Credit control software for a UK small business starts at £20 per user a month on Sage 50 and £45 a month on Xero, as at August 2026. Sort by ledger first, then by invoices a month.
Written for the person who does the chasing in a UK business: usually the owner, sometimes the one bookkeeper, on Xero, QuickBooks Online or Sage 50. If you have a finance team and a credit controller, our comparison by turnover, seats and cost is the better page.
The short answer, by ledger. On Sage 50, start with Credit Hound at £20 a user or Satago at £25. On Xero or QuickBooks Online, start with Satago at £45 if you want credit scores, or Paidnice at £49 if you want statutory interest posted to the ledger. Past £4m turnover, look at Chaser. Under an hour of chasing a month, stay on Xero's reminders.
Credit control software connects to your accounting ledger, reads what is overdue, and chases it on a schedule you set. It is also sold as debtor management software.
Five capabilities define the category: automated reminders, escalation when they are ignored, a customer portal, dispute tracking, and risk data on how a customer pays. In the UK a sixth matters: whether the tool can charge the statutory interest the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998 already entitles you to, at 8% above the Bank of England base rate.
Credit control software does five jobs: reminders, escalation, a customer portal, dispute tracking, and risk data. What separates the tools is how many they automate.
The number this category scores itself on is DSO, days sales outstanding, the average number of days it takes you to get paid. Hold every tool on your shortlist to it. Our guide to the dunning process covers how the reminder ladder is usually built.
Five tools serve UK small businesses at this size: Xero's built-in reminders, Credit Hound, Satago, Paidnice and Chaser. Entry prices run from included with your Xero subscription to £199 a month, counted in four different units.
Columns run left to right by entry price. That is not a ranking, and the cheapest column is rarely the right answer. Every figure traces to the vendor's own published material and is dated August 2026.
 Xero built-in |  Credit Hound |  Satago |  Paidnice |  Chaser | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Choose it when | |||||
| Buy this one if | You chase under an hour a month | Your ledger is Sage and disputes are the bottleneck | You want credit scores, or invoice finance alongside | You use Xero as your ledger and you want accounts receivable automation | You are past £4m and need credit data at scale |
| The money | |||||
| Entry price, Aug 2026 | Included | £20 per user | £25 Sage 50, £45 Xero | £49 | £199 |
| Priced on | Your Xero plan | Per user | Per company | Invoices a month | Company revenue |
| Invoices a month at entry | No cap | ⚠️ Not published | Unlimited on Sage 50, 100 emails on £45 Xero tier | 150 | No cap |
| Users at entry | Your Xero users | One per licence | Unlimited | 2 | 4 |
| Turnover gate | ✅ None | ✅ None | None published | ✅ None | Yes, £4m at £199 |
| The fit | |||||
| Revenue fit | Short overdue lists | Sage sites, any size | UK, any size | £1m to £20m | £4m and above |
| Region | Global | UK led, six currencies | UK only | UK, AU, NZ, US, CA, ZA | UK led, global |
| Your ledger | |||||
| Xero | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes |
| QuickBooks Online | ❌ No | ❌ None found | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes |
| Sage 50 | ❌ No | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes | ❌ No | ✅ Yes |
| What it automates | |||||
| Reminder sequences | ⚠️ Partial | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes |
| Scheduled statements | ❌ No | ❌ None found | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes | ⚠️ Partial |
| Payment plans | ❌ No | ❌ None found | ⚠️ Not verified | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes |
| Customer payment portal | ❌ No | Pay links, £38 | ⚠️ Not verified | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes |
| Credit checks on customers | ❌ No | ❌ None found | ✅ Yes | ❌ No | ✅ Yes |
| UK statutory charges | |||||
| Interest at 8% above base | ❌ No | ❌ None found | ⚠️ Not verified | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes |
| The £40, £70, £100 fixed sum | ❌ No | ❌ None found | ⚠️ Not verified | ✅ Yes | One rule only |
| Charge posts to the ledger | ❌ No | ❌ None found | ⚠️ Not verified | Xero and QBO | Xero only |
| Proof, and how to try it | |||||
| Rated | Not applicable | 5.0 from 11 Sage UK Marketplace reviews | ⚠️ Not verified | 5.0 from 82 Xero App Store reviews | 4.98 from 374 Xero App Store reviews |
| How you try it | Turn it on in Xero | Free trial, no card | No trial stated | 20 free actions, no card | 10-day trial after a demo |
Yes The vendor documents the capability and we have read the documentation.
