How Aventus stopped chasing invoices on Sunday nights

Before publishing — read this whole block.

Aventus is a real customer. Nothing about them may be invented, including the parts that feel too small to matter — sector, headcount, city, the shape of their book. Every [[NEEDS: marker below is a claim that has to come from Aventus or from their ledger before this page can go live. The build fails while any marker remains in a published article, so this cannot ship by accident.

Sign-off required before publishing:

• [[NEEDS: written permission from Aventus to be named in a public case study, and separate permission to use their logo if we use it. Email confirmation is enough; keep it on file.]]
• [[NEEDS: named person and job title for the quote, and their approval of the exact wording. Do not paraphrase an approved quote afterwards.]]
• [[NEEDS: Aventus in one line — what kind of agency, roughly what size, roughly where. Ask them how they describe themselves rather than describing them for them.]]

Figures, all from their ledger, all to be confirmed with them:

• [[NEEDS: number of open invoices at the point they started, and total value outstanding.]]
• [[NEEDS: average days-to-pay before, measured over a stated window — say the six months before go-live — and the same measure after, over a comparable window. State both windows on the page. A before-and-after with no stated period is the kind of number a buyer stops trusting.]]
• [[NEEDS: how much time the founder or ops lead was spending on chasing per week, in their own words.]]
• [[NEEDS: statutory interest claimed to date, if any, and whether they actually applied it or only signalled it.]]
• [[NEEDS: number of payment plans agreed, and whether they held.]]
• [[NEEDS: anything that did NOT improve. A case study with no negative in it reads as marketing. If concentration is still bad or one client is still terrible, say so — it is the most credible paragraph on the page.]]

Also confirm: which duties they actually have switched on. Do not describe anything they are not using. Nothing on this page may reference client scoring or cash-flow forecasting, which do not exist.

[[NEEDS: one-line description of Aventus]] had the problem every agency of its size has and almost none of them name: the money owed to them was somebody's job in the sense that somebody felt bad about it, not in the sense that somebody did it.

The short version

A block for a salesperson to paste into an email. Keep it to four lines.

Aventus is [[NEEDS: one line — what they do, roughly what size]]. Before Fisco they had [[NEEDS: N]] open invoices worth [[NEEDS: £X]], chased in bursts by [[NEEDS: role]], mostly at weekends. Average days-to-pay was [[NEEDS: N days, over stated window]]; it is now [[NEEDS: N days, over stated window]]. They have claimed [[NEEDS: £X]] of statutory interest they were entitled to all along, and nobody at Aventus has opened the accounting system on a Sunday since.

The situation before

[[NEEDS: rewrite this section from what Aventus actually tells you. The shape below is the shape the interview should follow — do not publish the generic version.]]

The book was [[NEEDS: N]] open invoices at any one time, worth [[NEEDS: £X]]. That is past the point where one person can hold the picture in their head — which is the real threshold, not headcount. Below about twenty open invoices a founder knows, roughly, who owes what and who is being slow. Above it they know the total and nothing else.

Chasing fell to [[NEEDS: role]], on top of a full job. It happened the way it always happens when it is nobody's actual role: in bursts, triggered by the cash position getting uncomfortable rather than by an invoice becoming overdue. [[NEEDS: their own description of how much time this took and when it happened — quote them if the phrasing is good.]]

Three specific costs, none of which show up in any account:

The chases went out too late. The value of a chase is almost entirely in its timing. A nudge two days after the due date gets a reply; the same words six weeks later get an apology and no payment, because by then the invoice has moved to a different place in the client's system and needs a different intervention.

Promises evaporated. A client would say "it'll go out on the 25th" on a call. Nobody wrote it down where anyone else could see it, nobody chased on the 26th, and three weeks later the chase restarted from the beginning — from a weaker position, having thrown away the strongest thing they had.

The awkwardness had a price. [[NEEDS: confirm with Aventus — did account managers avoid chasing their own clients? This is the near-universal pattern and it is worth naming if it was true for them, because every prospect recognises it.]] The person with the relationship is the worst person to ask for money, and at a small agency they are usually the only person available.

The objection this answers

The question every agency asks, and the one Aventus asked: why pay for this when Xero will send reminders for free?

It is a fair question and the answer is not "our emails are better". Turn on Xero's reminders. They are free, they work, and they will fix the invoices that were only ever going to be a few days late.

