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Chasing unpaid invoices: what to use, honestly compared
This is a page about getting paid, written by a company that sells one of the answers. Same rules as the rest of this blog: every claim about another product carries the source and the date we checked it, and there is a section on where we are the wrong choice.
One thing about our own data first, because it is why this post exists. Our invoice-chasing page has produced exactly one signup from organic search. One. That is not a statistic and we are not going to dress it up as one, but somebody went looking for this unprompted and found us. That is worth writing about properly.
What the money actually looks like
Before the tools, the numbers — and only the ones that survive checking.
86 hours a year chasing late payment. That is government-commissioned research for the Department for Business and Trade and the Small Business Commissioner, not a vendor survey, and the same work puts the average owed per affected business at £17,000. Source: London Economics for DBT and the Small Business Commissioner, July 2025, via our own evidence base, 3 August 2026
Invoices run about eight days past their terms. Xero's UK Small Business Insights puts payment at 8.2 days late and 29.0 days from invoice to cash in the March 2026 quarter. The catch is worth knowing: that is measured on businesses already using Xero, so the wider market is more likely slower than faster. Source: Xero Small Business Insights UK, March 2026 quarter, via our own evidence base, 3 August 2026
We have left out the figure you will see most often — the one claiming UK firms spend an hour and a half a day chasing invoices. We could not trace it to any primary study and it contradicts the government number by about four times.
The four different things people mean by this
They are four separate purchases, not variations on one product, and picking the wrong one is the expensive mistake.
1. The reminders already inside your accounting software. Xero will send an automatic, customised email when an invoice is due or overdue, can send before the due date as well as after, and can be switched off for one customer or one invoice. If your invoices already live there, this costs nothing extra and is the first thing to turn on. Source: Xero's own invoicing pages and Xero Central invoice-reminder articles, read 8 August 2026
2. Dedicated credit control. Chaser is the serious version — sequenced chasing, credit checks, collections, on top of a real ledger. Its published entry plan is £199 a month for turnover under £4m. That is a finance-function price and the right one for a finance function. Source: chaserhq.com/pricing, checked 8 August 2026
3. Trade job management with chasing bundled in. Powered Now puts “Automatic Invoice & Quote Chasing” in its Premium tier at £40 per user per month; Tradify puts “Quote & Invoice Reminders” in its Pro and Plus tiers at £37 and £44 per user per month. If you already run one of these, the chasing is a switch rather than a purchase. Source: powerednow.com/pricing and tradifyhq.com/uk/pricing, both checked 8 August 2026
4. An AI employee you hand the job to. Our category. You do not build the sequence — you point it at your records and it drafts the chase for each overdue invoice in your wording.
Where LoopSuite is the wrong choice
The section most comparison pages skip, which is why they are worth nothing.
Your invoices live in accounting software. We have no working accounting connector. We do not read Xero and we do not read QuickBooks. If that is your setup, use the reminders those products already ship: they are included, they know exactly what is outstanding, and they stop when the invoice is marked paid without anyone telling them. Source: Xero's own invoicing pages, read 8 August 2026; our own connector status, 8 August 2026
You have real receivables and someone whose job is collecting them. At that size credit control earns its price. Chaser publishes tiers by turnover all the way to £100m for a reason. Source: chaserhq.com/pricing, checked 8 August 2026
You already pay for job management. Buying us to chase invoices you can already chase inside Tradify or Powered Now is paying twice for one job. Source: tradifyhq.com/uk/pricing and powerednow.com/pricing, both checked 8 August 2026
You want it to phone people. We work in email. Voice chasing is a different product and we do not have one.
Three things that work whatever you buy
All free, all published guidance, all underused.
You are allowed to charge interest. On a business-to-business debt the statutory rate is 8% plus the Bank of England base rate. Source: gov.uk, interest on late commercial payments, checked 8 August 2026
You can claim a fixed sum for the cost of chasing. £40 on a debt under £1,000, £70 up to £9,999.99, £100 at £10,000 or more, once per payment. Source: gov.uk, claim debt recovery costs on late payments, checked 8 August 2026
If you never agreed terms, the law sets them. Usually 30 days for public authorities, 60 for business transactions. Putting your own terms on the invoice takes five minutes and changes what “overdue” means. Source: gov.uk, late commercial payments guidance, checked 8 August 2026
None of that is legal advice. The point is that one calm sentence about statutory interest at the bottom of a chaser changes how the whole email reads, and costs nothing.
What we do, and what we do not
Overdue Invoice Follow-up builds the overdue list from the records you point it at — a spreadsheet, an upload, whatever you keep — and drafts a chase for each one in your wording, from your account. The list on its own is usually the thing people did not have.
Payment Link Sender is a separate job and prepares a link if you want one. Neither moves money.
Every employee lands paused, and you choose which accounts it may reach.
And the limit again, because here it is the one that matters: no accounting connector. If your books are the source of truth, we are not reading them.
Questions
Can LoopSuite chase invoices out of my accounting software?
No. We have no working accounting connector, so we do not read Xero or QuickBooks. Xero ships its own automatic reminders and for that setup they are the right answer [source: Xero's own invoicing pages, read 8 August 2026].
What does it work from, then?
The records you point it at — a spreadsheet, an upload, or the invoice records you keep in LoopSuite. It builds the overdue list from those and shows it to you.
Can I charge interest on a late invoice?
On a business-to-business debt, statutory interest is 8% plus the Bank of England base rate, and you can claim a fixed £40, £70 or £100 towards recovery costs depending on the size of the debt. Check your own position rather than relying on a blog post.
How late is a normal late invoice?
UK data put payment at 8.2 days beyond terms and 29 days from invoice to cash in the March 2026 quarter, measured on businesses already using accounting software — so the true figure across the market is probably worse [source: Xero Small Business Insights UK, March 2026 quarter, via our own evidence base, 3 August 2026].
Will it keep chasing someone who has already paid me?
Tell it and it stops. It also stops on a reply, so a conversation you have already started does not get talked over.
Is it cheaper than the alternatives?
Not always, and it depends what you are replacing. If you already pay for job-management software with reminders built in, that is cheaper. If your invoices sit in a spreadsheet and nothing chases them at all today, that is the gap we fill.
Every claim about another product above carries the source we checked and the date we checked it. If one of them is out of date, tell us and we will correct it.