Partial It works, with a limit worth knowing before you buy. The limit is named in the cell or the tool notes below.
None found We read the vendor's product pages, feature lists and FAQs and the function does not appear in any of them.
Not verified The vendor documents nothing either way, and we will not guess on their behalf.
A Sage channel collections tool from Draycir, in the market since 2002, built around structured dispute management and promise-to-pay tracking rather than around charging.
Pricing is published, which is rare in this channel: £20 per user a month on Sage 50 and Sage Accounting, £51 for the first user plus £35 for each user after on Sage 200 and Xero, verified 14 August 2026. The Sage UK Marketplace listing separately shows Credit Hound Professional from £39 a month, so confirm which price applies to you.
Choose it when your ledger is Sage, and disputes rather than reminders are what holds up your cash.
The limitation. It chases, it does not charge. No interest, no late fee, no fixed sum and no writeback of a charge to the ledger appears anywhere in the vendor's published material.
Payment is a separate £38 a month module and it is pay links rather than a portal, and there is no QuickBooks Online connector. Per-user pricing also scales badly: three people chasing on Xero is £51 plus £35 plus £35, so £121 a month, not £51.
A UK hybrid: automated chasing and credit risk data on one side, invoice finance on the other.
Inside Sage 50 the embedded Credit Control and Risk Insights package starts at £25 a month for unlimited users, unlimited chasing and three full credit reports a year, with a Plus tier at £45 carrying 25 reports. The vendor states Plus is included with selected Sage 50 subscriptions, so ask your Sage account manager before you pay for anything.
On Xero or QuickBooks Online you are on the standalone ladder instead: Basic £45, Premium £80, Platinum £200 a month, verified 14 August 2026.
Choose it when you want credit scores and credit limit suggestions on your customers, or you want to finance an invoice as well as chase it.
The limitation. The £45 Basic tier caps you at 100 email reminders a month, which is the binding constraint on a chasing tool at that price. Satago is UK only, so a business with an Australian or US entity needs a second tool.
We could not verify from the vendor's own material whether it applies statutory interest, runs payment plans or posts a charge back to the ledger. Treat all three as open questions for the demo.
Built in 2022 specifically to generate late fees, then grown into reminders, statements, payment plans, escalation and a customer portal. Pricing is on invoice volume: £49 a month for 150 invoices and 2 users, then unlimited users on every tier above.
Winner of Global Small Business App of the Year at the 2025 Xero Global App Awards, winner of New Zealand Small Business App of the Year at the 2026 awards, and a 2026 finalist in the UK. Rated 5.0 from 82 Xero App Store reviews. The platform has passed $1 billion collected on time across more than 1 million invoices since 2022.
Choose it when the charges have to land on the ledger, and you want statements, fees, payment plans and a portal inside one plan rather than as paid add-ons.
The limitation. Paidnice runs on Xero and QuickBooks Online only. If your ledger is Sage 50, Sage 200 or FreeAgent, we cannot help you. Three of the other four tools here run on Sage 50.
There is no credit checking either. If credit data on a new trade account is the primary job, Satago or Chaser is the buy. Below about an hour a month spent chasing, Xero's own reminders are the better answer and we will tell you so.
The most established suite in this set, founded in 2014, and the deepest review base in the category at 4.98 from 374 Xero App Store reviews. It chases by email, SMS, letter and automated call, runs credit checking and monitoring as metered credits, and includes an integrated collections route.
Pricing is tiered on your company revenue: £199 a month up to £4m turnover, £599 up to £10m, and £899 for the top published tier, with a 10-day trial and a demo required before you can buy. Our Chaser alternatives guide covers the fit in more detail.
Choose it when you are past £4m turnover, credit checking matters as much as chasing, and you want letters and phone calls as well as email.
The limitation. Pricing on company revenue rather than invoice volume means a low volume, high value business can land on the £599 tier for a handful of invoices a month.
The late fee is one global rule that cannot vary by customer group, it does not apply to payment-plan or partially-paid invoices, and the line-item sync is Xero only. Statements go monthly on a fixed day, with recipients and senders you cannot change.
Of the five tools here, four run on Xero, three run on QuickBooks Online and three run on Sage 50, and only two run on all three. Your accounting system removes most of the shortlist before price does.
Check the connector on the vendor's own integration page before you shortlist. A category page can name QuickBooks in its audience section and still recommend tools that have no QuickBooks connector.
