If you run a Xero business, you have probably met the one job Xero does not finish for you: getting the late payers to actually pay. Credit control software is the layer that does it, following up every overdue invoice on a schedule, logging each chase, and stepping the pressure up when a customer goes quiet. This guide is for Xero users deciding whether to add one, and which to pick. It covers where these tools fit, what they cost, how candid each is about its limits, and the UK detail most round-ups gloss over: charging statutory interest.
The short answer
For a Xero business in 2026, the best-value credit control software is Paidnice: it holds a 5-star average on the Xero App Store, charges UK statutory interest automatically, and bills a flat published rate with unlimited users. Chaser is the pick when you need real credit reporting and Companies House risk monitoring. Satago layers on Experian credit checks and invoice finance, Kolleno and Upflow are built for larger, data-led finance teams, and Xero's free reminders will hold you over until their limits start to bite.
- Paidnice: best value, top rated on the Xero App Store, with automatic UK statutory interest.
- Chaser: depth and Companies House credit reporting for mid-market teams.
- Satago: chasing with Experian credit checks and invoice finance.
- Credit Hound: a task-led debtor workspace for Sage-heavy teams.
- Kolleno: full-cycle AR with AI, for mid-market and enterprise.
- Upflow: deep receivables analytics for scaling B2B teams.
- Xero reminders: free and built in, until you outgrow them.
Where credit control software fits
The credit control loop that software automates end to end.
Getting paid runs in three moves: the invoice goes out, most customers settle on their own, and a stubborn few have to be chased. Accounts receivable is the name for the whole sequence. Credit control is just that final move, the chasing. On Xero, the first two moves are already handled, so credit control is usually the only gap left to plug.
| The move | Who handles it on a Xero stack |
|---|---|
| Raising and sending the invoice | Xero |
| Taking the payment | Xero, with Stripe or GoCardless |
| Following up the late payers | A credit control tool, the gap |
So if your invoices already go out cleanly and the majority get paid, you are not shopping for another invoicing system. You are looking for something that closes the last mile: the polite, persistent follow-up you would rather not do by hand.
One job, several names
You will see the same job sold under several labels, and which one you meet usually comes down to geography rather than anything technical.
| Label | Roughly means | Common in |
|---|---|---|
| Accounts receivable | The entire invoice-to-cash process, start to finish | Used everywhere |
| Credit control | Chasing what is late, plus managing credit risk | The UK |
| Debtor management | The same thing as credit control | Australia and New Zealand |
| Dunning | Automated chasing, with less of the credit-risk side | The US |
FreeAgent files these apps under Credit Control; Xero files the identical feature under Debtor Management. Treat the labels as interchangeable. What matters is whether the tool actually collects, not what its menu calls the section.
Which features you actually need
Manual credit control
- Someone has to remember to chase
- Reminders go out late, or not at all
- No record of what was said
- Late fees rarely claimed
Software credit control
- Reminders fire on schedule
- Escalation is built in
- Every action is logged
- Statutory interest applied automatically
What changes when a tool runs the process instead of a person.
Once you have ruled out the full AR platforms and settled on a chasing tool, the feature list is shorter than the marketing suggests. Sort it into what you will use straight away and what only earns its place later.
Used from week one
- A live two-way link to Xero, so invoices and payments stay in step without exports.
- Scheduled, multi-step follow-ups that run without you remembering to send them.
- Messages that go out from your own address, not a shared one, so they land and look like you.
- Somewhere to log calls, promises and disputes against each customer.
- A plain read-out of what is overdue, what is outstanding, and what has come in.
Earns its place later
- Deeper reporting, once you start tracking DSO and ageing in earnest.
- Alerts pushed into Slack or Teams for a growing finance team.
- A tie-in to your CRM, so payment history sits beside the relationship.
- Credit limits and risk scores, to price the risk before you extend terms.
- Automatic UK late fees and statutory interest, so you actually claim what you are owed.
That final item is the one a UK round-up should never bury, so it gets its own section.
The UK feature most tools get wrong
Why credit control matters in the UK. The statutory rate moves with the Bank of England base rate, so confirm the current figure at GOV.UK.
Under the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998, a UK business can charge interest on an overdue business-to-business invoice from the first day it is late, plus a fixed sum towards the cost of recovery. The right is automatic, so it does not need to be written into your contract.
What the law lets you charge
Easy to state, awkward to apply by hand, because the base rate keeps moving.
The fixed sum is £40 on debts up to £999.99, £70 from £1,000 to £9,999.99, and £100 at £10,000 and above. Because the base rate is reset several times a year, a long-overdue invoice can straddle two or three rates, and the charge has to be split across each. Source: GOV.UK.
Who actually charges it for you
Most chasing tools either skip statutory interest or bolt on a flat percentage that is wrong the moment the Monetary Policy Committee meets. A handful raise a late fee but leave you to set the rate. Paidnice is the one tool in this guide that pins the interest to the Bank of England base rate plus 8%, recalculates it as the rate moves, and keeps an audit trail behind each charge. On a ledger of overdue B2B invoices, that is the gap between an app that nags and a system that recovers.
