Summary
- Practices are often poor at chasing their own fees. Recurring and one-off fees need different handling, the debtor is someone you advise making chasing awkward, and clients are usually split across partners.
- Late fees can help nudge. Statutory interest and a fixed recovery fee are available on all your overdue business-to-business invoices.
- Four tools worth comparing, from £8 to £199 a month. Jump to the tools
- Once it works for your own fees, use it for clients. Check whether the provider offers a partner scheme. Jump to helping clients
Why accounting firms can struggle to chase their own fees
Three things make it harder than it should be.
-
Monthly fees and one-off fees behave differently. A retainer recurs every month while a tax return fee is invoiced once. Each has its own challenges: if a client on retainer starts failing to pay, invoices will start piling up. Meanwhile, you and the client are more likely to forget a one-off invoice. Managing both in separate workflows is important.
-
You’re chasing someone you advise. The client you’re reminding about an overdue fee is the same person you’ll be advising next month. Every reminder can feel like it costs a little goodwill (even though it is perfectly justified) so it gets softened, delayed or skipped altogether.
-
Clients are split between partners. Different partners own different clients and each has their own view of who is fine to chase and who needs handling carefully. Without one shared picture, reminders go out that a partner would have held back, or nobody chases at all because everyone assumes someone else is dealing with it.
These three things combine to make chasing down unpaid invoices harder for accounting firms than other professions.
Three ways to reduce debtor days for your firm
Three changes that make a big difference, in rough order of effort.
Move recurring fees to direct debit. Monthly bookkeeping and compliance retainers belong on direct debit through GoCardless or a similar provider. It removes a whole category of invoice from the chasing problem entirely.
Automate the reminders and send them from a firm email. A reminder that goes out on day 3, day 14 and day 30 without anyone deciding to send it stops being a relationship decision. If you’re still feeling stressed, send it from an accounts@ email address.
Stay in the loop. Automation handles the clients who need a nudge. Keep yourself in cc on later emails in the sequence so you can step in when a conversation is needed.
Adding late fees automatically to late invoices
The Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998 applies to a practice’s fees just as it does to any other business-to-business invoice. On an overdue invoice you can charge interest at 8% above the Bank of England base rate, plus a fixed recovery fee:
| Debt | Fixed fee |
|---|---|
| Under £1,000 | £40 |
| £1,000 to £9,999.99 | £70 |
| £10,000 or more | £100 |
You don’t need it in your engagement letter for the statutory right to apply, though stating payment terms clearly there makes the conversation easier.
Few practices use it on their own fees, for the same reason they’re slow to chase: it feels like a bigger act than it is. Applied automatically and consistently, it becomes a term of business rather than an escalation, and most clients pay before it triggers. Where the relationship genuinely can’t take it, waiving the fee deliberately is a decision you can make and tell the client about.
More detail: what you can legally charge on a late invoice and a calculator for working out the interest and fee.
Credit control tools for accounting firms
| Tool | Best for | Late fees | From |
|---|---|---|---|
| Statey | Practices that mainly need monthly statements sending | No | £8/month |
| Satago | Practices wanting credit checks on new clients | Not automated | £45/month |
| Trove | Practices wanting chasing handled from their own address, with late fees | Calculated and raised automatically | £50/month |
| Chaser | Larger practices wanting one platform through to debt recovery | Calculated and raised automatically | £199/month |
Prices checked September 2026 against published pricing pages.
Statey
Automated Xero statements with 30, 60 and 90-day age analysis, and nothing else. For a practice whose clients pay once reminded what’s outstanding, £8 a month is hard to beat. It doesn’t chase and won’t escalate.
Wins on: Price. If you are a small practice that just needs statements, Statey works for you.
Satago
Chasing plus Experian-backed credit scoring, which is useful for checking a new client before taking on a large piece of work. The entry plan sends reminders from Satago’s own address rather than yours; own-domain sending starts at £80.
Wins on: Credit checking. If you work with a certain industry where credit checks are necessary, Satago is the only one that integrates this fully.
Trove
Reminders go out on a schedule per client, from your practice’s own email address with your signature. Replies come back and get read, so when a client writes “we’ll pay on the 28th” the expected date updates against the invoice rather than sitting in a partner’s inbox. UK late payment fees are calculated and raised automatically. Users are unlimited, so the whole practice team can see the position at no extra cost.
Wins on: Personalised emails. Trove uses AI to keep all emails personalised, draft replies and update Xero automatically.
Chaser
A full receivables platform with detailed workflow control and an escalation route into debt collection, which Chaser also runs. More than most small practices need, but the right answer for a larger firm with a dedicated credit controller.
Wins on: AR platform. If you want a full accounts receivable platform beyond just chasing invoices, Chaser is the most fully featured option on the list.
Helping accounting clients with credit control
Many accountants also manage credit control for their clients. If that’s the case, using a tool you already know works for your own practice makes the most sense. Here are five things to check before recommending it:
How easily workflows carry across client organisations. Each client has their own Xero organisation. If every new client means rebuilding reminder schedules, templates and escalation rules from scratch, the setup time eats the value. Look for a tool that lets you build a workflow once and apply it to the next client in a few clicks, then adjust from there.
Whether there’s a partner scheme. Many credit control vendors offer something for accounting firms, whether that’s discounted pricing, referral commission or partner support. Trove offers a discount for practices using it on behalf of their clients. Chaser says it runs a partner scheme too.
Whether the client can see progress. Clients will often want to know what’s going on. Some tools don’t charge for extra seats, others let you send regular reports to give people outside of the platform progress updates.
What price increase history is. If you have priced your own service with a certain tool in mind and then that tool triples in price, you’re in trouble. Check with the vendor when they last raised prices and by how much.
Frequently asked questions
Will chasing my own clients damage the relationship?
Less than leaving invoices to drift and then having an awkward conversation at 90 days. A consistent, automatic reminder from your own address reads as a normal term of business. It’s the irregular, personal chase after a long silence that feels like a complaint.
Can I charge late fees on my own fees?
Yes. Statutory interest and the fixed recovery fee apply to any overdue business-to-business invoice, including a practice’s. They apply whether or not your engagement letter mentions them.
What about clients on direct debit?
Leave them there. Direct debit is the best answer for recurring fees, and credit control software is for everything else, one-off fees, project work, and anything invoiced on completion.
Should the partner still be involved?
For the exceptions, yes. Automation handles the clients who simply forgot. A partner’s time is better spent on the few where a conversation genuinely matters.
Trove chases your practice’s overdue fees from your own email address, reads the replies, and raises UK late payment fees automatically, so collecting what you’re owed stops depending on a partner finding time. £50 a month, fixed, with unlimited users and a free 30-day trial. Book a demo to see it against your own ledger.