If you are on Xero, our longer comparison of credit control software for Xero covers six tools against the same tests. If you run more than one Xero organisation, start with credit control across multiple Xero companies, because multi-entity pricing changes the answer.
Two of the five tools here apply the UK statutory rate of 8% above the Bank of England base rate automatically. One has no such function, one shows no evidence of it in any published material, and one leaves it undocumented.
The Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998 gives you an automatic right to interest at 8% above the Bank of England base rate on an overdue commercial invoice, whether or not your contract mentions it. You can also add a fixed sum for debt recovery costs: £40 on an invoice under £1,000, £70 from £1,000 to £9,999.99, and £100 at £10,000 and above.
The mechanic that catches people out is the fixing. The rate is set in six-month blocks by the base rate in force on 30 June and 31 December, and it holds for the whole block even if the Bank moves in between.
The Bank Rate on 30 June 2026 was 3.75%, so the statutory rate on debts becoming late between 1 July and 31 December 2026 is 11.75%, verified 26 August 2026.
Terms are the other half of it. The Prompt Payment Code recommends 30-day business-to-business terms, while construction and recruitment still run 60 and 90 day accounts, which is where the interest arithmetic gets large enough to change behaviour.
Three questions to put to any vendor, in this order.
The full arithmetic, with worked examples, is in our guide to late payment fees in the UK and in how much you can charge for late fees.
About twenty a month. At eight minutes an invoice that is two hours forty of somebody's time, or £59 at £22 an hour fully loaded, against £49 for an entry tier.
Both figures are assumptions, so put your own minutes and your own hourly cost through the same arithmetic. Volume is the second thing to sort on, and only one of these five counts invoices at all, so the bands below use that ladder as the shape of the market rather than as the only route.
| Overdue invoices you chase a month | What to do about it |
|---|---|
| Under 20 | Stay on Xero's reminders and send a statement on the first of the month. A subscription costs more than the time it saves. |
| 20 to 150 | An entry tier does the job. Roughly £20 to £49 a month, depending on your ledger and your user count. |
| 150 to 300 | You have outgrown entry tiers. Expect £74 to £99 a month, and check the email allowance as well as the invoice cap. |
| 300 to 1,000 | £129 to £199 a month. Users included starts to matter more than the headline price. |
| Over 1,000 | Price on invoice volume rather than turnover, or a strong sales year moves you up a tier for no extra work. |
Volume is also why the delay costs more than it looks. On accrual accounting the VAT on an unpaid invoice is owed to HMRC whether or not your customer has paid, so every extra week of DSO is financed out of your own bank account.
Xero includes invoice reminders with your subscription: up to five emails on one organisation-wide schedule, fired at every invoice marked as sent. There is no interest, no statement schedule and no escalation to a named person.
The only balance control is a single checkbox that stops reminders below an amount you set, and it applies to all five reminders at once. Xero's own setup article points readers at the Xero App Store once they need more than that.
Interest is the clearest gap, and Xero's position on it is public. The request "Sales Invoices - Add interest to late invoices" was posted to the Xero product ideas board on 29 March 2012 and carries 1,104 votes as at 26 August 2026, with the status Accepted.
Xero's Community Manager replied on 7 July 2025 that a team is considering how to solve it, that there are no committed plans, and pointed users at invoice template wording, manual line items or a third-party app.
Statements have the same shape: accurate in Xero, and sent by hand. Our guides to automatic customer statements in Xero and adding 30, 60 and 90 day ageing to Xero statements cover the workarounds and where they run out.
The limitation. Xero gives every customer the same schedule, with no interest, no statement schedule and no escalation to a named person. It is included with your subscription and it is enough while chasing is under an hour a month. Above that you are working around one schedule by hand.
Paidnice charges UK statutory interest by switching on the Bank of England base rate toggle. It applies the correct base rate for each period an invoice spans and re-indexes itself when the rate resets, so nobody retypes 11.75% in January.
Two charge types run on the same customer group, which is unusual in this category.
Three mechanics are worth knowing before you compare. Statement interest recalculates at the moment the statement is sent rather than at the last policy run, so the figure your customer opens is accurate that morning. Compounding is on by default, so simple interest is a deliberate choice you make. Where a customer holds a credit note, the charge is calculated on the net balance rather than the gross.