What it really costs
A warning before the numbers. Every figure below is the entry price, and most tools climb as your invoice volume does. A couple do not publish pricing at all and quote only on request, which is worth holding against them if predictable costs matter to you.
| Tool | Suited to | Entry price | How it is priced | Free trial | UK late fees / interest |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Paidnice | Value-focused Xero businesses | $69/mo | Flat, published, unlimited users | Yes | Statutory interest, applied automatically |
| Chaser | Mid-market finance teams | £199/mo | Tiered by turnover | 10 days | Late fees at a rate you set |
| Satago | Small businesses, often on Sage | £45/mo | Tiered | Yes | Late fees (own-domain on the £80 tier) |
| Credit Hound | Sage-based teams | On request | Quote only | Varies | Manual |
| Kolleno | Mid-market and enterprise | On request | Quote-based | No mention | Part of the AR workflow |
| Upflow | Scaling B2B teams | On request | Historically % of revenue | No mention | Late fees |
Entry pricing as published in June 2026; expect to pay more as invoice volume grows. Credit Hound and Upflow quote on request. Check each vendor for the current figure.
A closer look at each tool
Here is each option in the same shape, with what it does well and the one thing to keep an eye on. No tool suits everyone, so the catch matters as much as the pitch.
Paidnice
Best value- Reviews: 5/5 Xero App Store, 5/5 Capterra, 2025 Xero Global Small Business App of the Year
- Entry price: $69/mo, flat and published, unlimited users
- Suited to: Value-focused Xero businesses that want enforcement, not just reminders
- Xero fit: Native two-way sync, plus Stripe and Pinch for payment
- Standout: UK statutory interest pinned to the Bank of England base rate plus 8% and recalculated automatically
- Watch out: Pricing is quoted in US dollars, and it is built for small and mid-sized businesses rather than large enterprise finance functions
Paidnice hands a small Xero business the kind of collections process a finance department would run, minus the headcount and the per-seat bill. It chases by email, SMS and posted letter from your own domain, raises late fees and statutory interest on its own, sets up payment plans, and routes each customer group down its own path. The 5-star Xero App Store average and the 2025 Xero award are the short version of why it leads on value here. See Paidnice on the Xero App Store →
Chaser
- Reviews: 5/5 Xero App Store, 4.9 Capterra, 4.4 G2
- Entry price: £199/mo, next tier £599
- Suited to: Mid-market finance teams that want depth and control
- Xero fit: Native, alongside Sage and a wide set of CRMs and ERPs
- Standout: Companies House risk monitoring and a built-in route into debt collection
- Watch out: Price jumps at turnover bands, and any late fee is a flat rate you keep up to date yourself, not one tied to the Bank of England base rate
Chaser is among the longest-standing names here and reaches across the whole receivables cycle. It rewards a finance team that wants granular control of chasing workflows and reporting, and its UK credit-risk monitoring is the genuine differentiator.
Satago
- Reviews: 4.9 Xero App Store, verified on Capterra and Trustpilot
- Entry price: £45/mo, next tier £80
- Suited to: Small businesses that want chasing, credit checks and finance together
- Xero fit: Connects to Xero, alongside Sage, FreeAgent and Experian
- Standout: Experian-backed credit scoring, and invoice finance inside the same tool
- Watch out: On the Basic plan, reminders go out from Satago's own address rather than yours; sending from your domain needs the £80 Premium tier
Satago folds credit scoring and invoice finance into a chasing tool. The credit view is genuinely handy for setting sensible terms up front, so you sidestep the bad debt instead of chasing it later.
Credit Hound
- Reviews: Verified on TrustRadius and G2
- Entry price: On request
- Suited to: Sage-based teams that want a task-led debtor workspace
- Xero fit: Connects to Xero, but is built around Sage 50, 200 and Intacct
- Standout: A worklist that tells you who to call, when and why, with promised payments and disputes tracked
- Watch out: Quote-only pricing makes budgeting harder, and the centre of gravity is Sage, not Xero
Credit Hound, from British developer Draycir, is essentially a CRM for outstanding debt. One finance lead reported debtor days dropping from the mid-40s to the high-20s. The natural pick if your stack is Sage-first and you want structure around the chasing.
Kolleno
- Reviews: 5/5 Xero App Store, verified on G2
- Entry price: On request, quoted per user
- Suited to: Mid-market and enterprise collections teams
- Xero fit: Connects to Xero, plus Sage, ERPs, CRMs and 1,000+ tools
- Standout: The full AR lifecycle, including e-invoicing and reconciliation, with newer AI agents
- Watch out: Per-user pricing gets expensive fast for a small team, and the platform is pitched above the typical SMB
Kolleno, based in London, pulls receivables, payments and reconciliation into one place and uses AI to draw data from accounting systems, ERPs and CRMs. A capable all-rounder for larger teams that value automation and reconciliation together.
