Your aged receivables report shows you what you’re owed. This calculator tells you how much of it you’re likely to actually see.
Put in the totals from each bucket of your Xero aged receivables report and we’ll apply the recovery rate data to give you an estimate of what’s still collectible - and what may already be at risk.
A quick recap: what aged receivables are
Aged receivables are the outstanding invoices your customers haven’t paid yet, grouped by how long they’ve been unpaid. Xero’s aged receivables report splits them into five buckets: current (not yet due), 1-30 days overdue, 31-60 days, 61-90 days, and 90+ days.
The amounts shown are gross figures - they include VAT. If you’re using this calculator to think about your actual cash position, it’s worth remembering that a portion of whatever you recover will go straight to HMRC.
We’ve written a full guide to reading and acting on the Xero aged receivables report here.
The scale of the problem in the UK
Late payment is not a niche issue. UK Government research published in 2025 estimates there are approximately £26 billion in overdue invoices outstanding across UK businesses at any given time - with UK businesses effectively providing that sum as interest-free finance to their customers.
For individual SMEs, the picture is increasingly difficult. Bibby Financial Services’ 2025 SME Confidence Tracker found that UK SMEs are owed an average of £66,770 in unpaid invoices - a 10% increase on the year before. Nearly a third of those businesses have written off close to £30,000 in the past year due to customer insolvency or payment default.
The Credit Protection Association estimates that late payments cost the UK economy £11 billion a year and contribute to the closure of 38 UK businesses every day. The Federation of Small Businesses puts the number of business closures attributable to late payment at 50,000 a year.
None of which means your overdue invoices are lost - but it does mean the risk is real, and it compounds with time.
Why recovery rates fall as invoices get older
The data on this is consistent across the UK and internationally. According to Atradius - one of the world’s largest trade credit insurers, with deep data on UK payment behaviour - the probability of full recovery drops by 25 percentage points or more by the time an invoice reaches 90 days overdue. Most companies begin provisioning for potential loss at this point and consider write-off if recovery looks unlikely beyond 180 days.
The breakdown by bucket, documented by Crestmont Capital using data from Dun & Bradstreet, the National Association of Credit Management, and the Atradius Payment Practices Barometer, looks roughly like this:
| Age | Approximate chance of collecting |
|---|---|
| 1-30 days overdue | ~90% |
| 31-60 days overdue | ~85% |
| 61-90 days overdue | ~75% |
| 91-120 days overdue | ~55% |
| Over 120 days | ~25% |
The Credit Protection Association reports that when overdue accounts are passed to them promptly - within a few weeks of the invoice becoming overdue - resolution rates run above 95%. By the time an invoice has been sitting unpaid for several months, the same organisation reports an overall resolution rate of 82-84%. The gap between those two numbers is the cost of waiting.
Three things drive this decline.
The original contact moves on
Most B2B invoices are approved by a specific person - a finance manager, an office manager, a director. When that person leaves the company, the invoice often goes with them. The new contact has no memory of the work, no relationship with you, and no particular motivation to prioritise a debt they didn’t incur. Re-establishing the paper trail takes time, and some debtors will use the transition as cover for not paying at all.
The budget gets reallocated
Smaller invoices in particular are vulnerable here. If a £400 invoice sits unpaid for three months, the person responsible for paying it may have simply moved on mentally. The budget period has closed, the cost centre has been reallocated, and raising a payment now requires someone to go back and find approval for an expense that doesn’t fit neatly into the current period. It’s not always bad faith - it’s friction, and friction compounds over time.
Disputes harden
An invoice query that could have been resolved with a five-minute phone call in week two becomes a formal dispute by month four. What was a small disagreement about a line item becomes entrenched. Both sides have had time to build their version of events. The relationship has cooled. The Credit Protection Association notes that delayed follow-up actively increases dispute risk - the longer you leave it, the more likely a payment problem becomes a payment refusal. Controlaccount, a UK debt recovery firm, puts it plainly: “the older the debt, the more time-consuming it is to try to recover, whilst the likelihood of recovery decreases as the debt ages.”
Estimate how much you’re likely to recover
Enter the totals from each bucket of your Xero aged receivables report. The calculator will apply the recovery rate estimates and show you how much is likely collectible and how much may be at risk.
A note on these estimates
The recovery rates used in this calculator are averages drawn from data across thousands of B2B businesses in the UK and internationally. Your actual recovery rate will depend on:
- Your industry. Atradius payment data shows construction and manufacturing consistently see worse aging profiles than professional services or financial services, due to longer project cycles and a higher rate of scope disputes.
- Your customer base. A handful of large, reliable customers behaves very differently from a long tail of smaller ones.
- Your collections process. Businesses with a consistent, structured follow-up process recover significantly more than those who chase ad hoc. Trove’s own data shows that two well-timed reminders recover around 80% of overdue invoices - which means the process matters as much as the age.
- Whether there are active disputes. An invoice in dispute is a different animal from one that’s been forgotten. Neither is guaranteed, but the paths to resolution are different.
Treat the output as a directional estimate, not a precise forecast. If your 90+ bucket is large and has been sitting there for a while, the number may be uncomfortable - but it’s better to know than to carry it as an asset you’re unlikely to see.
What to do with what you find
If the calculator shows a significant amount at risk, the most important thing is to act now rather than later. Every week an invoice ages, the odds move further against you.
For invoices under 60 days: These are still very recoverable. A structured reminder sequence - friendly at first, firmer if needed - will get most of them paid. Our late payment email templates cover every stage from a gentle nudge to a formal escalation notice.
For invoices between 60 and 90 days: Pick up the phone. An email at this stage is easy to ignore; a direct conversation is harder to avoid. Ask specifically whether there’s a dispute or query holding payment up - sometimes there is, and resolving it quickly unlocks the payment.
For invoices over 90 days: Make a decision on each one. Some will still be worth pursuing directly. Others may warrant a formal demand letter or a payment plan conversation. A small number may need to be written off. Being honest about which is which is more useful than treating them all the same.
For all of it: the best way to keep your aged receivables report healthy is to catch invoices before they get old in the first place. Understanding the report and building a weekly review habit is the simplest thing you can do to protect your cash flow.
If the volume of chasing has grown to the point where a manual process isn’t keeping up, Trove automates the follow-up directly from your Xero account - tracking which invoices have been chased, sending reminders on schedule, and logging any responses. You can start a free 30-day trial here or book a demo if you’d like to see it first.
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