The charge posts into Xero or QuickBooks Online as a Draft or an Approved invoice, your choice, and a single disputed invoice can be excluded by reference without moving the customer out of the policy.
Ask every vendor on your shortlist to raise a late fee during the demo, then show you that fee sitting in your ledger as an approved invoice against the customer. Some tools show the fee only inside their own dashboard. A charge posted to the ledger enters your customer's accounts payable and their next payment run, which is where it does the work.
Only one of these five offers a conventional free trial with no card and no obligation. The rest run a demo gate, a free action allowance, or nothing at all.
Whichever you pick, run it against last month's real overdue list rather than a sandbox. The thing you are testing is whether the rules survive your actual customer mix.
Paidnice runs from £49 a month for 150 invoices and 2 users up to £599 for 4,000 invoices, with unlimited users on every Pro tier and Custom from £749. Prices are hard-coded in each currency rather than converted.
| Plan | Invoices a month | Users | GBP | USD |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Essentials | 150, with 600 emails | 2 | £49 | $69 |
| Pro 300 | 300 | Unlimited | £74 | $99 |
| Pro 600 | 600 | Unlimited | £129 | $179 |
| Pro 1,000 | 1,000 | Unlimited | £199 | $279 |
| Pro 2,000 | 2,000 | Unlimited | £349 | $489 |
| Pro 3,000 | 3,000 | Unlimited | £479 | $649 |
| Pro 4,000 | 4,000 | Unlimited | £599 | $799 |
| Custom | Above 4,000 | Unlimited | from £749 | from $999 |
| Multi-entity add-on | Per extra entity | Unlimited | £19 | $29 |
| SMS | Per message | Unlimited | £0.05 | $0.10 |
Email allowances scale with the tier, from 1,200 a month on Pro 300 to 24,000 on Pro 4,000. There are no per-seat fees on any Pro tier, and it is priced fairly, with no contracts or lock-ins. Verify current pricing on the Paidnice pricing page before you buy.
Ten questions UK buyers ask before they shortlist, answered against the same five tools.
What are the tools of credit control?
Credit terms and a signed agreement, credit checks before you extend those terms, invoices with clear due dates, automated reminders, customer statements, statutory interest and the fixed recovery sum, payment plans, and escalation to a demand or a collections partner.
How to keep track of customer payments?
Your accounting system is the record. Xero's Aged Receivables report tells you who is late and by how long. Credit control software sits on top of it, chases automatically and writes the payment back, so the ledger stays the single source of truth.
What is debtor management software?
The same thing as credit control software. Debtor management is the older UK term, credit control is the more common one, and vendors use both to describe a tool that connects to your ledger and automates chasing overdue invoices.
What is the best debt collection software?
Debt collection and credit control solve different problems. Credit control software works your ledger before an invoice goes bad. Debt collection software, or an agency, works accounts that have already failed. Most UK small businesses need the first and use the second rarely.
Which software is mostly used in finance?
For UK small businesses the ledger is almost always Xero, QuickBooks Online, Sage or FreeAgent. Credit control software is a layer on top of one of those, not a replacement, which is why the connector list decides your shortlist.
Is there free credit control software?
Not as a standalone product. Xero's reminders, statements and credit limits come with your subscription and cover a short overdue list. Satago states that its Plus tier is included with selected Sage 50 subscriptions, so a Sage 50 business should check before paying.
Does the late fee appear on the customer's account or as a separate invoice?
It depends on the tool. Paidnice raises it in Xero or QuickBooks Online as a Draft or Approved invoice against the customer, so it appears on their statement and enters their accounts payable. Some tools show the charge only inside their own dashboard.
Can credit control software handle payment plans?
Some can. Paidnice and Chaser both run instalment plans with payments taken automatically. Check how chasing behaves once a plan is live, because at least one tool chases against the original invoice due date rather than the instalment dates.
Does credit control software send SMS as well as email?
Paidnice charges £0.05 per SMS on top of the plan, Chaser meters SMS as credits, and Satago includes 100 SMS a month on its £80 Premium tier. SMS is worth turning on for the final reminder before escalation rather than for the whole ladder.
How long does credit control software take to set up?
The connection is an OAuth login to your ledger and takes minutes. The real work is deciding your reminder ladder, which customers sit outside it and what your fee policy is, which is an afternoon with your aged receivables report open.
Paidnice is accounts receivable automation that enforces your payment terms, trusted by thousands of businesses on Xero and QuickBooks. Credit control and debtor management, run for you.
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