Most accountants are already doing informal credit control for their clients. Fielding calls about overdue invoices. Advising on when to escalate. Helping draft a chasing email. They’re just not charging for it.
This article is about how to turn that into a structured, profitable service - including how to identify which clients need it, how to price it, and how the economics change when you have the right tool doing most of the heavy lifting.
Why your clients need this more than ever
Late payment is getting worse. 28% of UK businesses are impacted by late invoices every year, and the problem is structural rather than cyclical - it does not improve much in good economic conditions and gets significantly worse in bad ones.
At the same time, the finance functions inside your clients’ businesses are getting thinner. The trend over the past few years has been toward leaner back-office teams, with founders and operations leads absorbing tasks that used to belong to a dedicated finance person. Credit control is almost always the first thing that gets deprioritised when a finance team shrinks - it feels less urgent than payroll or VAT, right up until the cash flow crisis hits.
The result is a growing gap between what your clients need and what they have capacity to do themselves. As their accountant, you are already the most trusted financial relationship they have. You know their debtor book, their payment terms, their problem clients, and their cash flow position. Nobody is better placed to offer this service than you.
Which clients are the right fit
Not every client needs a managed credit control service. The ones most worth approaching first tend to share a few characteristics:
High debtor volumes. Businesses with 20 or more active debtors at any one time are spending meaningful time on collections whether they realise it or not. The opportunity to systematise that is significant.
DSO above 45 days. Days Sales Outstanding is the clearest single indicator that a collections process is underperforming. If your client’s DSO has been creeping up, that is both a problem worth solving and a measurable outcome you can point to once you have solved it.
A recently reduced finance team. When a client lets go of a finance manager or bookkeeper, credit control is the function most likely to quietly fall through the gap. This is often the moment they most need support and are most open to it.
Fast-growing businesses. Revenue growth outpacing headcount growth means invoice volumes are increasing faster than the team’s capacity to manage them. This is a cash flow problem waiting to happen.
Specific sectors. Some industries have structural payment challenges that make credit control particularly valuable. Recruitment agencies - especially in construction and labour - pay contractors before clients pay them, creating acute cash flow exposure. Professional services firms bill on project milestones that clients sometimes dispute. SaaS and subscription businesses deal with failed payments and renewal cycles that need careful management. If your client book has concentration in any of these sectors, they are natural candidates.
The easiest starting point is often the simplest one: which of your clients has complained about cash flow or late payment in the last six months? Start there.
How to structure the service
There are three models worth considering, each with different effort and margin profiles.
The referral model
You identify the problem, recommend a tool or provider, and take a referral fee when the client signs up. This requires the least involvement and generates passive income, but it is also the lowest margin and does not deepen the client relationship meaningfully. It is a good starting point if you want to test appetite before committing to a fuller offering.
The managed service model
You run credit control on behalf of the client as part of an expanded engagement. You own the process - setting up the chasing sequences, monitoring the debtor book, escalating where needed, and reporting back monthly. Higher margin, more involvement, and it positions you as an operational partner rather than a compliance provider. Works best for smaller clients who want to fully outsource the function and do not have the internal capacity to run it themselves.
The hybrid model
You design and configure the system, get it running correctly for the client, then hand day-to-day operation back to them with light-touch monthly oversight from your team. This scales well - the setup knowledge is largely reusable across clients even if each configuration differs, and ongoing involvement is low once the process is established. It is also the easiest model to introduce to existing clients who are used to doing things themselves but need help getting the process right.
Most practices find that starting with the hybrid model on one or two clients is the quickest way to build confidence and a repeatable playbook before rolling it out more widely.
How to price it
Pricing is where most accountants get stuck, mainly because credit control does not fit neatly into the compliance pricing models most firms are used to. Here are three approaches, with an honest assessment of each.
Time and materials
Charge your standard hourly rate for time spent on credit control tasks. Transparent and familiar, but unpredictable for both sides - your client does not know what they are paying each month, and you have no visibility on margin until the work is done. Works for ad hoc engagements but is difficult to scale and hard to sell as a packaged service.
Fixed monthly retainer
Agree a defined scope - for example, chasing all invoices over seven days overdue, weekly activity reporting, a monthly debtor review call - and price it as a flat monthly fee. Predictable for both parties, easier to sell, and it scales well as you add more clients. For a small business with 20-50 active debtors, a reasonable starting range is £200-500 per month depending on complexity and volume. Review and adjust after the first three months once you understand the actual time involved.
