmail and textDirect, still friendly
The text is what changes the outcome here. It reaches a phone rather than an inbox, and it asks a specific question — when should we expect it — rather than repeating the balance.
- 60 days past duePhone callA conversation, not a demand
Somebody rings. Two months of silence usually means something we cannot see from an invoice — a dispute nobody raised, cash flow, a lost document — and none of that surfaces over email. Most of what gets recovered at this stage is recovered because someone finally asked.
- 75 days past duePosted letterOn paper, and on the record
A letter, printed and posted, with the invoice and the contact history attached. Nothing in it is new, and that is the point: it is the same request in a form that has to be opened by a person rather than swiped past on a phone, and it is the document you would want to be able to produce afterwards. Posted — never delivered by hand, because nobody from here ever attends an address.
- 90 days past dueFinal call and written noticeFormal, and honest with you
A last call and a written notice of where things stand. This is also where we tell you plainly whether the account is still worth chasing, or whether it has become a job for a collection agency near you — which is a hand-off rather than the next rung, and it is where we stop.
It stops before any of that, usually
The sequence ends the moment the invoice is paid, a payment date is agreed, or your customer says they are disputing the work — and a dispute comes straight back to you rather than being chased, because it is a question about the job and not about the money. You can pull any account out at any point, for any reason, including none.
What’s not included
Where we stop
Being specific about the limits is cheaper for both of us than discovering them halfway through.
- Acting as a debt collection agency. We chase your invoices as you would, in your name — we do not take assignment of the debt or present ourselves as collectors
- Legal action of any kind. No proceedings, no court forms, no letters purporting to come from a solicitor, and no advice on any of it. An invoice that needs one of those needs a collection agency or a solicitor rather than us
- Enforcement, bailiffs, sheriffs, or anything requiring a court order
- Any physical collection. Letters go by post; nobody visits an address, ever. Not the debtor’s home, not their business, not a site
- Credit reporting, or registering a default against anyone
- Buying the invoice from you. It stays yours throughout, and so does everything recovered
Questions
The things people ask before saying yes
- What counts as an account?
- One customer who owes you money, however many invoices that is. If the same builder has four unpaid invoices, that is one account rather than four, because it is one conversation, one relationship and one phone call. Ten accounts a month is the cap, and you can count yours off your own export before deciding whether this is worth it. Which ten we work is your call, or ours if you would rather we picked the ones most likely to pay.
- What do you need from us to start?
- An export of what is outstanding. Xero, Sage, QuickBooks and every CRM we have met will produce one, and a spreadsheet is fine if yours will not. It needs the customer, the invoice, the amount, the date it went out and your payment terms — which is also the point at which the escalation gets built around how you actually invoice. We do not need access to your accounting system and we would rather not have it: a file you exported is a file you have read, and this service only works if you know exactly what is being chased.
- Do you take a percentage of what you recover?
- No. It is a flat monthly fee and everything recovered is yours. Commission is the standard model in this industry and it has a problem worth naming: it pays best on the largest debt rather than the most recoverable one, and it takes a cut of money that was already yours. A flat fee means we have no reason to prefer your one big hopeless invoice over your five collectable ones.
- Will this make us look aggressive to a customer we want to keep?
- That is the right question, and it is why the escalation starts where it does. The first contact assumes the invoice was simply overlooked, because most unpaid invoices genuinely were. The tone hardens only with age, everything goes out in your name from your address, and you see every message as your customer sees it — so nothing is ever sent on your behalf that you would not have sent yourself. You can pull any account out of the sequence at any point, and anyone who tells us they are disputing the work is removed automatically and handed back to you rather than chased.
- Are you a debt collection agency?
- No, and the distinction is a real one rather than a wording preference. A collection agency takes on the debt as its own matter and contacts your customer as a third party, which brings a set of rules and a set of impressions with it. We chase your invoices the way you would if you had the time — in your name, from your address, as your business following up on its own work. That is why it is a flat fee rather than a commission, and it is why nobody ever turns up at a door. Where an account genuinely needs an agency, we hand it back and say so rather than pretending to be one.
- What happens when chasing stops working?
- We stop, and we tell you plainly. Past ninety days the honest answer is usually that the account needs a debt collection agency rather than more chasing, and our preference is an agency local to you — close enough to know the rules and the courts where you and your customer actually are, and instructed by you directly rather than through us. We do not move into that phase ourselves and we do not sit in the middle of it. Legal action of any kind is outside what we do, and it stays outside.
- Do you visit people?
- No. Never, under any circumstances. Letters are posted, and that is as physical as this gets — there is no doorstep element to the service and there will not be one, because physical collection is a different business with different licensing and a very different relationship to the person who owes you money.
- What if the customer disputes the invoice?
- Chasing stops immediately and the account comes back to you, because a dispute is a question about the work rather than about the payment, and we are not in a position to settle it. Continuing to chase a disputed invoice is how a recoverable debt becomes a complaint and a lost customer.
- Our accounting software already sends reminders. Why pay for this?
- Because an automatic reminder is one email that everyone has learned to ignore, and it stops there. This is a campaign: it escalates over weeks, moves from email to text to an actual phone call to something that arrives in the post, and a person decides which accounts are worth the call. Most invoices are settled by the software reminder and never reach us. This is for the ones that are not, which is where the money you have written off in your head actually sits.
Tell us what you're up against
Describe the situation in a couple of lines. We'll tell you straight whether we can help, what it would cost, and how long it would take.