What does chasing overdue invoices cost you today?
Credit control in a small practice is rarely done badly. It is done late, because it is the job that loses every time something billable turns up. The ledger gets looked at when somebody remembers, the largest debts get the attention, and the rest turn into the awkward call in month four that would have been a two-line email in week two.
The European Commission's EU Payment Observatory Annual Report 2025 reports that in 2024, average business-to-business payment periods in Ireland rose to 61 days, up nine days on the previous year, against average agreed terms of 42 days. Those figures come from the Intrum survey as reported by the Observatory, which is careful to say the 2024 Irish evidence is mixed: another source in the same chapter has on-time payment rising to 58%.
There is also a legal position that runs in your favour, and most practices never mention it. Under S.I. No. 580/2012 it is an implied term of every commercial transaction in Ireland that a supplier is entitled to statutory late payment interest when the purchaser misses the payment date, "without the necessity of a reminder", at the European Central Bank main refinancing rate plus eight percentage points. That rate is the default. Two businesses can agree a different one in the contract, but only where the varied amount is not grossly unfair to the supplier. The supplier is also entitled to a fixed sum towards recovery costs without having to evidence them: €40 on debts up to €1,000, €70 up to €10,000, €100 above that. A reminder ladder that names that at the right rung is the statutory position, not aggression.
What exactly gets automated?
The reading, the drafting, the sending, the stopping and the record. Not the relationship.
Reading the ledger on a schedule. The aged debtors listing is pulled on the days you choose, every account is assessed against the ladder you set, and the day's chase list is ready before anyone opens the accounts package.
Drafting the reminder in the firm's voice. Not a template with a merge field. The message references the specific invoice, the amount, the date it was due and the previous contact if there was one, written the way your firm writes to that kind of client.
Escalating as the debt ages. A first reminder at seven days past due reads nothing like a fourth at sixty. The ladder is yours: how many rungs, how many days between them, what changes in tone, and where the statutory interest gets mentioned. The system moves an account up a rung. It does not invent one.
Stopping the moment payment lands. This matters more than the drafting and it is what cheap tools get wrong. Payment status is checked immediately before every send, not overnight. Nothing chases an invoice that has been paid, credited or disputed.
Never chasing the same thing twice. Every request writes to a chase ledger, so one invoice cannot be chased twice by two routes, and anyone picking up the account can see what has already been said.
For a practice this runs in two places: your own fee notes, the ledger you feel most, and credit control run as a service for clients, which is a billable line rather than an overhead.
What still needs a person?
Three things, and the first is not negotiable.
Which accounts are in scope at all. Some clients get chased by a system. Some get a phone call from a named person and nothing else, ever. You decide which is which before anything is switched on. The tone your firm uses with its best client took years to build, and an automated ladder that overwrites it costs more than the debt it recovers.
Approval on key accounts and anything heading for legal. On the accounts you flag, every message is queued for a person to release. Where the next step is a solicitor's letter, a suspension of work or a payment plan, the system stops and tells you. It does not take that step.
The judgement about why the money has not arrived. An invoice unpaid at day sixty because the client is disorganised and one unpaid at day sixty because the client is in trouble look identical on an aged debtors report and need opposite responses. One needs a firmer reminder. The other needs a phone call this week. No system reads that, which is why the ladder's top rung hands back to you rather than sending something.
A dispute is a stop condition, not a rung. The moment a client says the invoice is wrong, the account leaves the ladder and goes to a person.
How is the result measured?
Against your ledger before we start, and only using numbers you already produce.
Days sales outstanding is the headline, measured the same way before and after. Under it, three that are more diagnostic: the average age of a debt when it is first chased, which usually moves first and moves most; the proportion of overdue invoices that received any contact at all; and the value sitting beyond ninety days, which is where the write-offs come from. On your own fee notes, add the share settled within terms.
Take three months of history on all of those first. If they do not move, we will look at why rather than at a dashboard.
What could go wrong?
Chasing an invoice that has already been paid. The most expensive failure available here, because it costs you credibility with a client who did the right thing. Designed out by checking payment status immediately before every send and treating a partial payment as a state change.
Chasing on your own mistake. If the invoice went to the wrong address, carried the wrong PO number or was never actually sent, the reminder makes the practice look careless. Check the accounts never chased before, where the old data errors live.
The tone drifting. Reminders written in a voice that is not yours get noticed, particularly by clients who know how you write. The voice is set from your own past correspondence, and you read a sample of what goes out in the first fortnight.
How long does it take to put in?
One to three weeks. This is the cheapest build we do in an accounting practice.
A session to set the ladder: rungs, days, tone, which accounts are in scope, which are approval-only, and where the statutory interest gets mentioned. A connection to the ledger and to whatever tells you a payment has landed. A draft-only run, where everything is generated and nothing sends, so you can read a fortnight of output before a client receives anything. Then live, with approval queues on the accounts you named.
Then we hand it over. No retainer, the ladder is yours to edit, and pointing it at a client's sales ledger next quarter is a configuration rather than a rebuild. If you want to know whether this is the right first thing to automate, that conversation is the opportunity review, and it starts with your aged debtors listing rather than with software.