The first of the month arrives and someone on your team opens Xero, goes to Sales Overview, clicks Send Statements, selects the date range, picks the customers, and sends. Next month, the same thing.
Xero lets you send statements to multiple customers in a single batch but what it doesn’t offer is any way to automatically schedule this so it happens every month without fail. There’s no “send on the 1st of every month” setting, no automation, no way to set it up once and forget it. Someone has to trigger it every time.
The only way to automatically send statements using Xero data today is with a third party tool. If you are surprised to hear that, you are not alone. Here’s a Xero forum of people who think the same thing.
If automating statements is important to your business, here’s a way to choose the right tool to automate the process.
How to choose a tool for automating regular Xero statements
There are a few things to look out for when choosing a tool to send statements.
Sending from your own domain. If your statement arrives from a third-party address - something like noreply@randomproduct.app - it’s more likely to land in spam or cause customer suspicion. Your customers are used to hearing from you, not from a tool they’ve never heard of. Sending from your own domain keeps deliverability high and looks more professional.
Customer exclusions. Some customers won’t want automated statements. Maybe they’ve asked not to be contacted this way or you have a different arrangement with them. You need to be able to exclude individual customers without turning off the automation entirely.
Flexible cadences. Monthly works for most customers but not all. Your largest accounts might want statements fortnightly. A tool that only supports one fixed schedule for everyone isn’t much of an upgrade.
Chasing if there’s no response. A statement is useful. It reminds a customer what’s outstanding and gives them something to reconcile against. But if it lands and nothing happens, the next step is a follow-up. Some tools let you automate that too.
The three options for sending regular Xero statements automatically
Statey is the cheapest option but has two significant drawbacks on their cheapest plan:
- It forces you to put a Statey watermark on your statement
- You cannot send from your own email (e.g. accounts@company.com), it has to come from Statey. This can trigger spam alerts or mean the customer ignores the email.
To get around these two limitations, you have to upgrade to their most expensive plan (£40 per month). Here’s a full feature comparison of all the tools on the market:
| Statey | Paidnice | Trove | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sends from product | £8/month | $69/month | - |
| Sends from your email | £40/month | $99/month | £50/month |
| Customer exclusions | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Flexible cadences | Max 1 cadence | Max 1 cadence | Unlimited |
| Number of users | Unlimited | 2 users | Unlimited |
| Automated chasing | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
Statey - best for lowest cost
Statey does one thing: automated customer statements for Xero. At £8/month on the Starter plan, it’s the cheapest option available. At that price, statements send from the Statey domain and carry a Statey watermark on the PDF. If that’s fine for your business, it’s hard to argue with the price. Upgrading to send from your own domain costs £40/month.
Statey handles weekly or monthly schedules, includes 30/60/90-day age analysis, and lets you see delivery history. It doesn’t do chasing or late fees, statements are the whole product.
Paidnice - best for late fees
Paidnice is a broader AR automation platform for Xero and QuickBooks. Automated statements are one feature among several - they specialise in automatic late fee charges for overdue invoices.
The base plan is $69/month but sending from your own domain requires the $99/month plan. If automated late fees are something you want alongside statements, Paidnice is the natural home for that. If you don’t need late fees, the pricing is harder to justify against the alternatives.
Trove - best all-rounder
At £50/month, Trove sits close to Statey’s own-domain price but covers significantly more ground. Statements send from your own domain, you can set different workflows for different customer groups, and if a statement goes ignored you can follow up automatically with a chasing sequence (Trove data shows that 80% of customers pay after two chasing emails.)
We do appreciate it’s frustrating to have to buy an additional tool when sending statements is functionality that Xero should have. If you have read this far down the page, Trove can give you 50% off for 3 months on our Essential plan. Just email hi@trove.works with the word “statements” when your free trial is coming to an end and we’ll get that set up for you.
Conclusion: which is the best tool for automating Xero statements
Sticking with a manual process may still be best. If your customers are reliable payers and the main problem is that someone has to remember to press a button each month, a calendar alert should do the trick.
If you do decide to buy a tool to automate the process, the cheapest plan on Statey covers the basics. Unfortunately, there will be a Statey watermark on your statement and it will come from @statey, not your email. If you are fine with that, go with their £8 plan.
If you want emails to come from your domain to ensure good deliverability, Trove is the best all-rounder. It includes sending statements from your own email address, multiple cadences, exclusions, and invoice chasing if there’s still no payment.
Trove runs a free 30-day trial and connects to your Xero account in a few minutes. You can start a free trial here or book a demo if you’d like to see it first.