Upflow
- Reviews: 5/5 Xero App Store, strong across 167 reviews on G2
- Entry price: Not published, historically a percentage of revenue collected
- Suited to: Scaling B2B and SaaS companies, often US-based
- Xero fit: Connects to Xero, alongside NetSuite, Stripe, Zuora and Salesforce
- Standout: Serious AR analytics: DSO trends, cohort analysis and risk scoring
- Watch out: Pricing is opaque, and it is lighter on hands-on UK statutory interest and fee enforcement than a UK-first tool
Upflow sits as an intelligence layer over your accounting or ERP system, turning raw billing data into dashboards and structured workflows. It is at its best when reporting and forecasting are the priority for a dedicated finance function.
Xero reminders (the free baseline)
- Reviews: n/a, built into Xero
- Entry price: Free, included with Xero
- Suited to: Any Xero user with simple, low-volume chasing
- Xero fit: It is Xero
- Standout: Free, and already switched on in your account
- Watch out: Stops at five reminders per invoice, runs one schedule for every customer, sends from an @xero.com address that can be filtered or reach the wrong contact, and cannot add a late fee
Xero's own reminders are the free baseline every paid tool is measured against. For a business with a few dependable customers they are often enough, and their ceilings only show as you grow. The day you hit one is the day a dedicated tool starts to pay for itself.
Narrowing it down to one
Four questions get most Xero businesses to an answer.
What are you actually missing?
If the only problem is the last few late payers, you need chasing, not a finance platform. Buy for the gap in front of you, not the org chart you might have in three years. Over-buying on features you will never open is the most common mistake here.
How much volume, and how much budget?
- Lower-priced tools do the core job cleanly and suit most small Xero businesses.
- The heavier platforms only pay back when a finance team will genuinely use the deeper reporting and controls.
Who is going to run it?
- An owner or director doing it themselves wants something that mostly runs itself.
- A small finance team wants control, customisation and reporting.
- A dedicated credit controller wants account-level depth and a real worklist.
Will it charge UK interest for you?
If you invoice other businesses, you are owed interest and a fixed fee on anything late. A tool that applies the Bank of England rate for you collects that automatically; one that leaves it in a spreadsheet quietly loses you money every time the rate shifts.
For most small and mid-sized Xero businesses, those four point the same way: reliable chasing that fits Xero and handles statutory interest, without paying for enterprise features you will never touch.
Frequently asked questions
When is credit control software actually worth paying for?
Once late payments start costing you real time or cash. The sum is simple: if a modest monthly fee brings invoices in days or weeks earlier, it has already paid for itself. If you only have a handful of reliable customers, Xero's free reminders may still be plenty.
Is credit control the same as debt collection?
No. Credit control is the steady, ongoing job of getting invoices paid on time, run by you or a tool. Debt collection is the fallback when that fails: handing the debt to an agency or solicitor for a fee or a cut. Good credit control means you reach for debt collection far less often.
Will it sync properly with my Xero account?
It should, through a two-way connection that reads your invoices and payment status and writes updates back. For a Xero user, native sync is non-negotiable, so rule out anything that only imports a CSV. Paidnice, Chaser, Satago, Kolleno and Upflow all connect to Xero directly.
Which tools can charge UK late payment interest for me?
Only some. UK businesses can charge statutory interest and a fixed fee on overdue B2B invoices, but Xero will not work it out or raise it. Tools with late-fee automation calculate it and raise a separate invoice; Paidnice goes further and keeps the rate indexed to the Bank of England base rate plus 8% automatically. See GOV.UK for the rules.
When do Xero's built-in reminders stop being enough?
When you bump into their ceilings: five reminders per invoice, one schedule for everyone, emails from an @xero.com address that get filtered or land with the wrong contact, and no way to add a late fee. Hit any of those and a dedicated tool starts to earn its keep.
Which credit control tool is best for a Xero user?
For most small and mid-sized Xero businesses, Paidnice is the best value, with a 5-star Xero App Store rating and automatic UK statutory interest. Chaser is the stronger choice if you need depth and Companies House credit reporting, while Satago, Kolleno and Upflow each suit more specific needs.
The bottom line
For a Xero business, credit control software fixes the single stage Xero leaves to you: chasing what is late. Narrow the field by what you are missing, what you can spend, and who will run it day to day.
Chaser leads on depth and credit reporting, Satago on credit checks and finance, Credit Hound on Sage-based worklists, and Kolleno and Upflow on AI and analytics for bigger teams. For most small and mid-sized Xero businesses that want dependable chasing on flat, published pricing with UK statutory interest handled for them, Paidnice is the best-value pick.
Sources and further reading
- GOV.UK: charging interest on commercial debt
- Xero App Store: credit control and debtor management apps
- Capterra UK: credit control and debt collection software
- G2: accounts receivable software category
Pricing, review scores and feature availability are accurate to the best of our knowledge as of 25 June 2026 and change over time. Follow each linked source for the current figure. This guide is published by Accounting.Events, powered by Paidnice.
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