Value-based pricing
Price as a percentage of cash recovered or improvement in DSO. Aligns incentives neatly and is easy to justify to a client who is sceptical about paying upfront. The downside is that it is harder to measure cleanly, can feel like a commission model which some clients dislike, and creates unpredictable revenue for your practice. Better suited to a one-off turnaround engagement than an ongoing retainer.
The recommendation for most practices is to start with a fixed monthly retainer. It is the easiest to sell, the easiest to operationalise, and gives you the clearest view of your own margin.
How the economics change when you use a tool
This is where the service becomes genuinely scalable - and where the numbers get interesting.
Without a dedicated tool, credit control for a client with 50 active debtors might take three to four hours per week of staff time. Chasing individually, logging activity, following up on responses, preparing a monthly report. At a staff cost of £30-40 per hour, that is £360-640 per month of cost before you have made any margin at all.
With a tool handling the routine - sending reminders automatically, logging all activity, flagging exceptions - the same client might take 30 to 45 minutes per week. Reviewing what went out, handling the edge cases, taking escalation calls. That is £120-160 per month of staff cost.
The tool itself costs £50 per month at standard Trove pricing - though as a Trove partner, accountants and bookkeepers managing multiple clients can access up to 50% off list price, bringing that cost down significantly as you scale.
Run the numbers on a fixed retainer of £350 per month per client:
Without a tool: £350 revenue minus £500 staff cost. Loss-making until you price higher or reduce scope.
With a tool: £350 revenue minus £150 staff cost minus £25-50 tool cost (at partner pricing). Margin of £150-175 per month per client.
Across ten clients, that is £1,500-1,750 of monthly margin from a service that, once configured, runs largely on autopilot.
The setup knowledge also compounds. The second client you onboard takes less time than the first. By the fifth, you have a repeatable playbook that can be delegated to a junior team member with light oversight from a senior person.
Trove’s partner programme for accountants and bookkeepers
Trove is built around the kind of collections process this article describes - it sends reminders from your client’s own inbox rather than a generic finance system, rotates email wording automatically so reminders never feel templated, and gives you a clear dashboard of every client’s debtor health across your whole practice.
For accountants and bookkeepers adding Trove across multiple clients, the partner programme offers:
Up to 50% off list price - the discount scales with the number of clients you are managing, making the economics above look even better as you grow the service.
Prioritised onboarding - rather than working through a standard queue, partner firms get dedicated onboarding support to get each client configured correctly from the start.
The programme is designed for practices that want to build a repeatable credit control service rather than manage a one-off client problem.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need to be a qualified accountant to offer credit control services?
No. Credit control is not a regulated activity in the UK - you do not need any specific qualification to offer it as a service. Bookkeepers and unqualified accounting professionals offer credit control as part of their service mix regularly. What matters is that you understand your client’s debtor book and have a reliable process for managing it.
What is the difference between credit control and debt collection?
Credit control is the proactive management of outstanding invoices - sending reminders, following up, maintaining relationships, and escalating where needed. Debt collection typically refers to the recovery of invoices that have already been written off or significantly aged, often involving a third-party agency. The two are complementary but distinct. What this article describes is credit control - the earlier and less adversarial intervention.
How do I introduce this service to existing clients?
The easiest route is to start with a client who has recently complained about cash flow or late payment - they are already aware of the problem and primed for a solution. Frame it as an extension of what you already do: “We manage your accounts, and we can manage the process of getting those accounts paid.” A short diagnostic - reviewing their current DSO and overdue invoice book - gives you something concrete to present and makes the value immediately visible.
Can I white-label the service under my own firm’s name?
Yes. When you run credit control for a client through Trove, the emails go from your client’s own inbox in their own name - not from Trove and not from your firm. From the end customer’s perspective, they are receiving a payment reminder from the business they owe money to. Your involvement, and the tool behind it, is invisible.
How quickly can I get a client set up?
For most clients, initial setup takes around 15-30 minutes once you have connected their Xero account and configured their chasing sequences. As a partner firm you also get prioritised onboarding support, which means any questions during setup are handled quickly rather than going into a general support queue.
What does Trove cost for partner firms?
Standard pricing is £50 per month per client. Partner firms managing multiple clients access up to 50% off that list price, with the discount scaling with the number of clients on the programme. Get in touch to discuss the specifics for your practice size.
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