Summary

  • The short answer: anything you regularly redo should be automated. Build the report once with synced Xero data instead.
  • Why it matters: an hour a week is around six working days a year spent recreating a report you already designed.
  • What Xero can and can’t do: Xero exports the data cleanly. It has no saved custom views, so every run starts from the same blank sheet.
  • How Trove does it: a report defined against your Xero data, updating over webhooks, filtered on any field in your data.
  • Getting it to people: set a frequency and enter an email address. Recipients get an HTML email with a link to the live view, and need no Xero or Trove login.
  • When Excel still wins: one-off analysis and modelling. The case for a live report is the recurring one.

The issues with credit control reports in Excel

Excel remains the queen of reporting because of its sheer flexibility. You can overwrite any data, flag exceptions, and exclude customers. However it comes with certain limitations:

  1. It’s always out of date. By the time you’ve cleaned the data up and emailed it round, two payments have landed and someone’s raised three new invoices.
  2. It takes time to redo. If you’re using data from Xero, you need to download and update your spreadsheet every time you want an updated overview.
  3. It lives on your drive. Best case scenario, you’re using Google Sheets and you can share the link with other people. Sharing an Excel or Google Sheet still takes time and is less user friendly than most software reporting.

For these reasons, it’s worth looking into ways to move away from Excel spreadsheets for credit control reporting.

Build a live report in Trove

In Trove you set up a report against your Xero data and it updates as Xero does via a live sync. Furthermore, you can use Xero data to customise exactly what’s in the report. Here’s a sample of fields you can use either as columns or filters:

  • Days overdue, or a custom range like 45 to 90
  • Customer, contact group, or account code
  • Amount outstanding, above or below a threshold
  • Invoice reference, date raised, or due date
  • Week-on-week change in the balance
  • Chase stage and who the account is assigned to

Combine them the way you’d combine filters in a pivot table. Everything overdue by more than 60 days, over £1,000, excluding the three accounts on a payment plan. Save it, and that’s the report from now on.

Regular credit control reports for the people who need them

In Trove you can set a frequency (daily, weekly, or monthly), enter an email address, and Trove sends the report on schedule. The recipient gets an HTML email with the figures in the body, plus a link to the live view if they want to click through and dig into the detail.

They don’t need a Xero login to do this and all Trove accounts come with unlimited users. This can be useful for sales team members, managers, or even the board.

If most of your recipients are outside the finance team, we’ve written separately about giving your team visibility of overdue invoices, which covers what to include and what to leave out.

When Excel is still the right tool

Excel is better for one-off analysis. If you’re modelling the cash flow impact of three different payment scenarios, or building a board pack that pulls in numbers from four systems, export the data and work in a spreadsheet.

The case for a live report is the recurring one. Anything you rebuild on a schedule is work you’re repeating because the tool won’t remember it for you.

Trove runs a free 30-day trial and takes about five minutes to connect to your Xero account.

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FAQ

Can I save a custom report in Xero?

Xero lets you sort and filter the aged receivables report and export the result, but it won’t store your filter combination as a saved view you can return to. Each run starts from the defaults.

How do I stop my debtor spreadsheet going out of date?

Stop building it from an export. A report defined against a live Xero connection reflects payments and new invoices as they happen, so there’s no stale version in circulation.

Can I schedule a debtor report to email automatically?

Yes, in Trove. Pick daily, weekly or monthly, enter any email address, and the report sends on that schedule with a link to the live view.

Can I still export to Excel if I need to?

Yes. Live reports handle the recurring reporting. Exporting remains the right move for one-off analysis or modelling that needs to sit alongside data from other systems.