Can AI chase unpaid invoices for me? How AI credit control works

What credit control involves

Credit control is the work of getting paid for what you have already sold: knowing who owes you, how late each invoice is, and chasing in a steady, polite way until the money arrives. In a small business it is usually the first job to slip, because it is never urgent on any single day.

The cost of letting it slip shows up in cash. Every week an invoice sits unpaid is a week that money is not in the bank for wages, suppliers or tax.

What AI can and cannot do here

How it works in Nella

1. You agree once. Nella asks whether it may prepare chase messages for overdue invoices. You can stop that at any time from the same place.
2. Nella checks each night. It reads your receivables ageing. Where customers are overdue, it puts one item on the Receivables role of your team board.
3. Drafts are ready to read. Each draft shows the customer, the amount overdue, the invoices, how many days overdue, the suggested tone and the message itself.
4. You approve message by message. Approving sends nothing. Each approved message opens as a new email in Gmail or Outlook, addressed to the email on the customer’s record in your accounting software, or you copy it. You can change the wording before you send it.
5. You can withdraw an approval if you change your mind before sending.

The tone is a suggestion based on how that customer has paid before. Nella never labels anyone a bad payer.

Due date versus when the money arrives

An invoice’s due date tells you when payment is owed on paper. When the money actually arrives depends on the customer. Nella measures each customer’s average days to pay from the invoice date, not the due date, so payment terms are not counted twice. A customer with no payment history has only the due date to go on, and Nella says that is a weaker basis.

Past behaviour is not a promise. A customer who has paid in 45 days four times running may still pay in 90.

What a chase list leaves out

• Small or newly due balances below the chase threshold have no draft, though they are still on the ledger. Nella shows both, so the chase list is never mistaken for everyone who owes.
• Invoices with no due date cannot be judged overdue or current, so they are counted separately.
• A ledger that could not be read is reported as not assessed, never as nobody owing you money.

Example · illustrative figures

Overnight, Receivables finds £10,900 overdue across three customers and drafts three messages. One customer usually pays 50 days after the invoice date and is 12 days late, so the draft is a friendly reminder. Another is 64 days overdue with a history of paying late, so the draft is firmer. The owner changes a line in one message, approves all three, and sends them from the business email. Nothing left the business until the owner pressed send.

When a payment is late in the UK

According to GOV.UK, if no payment date was agreed, a business payment is late 30 days after the customer gets the invoice, or after you deliver the goods or service if that is later. Agreed terms for business transactions are usually no longer than 60 days. Whether to charge interest or recovery costs on a late payment is your decision; the same GOV.UK guide sets out what you can claim.

Related: What is an AI finance team? and AI finance agents and human approval.

Sources

• GOV.UK: Late commercial payments: charging interest and debt recovery

Nella provides financial information and education, not accounting or tax advice. Nella shows you the numbers. When a question needs professional judgement, such as a filing or a tax decision, Nella says so and points you to a qualified accountant.