Summary
- A spreadsheet and Xero’s reminders are fine if you’re small. A handful of reliable customers and infrequent chasing doesn’t justify paying for credit control software.
- You’ve probably outgrown it if: chasing eats more than an hour a week, your spreadsheet has is getting hard for anyone else to understand, you’re raising late fees manually, or things are slipping through the cracks.
- Credit control software automates the chasing layer: reminders on a schedule from your own email address, a full log of every chase, automatic late fees and payment plan tracking.
- Three tools worth moving to, all with free trials: Satago (£45/mo, adds credit risk scoring), Trove (£50/mo, Xero-first for small teams) and Chaser (£199/mo, the most complete option, skewed towards bigger teams).
- Things to watch out for when moving: Introducing a new tool mid-chase can be daunting and we look at how to mitigate the risks.
When a manual credit control process in Excel is still fine
Worth saying upfront, Excel is a brilliant piece of software. It’s reliable, cheap, and does the job. If you only have a handful of customers, it’s worth staying put. Xero and a tidy spreadsheet are enough and paying for a tool would be solving a problem you don’t have.
It’s only if your Excel spreadsheet starts feeling more complex than a piece of software that it’s time to change. Here are some of the signs you’ll start to see.
Signs you’ve outgrown a manual invoice-chasing process in Excel
Chasing overdue invoices is taking more time every week
The clearest sign is the simplest one. If you or someone on your team is spending a morning a week working through overdue invoices, that’s time coming straight out of higher-value work.
Your credit control spreadsheet is becoming unusable
All spreadsheets reach a point where they are only understood by the person who uses them every day. Some stop being usable even to that person. It’s time for a change if your credit control has become too complex to be easily understood and tracked in a spreadsheet.
You’re raising late-payment interest invoices manually
UK businesses have a statutory right to charge interest on overdue commercial invoices, at 8% above the Bank of England base rate under the Late Payment of Commercial Debts Act. The catch is that Xero won’t do it for you. To add interest, you have to create a separate invoice and then keep it updated manually as interest accrues.
You can’t report on credit control the way you need to
If someone asks “what have we done to chase this client?”, can you answer it quickly? For a growing business, you often need a view by customer or by segment, showing what’s outstanding and every step taken so far.
What credit control software does that an Excel spreadsheet can’t
Credit control software is the layer that automates the chasing. It sends reminders on a schedule you set, from your own email address, and keeps a full log of every chase in one place.
The better tools also apply late fees automatically, handle payment plans, and let you set different approaches for different customers. If you want the full landscape, our guide to choosing credit control software covers the whole market. This piece is about three solid entry-level tools.
Three credit control software tools to move to (all with free trials)
We’ve kept this to three, because they share the thing that matters most when you’re nervous about switching: all three offer a free trial. They are also reasonably priced and we’ve listed them here from low to high.
Satago
- Who it suits: UK small businesses, Sage-leaning but works with Xero
- Starting price: £45/mo
- Free trial: Yes
Satago pairs chasing with credit control in a broader sense, adding Experian-backed credit risk scoring so you can see which customers are worth keeping an eye on. It’s a good fit if you want a view on risk alongside collections. One thing to know when you’re pricing it up: sending reminders from your own domain sits on the £80 tier rather than the entry plan.
Trove
- Who it suits: UK small businesses on Xero
- Starting price: £50/mo
- Free trial: 30 days
Trove is fills the gap between sending an invoice in Xero and getting paid. It’s Xero-native with a two-way sync, sends reminders from your own email address so they don’t get spam-filtered, and uses AI to keep those chasers sounding human rather than robotic. It automates UK late fees, tracks payment plans inside the workflow, and lets you exclude any customer you don’t want chased.
Chaser
- Who it suits: The M of SMB, orgs with a finance team
- Starting price: £199/mo
- Free trial: 10 days
Chaser is the most complete option here. It spans the full accounts-receivable cycle and includes a built-in pathway to debt collection, which suits a finance team that wants detailed control over workflows and reporting. If you’re scaling fast and building out a finance function, it’s a good option to trial.
Common worries when moving from Excel to credit control software and how to mitigate them
Most people know software would help but hesitate because of specific concerns about handing chasing to something automated. Here are the common ones to ask about when demo’ing each tool.
“Automated chasers will sound robotic and annoy my good customers.” Ask how the tool keeps the wording human and varied rather than firing the same stiff template five times.
“I’ll lose control. It’ll email the wrong people or send something I didn’t approve.” Ask what guardrails the tool has in place to make sure you can approve emails until you’re comfortable.
“Migration will be painful and I’ll lose all my history and notes.” Ask if the vendor has support for migrating history from spreadsheets or Xero into the new tool.
“It won’t handle my edge cases.” This is very valid. There are countless edge cases and no vendor will cover all of them. Get specific in the demo and, if they don’t have the feature yet, ask if they can add it.
“It’ll be complicated and slow to set up.” If you’re on Xero or Quickbooks, setup should not take more than 30 mins. Ask whether the vendor offers free onboarding to get you set up for success.
“What if it doesn’t work for us?” This is what the free trial is for. If the rest of your questions are answered, give it a shot and see.
FAQ
Is a spreadsheet good enough for credit control?
For a small number of reliable customers, yes. It stops being enough when chasing eats real time, the spreadsheet becomes the only record, or you’re working around Xero’s limits by hand.
When is it worth paying for credit control software?
When the time you spend chasing, or the cash tied up in late payments, costs more than the tool. If a modest monthly fee gets invoices paid days or weeks sooner, it pays for itself quickly.
Does credit control software replace Xero?
No, it works alongside it. Xero stays your accounting system; the credit control tool handles the chasing and syncs back so the two stay aligned.
If you’re on Xero and outgrowing the spreadsheet, Trove handles the chasing for you: per-customer reminders sent from your own email, AI that keeps them sounding human, and automated UK late fees raised straight into your account. It runs a free 30-day trial and connects to Xero in about five minutes, so you can see it against your own ledger before deciding. Start a free trial or book a demo if you’d like a look first.