What they will not do is anything that requires a decision. And the invoices that actually hurt an agency are all decisions:

Knowing when to stop. A reminder on a timer keeps sending. It chases a client who paid on Tuesday, and it chases a client who replied on Monday saying the March retainer is wrong. Both are worse than not chasing at all, and both are how agencies end up switching reminders off within a month.

Telling a promise from a dispute from a query. These three replies look similar and need opposite responses. A promise needs a date recorded and a follow-up the morning after. A dispute needs the chase stopped immediately and the complaint pinned down in writing. A query needs an answer today.

Tone. The same firmness for a twenty-year client and a stranger who has never paid on time is how relationships get damaged. Escalating tone gradually, per client, is the actual skill in credit control.

The money nobody was claiming. Every overdue business invoice in the UK carries an entitlement to interest at 8 points over base, plus a fixed sum of £40, £70 or £100 per invoice, under the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998. Aventus was not claiming any of it, which is normal — almost nobody does. On a book with [[NEEDS: N]] overdue invoices on it, the fixed sums alone come to [[NEEDS: £X — this is arithmetic the reader can check: count the overdue invoices in each band and multiply]] before a penny of interest.

That is the difference the price defends. Not automated typing — the comparison is with a salary, not with a mail merge.

What happens now, day to day

Only duties Aventus actually has switched on. [[NEEDS: confirm this list against their settings before publishing and delete anything they are not using.]]

Every open invoice is looked at every day. Not a scheduled send — an assessment, per invoice, of whether today is the day it needs something.

Chases go out from Aventus's own mailbox, in Aventus's voice. Not from a vendor domain. The client sees an email from the person they know, at the address they know, which is why it reads as a supplier rather than a system.

Nothing sends without approval. That is the default and it stays on until the agency turns it off, per client. [[NEEDS: has Aventus given any clients autonomy yet, or is everything still approved? Say which — "we still approve everything" is a perfectly good answer and it reassures the sceptical prospect.]]

Replies are read and sorted. Promise, query, dispute, out of office. A dispute stops the chase on that account immediately; a promise records the date and comes back the morning after if nothing has arrived.

Clients get a page to pay on. Their whole outstanding position on one branded page — pay, commit to a date, or raise a query, with no login. Money goes straight to Aventus's own accounts; we are never in the flow of funds.

Payment plans are agreed and enforced. When a client cannot pay in full, an instalment schedule is proposed and then actually watched — a missed instalment is noticed the day it is missed. [[NEEDS: how many plans, and did they hold?]]

Remittances are matched to invoices. A remittance advice arrives, the payment is allocated across the invoices it covers, and the allocation is put up for approval rather than guessed at.

Statutory interest is calculated per invoice and available to apply, or simply to signal — which is usually the more effective move.

It reports in Slack, like a colleague. Brief, numbers first: what was chased, what was promised, what needs a human. [[NEEDS: confirm they use Slack rather than the email digest.]]

Concentration gets flagged. When one client becomes a large share of everything outstanding, that is said out loud rather than left to be noticed. [[NEEDS: was this true for Aventus? If a single client was over 30% of the book, that is a strong detail — but only if it happened.]]

What changed

[[NEEDS: this entire section. Every figure from their ledger, every window stated, nothing rounded up. If a number is not impressive, publish it anyway — a modest real number is worth more in a sales conversation than a spectacular one the prospect suspects.]]

What did not change. [[NEEDS: the honest paragraph. Something did not improve — a client who is still terrible, concentration that is still too high, a dispute that took months anyway. Name it. This is the paragraph that makes the rest of the page believable, and a sceptical buyer on a call will notice its absence.]]

In their words

[[NEEDS: quote. Ask for something specific rather than complimentary — the moment they noticed the difference, or the thing they no longer do. "It caught a promise I'd completely forgotten about" is worth ten sentences of praise. Get the exact wording approved in writing.]]

— [[NEEDS: name]], [[NEEDS: job title]], Aventus

Would this work for you

The honest test is not agency size. It is whether these are true:

• More than about twenty invoices open at once, so nobody holds the whole picture.
• Chasing happens in bursts rather than daily, and usually outside working hours.
• Client replies get read by whoever happens to see them, and promises live in someone's memory.
• You have never claimed a penny of statutory interest.

If three of those are true, the job already exists at your agency and somebody is doing it badly rather than nobody doing it at all. The choice is what you want doing it.

The free health check reads your own numbers out of Xero in about two minutes — no card, no account, read-only, tokens revoked when the report is built. It is the fastest way to find out whether your book looks like the one described above.