You know roughly what you are owed.
Roughly is the problem.
The number in your head is from a fortnight ago, it is optimistic, and payroll is on Friday. Somewhere in it there is an invoice from March that nobody has ever mentioned to the customer.
You are doing the books because there is nobody else awake to do them.
It is the end of the weekend and you are in the accounts package, not because you want to be, but because it is the only window all week where nothing else is on fire. Two hours in, you still could not say to the penny what is due in before Friday.
You are not bad at this. You are doing it thirteen days after the last time, which is exactly long enough for every question to have become a small investigation.
The villain is not the customer who has not paid. It is the invoice nobody chased in week two.
Almost nobody refuses to pay. They just do not pay yet, and the ones that go bad nearly all look identical at day fourteen: unremarkable, un-chased, and quietly sliding out of anyone’s memory while the work carries on.
By day sixty the conversation is awkward, the relationship is involved, and the person who has to have it is the same person who wants to sell them the next job. So it does not happen.
Cash does not run out suddenly. It runs out in instalments nobody logged.
A month’s books behind is a VAT return done from guesswork. A quarter’s chasing not done is a supplier paid from your overdraft instead of a customer’s cleared funds. A job priced against a cash position that was already two weeks stale is a job that eats its own margin.
None of that appears as a crisis on the day it happens. It appears about five months later, as a decision you now cannot afford to make.
Two desks, deliberately kept apart.
One keeps the books current — reconciled, coded, and accurate to yesterday rather than to a fortnight ago. The other does the asking, on a written ladder with dates on it, starting at day seven while it is still an administrative note and not a confrontation.
They are separate on purpose. The desk that asks for money has no opinion about the work, cannot discount, cannot negotiate and cannot agree a plan — so your commercial relationship is never spent on a payment reminder.
This is what is on the screen when you open it
Not a report you request. The position as it stood when the desk finished, with every chase that went out overnight and every one due today.
- 02:14Stage 3 INV-2291£14,470 97 days. Third notice sent, statement attached, copied to their accounts inbox.
- 02:16Stage 2 INV-2334£8,900 48 days. Reminder sent to the named contact, not the generic address.
- 02:19Stage 1 INV-2361£3,120 9 days. Polite note: is the invoice with the right person?
- 02:21Paid INV-2318£6,740 Cleared overnight. Matched against the bank line and closed.
- 02:24Held INV-2340£2,180 Query raised by the client. Chasing stopped, flagged for a person.
A person signs it off. Nothing goes out that a human cannot read back.
Anything contractual, anything that spends money, and anything that goes to a customer as a quotation passes a person first — three decisions that never happen automatically here, on any desk, for any client.
It works inside the accounts package you already use. Nothing is migrated, nothing new is bought, and your client material is used to do your work and nothing else — not pooled, not used to train anything.
Every chase is a row with an owner and a date, and something sweeps it.
A commitment that lives in somebody’s memory is a commitment that has already been lost. So every promise becomes a row the moment it is made, and a scheduled sweep works the ones that are due whether or not anybody is at a desk.
Then a separate desk verifies at the far end that what was reported to have happened actually happened — pass, fail, or unverifiable. Unverifiable reopens the job. It is never quietly rounded up to a pass.
The accounts function you have not been able to justify hiring.
A part-time bookkeeper does the entries but will not chase; a credit controller chases but is not a job you can fill at your size; and a good accountant is looking backwards at a year that has already happened. The gap between them is where the cash sits.
This is that gap staffed, on retainer — from £1,450 a month for one desk, no seat count, no usage meter, thirty days’ notice either way. It is not cheap and it is not trying to be.
Sunday night, and you do not open the accounts package.
The books are current because they were current yesterday. The chasing happened on the days it was supposed to, by a desk with no stake in being liked. You know what is landing before Friday because it is written down, not because you have estimated it.
The number in your head and the number in the account are finally the same number.
Cash you are owed is not cash you have. The difference is whether anybody asked.
What this desk will not do
Where this desk stops
- It never contacts a creditor. Money going out is yours, personally and always. There is no automated desk on that side of the ledger.
- It does not move money. It reconciles and prepares; you release every payment.
- It is not a substitute for a qualified accountant or tax adviser where one is legally required for your filings.
- It does not replace your own sign-off on statutory accounts or returns. Your accountant, or you, sign what is filed.
Asked before, answered here
Why not just use software?
Is this the cheapest option?
Do you replace our accountant?
Does 'credit control' mean debt collection?
What is actually owed to you today?
If the honest answer is “roughly”, that is the thing worth fixing first. Tell us what you use and how far behind it is.