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Which customers should I chase first?
Fractional FD/CFO, FD/CFO of the Year 2019 (British Accountancy Awards).
Published 23 October 2026.
Chase the biggest overdue invoices first, and among those the oldest, because they hold the most of your cash and get harder to collect the longer they sit. Then catch the large invoices that have only just gone overdue, before they go stale, and leave invoices that are not yet due alone.
How do I decide who to chase?
Open Xero's Aged Receivables report, set the report date to today and Ageing By to Due Date, then click Update. It lists every customer who owes you money, split by how overdue each invoice is: not yet due, then overdue by days. Two things decide the order: how much and how old. Size tells you how much of your cash is stuck with that customer. Age tells you how urgent it is, because a debt that has sat for three months is a different conversation from one that went overdue last week.
So rank in four groups:
- Big and old. Large amounts more than 30 days overdue. Phone, today. Not an email.
- Big and fresh. Large amounts just overdue. A call or a direct email this week stops them becoming next month's big and old.
- Small and old. Decide once: one firm conversation, and if the money is not coming, talk to your accountant about it and stop counting it as cash.
- Not yet due. Leave them. For a large one, a short check a few days before the due date that the invoice is approved for payment is fine.
A worked ranking from an aged receivables report
An illustrative ledger, not a real business. Five customers, £45,350 owed in total, of which £25,350 is overdue.
| Customer | Not yet due | 1 to 30 days overdue | 31 to 60 days | 61 to 90 days | Over 90 days |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Customer A | £6,000 | £0 | £0 | £12,400 | £0 |
| Customer B | £0 | £9,600 | £0 | £0 | £0 |
| Customer C | £14,000 | £0 | £0 | £0 | £0 |
| Customer D | £0 | £0 | £0 | £0 | £2,150 |
| Customer E | £0 | £1,200 | £0 | £0 | £0 |
1. Customer A, £12,400, 61 to 90 days overdue. The biggest overdue amount and one of the oldest. Phone today. They are also due to pay you another £6,000, so agree how the old invoice gets settled before the new one falls due.
2. Customer B, £9,600, under 30 days overdue. Big and fresh. A call this week, while it is still a reminder rather than a dispute.
3. Customer D, £2,150, over 90 days overdue. Small, but the oldest on the list. One firm conversation. If it is not coming, stop treating it as cash.
4. Customer E, £1,200, under 30 days overdue. A polite email reminder is enough for now.
5. Customer C, £14,000, not yet due. The largest balance on the ledger and nothing to chase. Leave it, and check a few days before the due date that it is approved.
Customers A and B together are £22,000 of the £25,350 overdue: two phone calls cover 87% of the problem.
That last line is the whole method. You do not need to chase everyone this week. You need to chase the two or three invoices that carry most of the money.
Does chasing change my cash cushion?
Not on paper, and that is the honest bit. Net cash already counts what customers owe you as yours: cash in the bank, plus debtors, minus what you owe soon. Collecting an invoice moves money from one side of that sum to the other. What chasing does is make the number true. An invoice that is never paid is net cash you never had, and your cash cushion in months was overstated by it all along. The cash in the bank is what pays the VAT and the wages; the debtor is only a promise. (How net cash is built from a Xero trial balance.)
How often should I go through the list?
Weekly. An aged receivables report read once a month shows a debt when it is already a month older. Ten minutes on a Monday, a short list, a few calls. It sits naturally inside a weekly cash check, next to what is leaving soon.
Can this list come to me?
Yes. Own Your Numbers connects to your Xero read-only and every Monday its Weekly Cash Score shows who owes you, oldest first, alongside your cash, net cash, cushion in months, a risk rating and the five things to do this week. The calls are still yours to make, and so are the judgement calls: which customer you can lean on, which relationship needs a softer touch. It does not send reminders to your customers and it cannot change anything in Xero. If the chasing itself is what never gets done, an automated chasing tool such as Chaser is covered in our roundup of cash flow apps for Xero.
14 days free · no card · read-only.