Credit Control

Credit Control and Dunning for Telecoms Resellers

Chase overdue accounts on a schedule instead of from memory, working straight from the invoice ledger.

What credit control software does

Credit control software chases unpaid invoices for you. It tracks who owes money, sends reminders on a set schedule, steps up when they go unanswered, and hands your team a daily list of who to ring. SAFE CRM does this from inside your billing platform, so the balances it chases are the real ones.

Most resellers start by chasing from a spreadsheet. It works while you have thirty customers. At three hundred it becomes a real job: businesses affected by late payment spend an average of 86 hours a year chasing it (GOV.UK late payments research, 2025). The polite first reminder is the step that gets skipped when things are busy, and in our experience it is the one that recovers the most for the least effort.

Automating the routine part means the reminders always go, and your credit controller spends their time on the accounts that genuinely need a conversation.

SAFE CRM Credit Control dashboard showing total overdue balance across customers, an aged debt chart by age band, and a list of the largest overdue accounts

How the chase works

A chase pipeline is a ladder of steps. You define the rungs once, and accounts climb them until they pay or you step in.

  1. 1. Enrolment

    Each night the platform opens a case for every account owing more than the ladder’s minimum. The figure it works from is what is genuinely collectible: pending refunds come off, and any credit note you are holding is applied to the oldest debt first. No report to run, no list to review first.

  2. 2. Staged reminders

    Steps fire on the days you set: a gentle nudge, then a firmer one, then a call task for a human. A step can be an email, a letter, a text or a job for a person. Each one can send on its own, queue for approval, or wait to be done by hand.

  3. 3. Contact recorded

    Every attempt is logged against the case, including what was sent and what came back. When the customer says nobody told them, you can show them exactly what was sent and when.

  4. 4. Holds and promises to pay

    Record a promise to pay and the chase pauses while it stands. The customer can set that date themselves from a link in the reminder. Put a case on hold for a fortnight and it resumes on its own. Break the promise and the case reopens on its own.

  5. 5. The restriction decision

    The last rung is a review, not an automatic cut-off. It raises the decision for a person, records who approved it and why, and pauses the ladder while the account is restricted. On a vulnerable account it takes two different approvers. Changing the service itself stays where you do it today.

  6. 6. Payment closes it

    When the balance clears, the case closes itself. The invoice and the chase live in the same system, so that happens on the next daily sweep rather than whenever an integration next runs.

Not every customer gets the same ladder

A sole trader who has missed one invoice and a large commercial account that always pays at 60 days are not the same problem, and Ofcom does not treat them as the same customer either. So the classification on the account picks the ladder, rather than everybody getting the same one.

Six ladders come set up: vulnerable customers, protected customers, commercial customers, one that skips the early reminders, one that chases nothing automatically, and one for final bills. You can edit all of them, and add your own. The classification is read from the customer, not from the ladder chasing them, so a commercial account working through a general ladder is not quietly treated as protected.

Where it matters most is the vulnerable ladder. It opens with a support review before any chase contact goes out at all, it has no suspension warning in it, and a late payment charge or a service restriction on that account needs two different people to approve it. That is enforced in the database, not left to a policy document.

This is the part general credit control tools cannot do, because they never know whether the customer is a consumer, a micro business or a not-for-profit. Your billing system does.

What a credit controller sees

Credit control is its own section of the workspace, with its own permissions. Somebody can be given the chase queues without being given the sales forecast.

Today's worklist

Who to ring, in order, with the balance, the age of the debt and what was last said to them. Broken promises come first, then whatever is due today. Not a report you have to interpret.

Not being chased

Customers who are overdue with no case open against them. Usually the shortest list on the screen and the one worth clearing first, because you can enrol them in bulk from it.

Expected payments

Money the customer has promised or a collection has scheduled. It tells you which silence to worry about and which to leave alone for another few days.

Credit limits

Two lists, reached and approaching, across the overall limit, unbilled calls, unsent invoices and overdue invoices. Each breach raises a task on its own.

Pre-pay top-ups

Recent top-ups, accounts near their trigger, and accounts whose setup would stop a collection working. A failed top-up is not aged debt yet, which is the point of catching it here.

What the chasing recovered

Debt recovered, how long it took, and how many promises were kept. Money only counts as recovered where a chase contact came first. Everything else is reported as settled without contact, which is the honest number.

Failed collections, expiring cards and customers with no working way to pay you sit in the billing section of the same workspace, next to the invoices and payments they belong to. Same login, same customer record, one job along.

Why chasing from the billing system is different

Plenty of tools will chase invoices. Almost all of them read your accounting or billing data through an integration, which introduces a delay and a failure point. In credit control both matter more than usual, because the cost of getting it wrong is a phone call to a customer who has already paid.

  • ✓No stale balances: the chase reads the invoice ledger directly. There is no overnight sync to be out of date.
  • ✓Collection results included: a failed Direct Debit shows up next to the invoice position, with no separate CRM sync in between, so the account steps up on the right day.
  • ✓Payments already on their way: a customer with a Direct Debit or card collection already scheduled is not nudged about money that is coming. A tool reading your ledger from outside cannot see that.
  • ✓Disputes respected: a dispute recorded against an invoice holds that debt on its own and keeps it out of the nightly sweep, so nothing embarrassing goes out mid-argument. A "do not chase" flag switches the whole account off.
  • ✓Message purpose recorded: every send is marked as service or marketing. Marketing goes through consent and suppression checks, and a payment reminder stays a payment reminder, with nothing promotional bolted on.
  • ✓One audit trail: reminders, calls, arrangements, payments and write-offs sit on the same customer record as the invoices they relate to.

The measure of whether any of it is working is your aged debt position, and the single number worth trending is your debtor days. Our company site also has a guide to reading an aged debt report, and a walkthrough of the wider credit control process.

Where this fits against other tools

Most products in this space are one of three things. Accounting add-ons bolt a chase onto Sage or Xero. Debt recovery software picks up after the relationship has already broken down. Dedicated credit control tools sit alongside your billing and read it through an integration.

This is none of those. It is a credit control system inside the platform that raised the invoice, so the chase reads the ledger directly and there is no separate balance to keep in step. Every send is checked against the current position first.

For customers you would rather not invoice at all, auto top-up on a pre-pay account keeps the account funded in advance, so that usage never becomes a debt to chase. If you need to work out what a specific late invoice has cost you, there is a late payment interest calculator on the company site.

Credit Control Questions and Key Terms

What is credit control software?
Credit control software chases unpaid invoices for you. It watches who owes money, sends reminders on a schedule, steps up when they go unanswered, and gives your team a daily list of who to ring. Good credit control software works from the invoice ledger itself, so a customer who has just paid is not chased by mistake.
What is dunning?
Dunning is the formal name for chasing overdue payment: the sequence of reminders, letters, emails and calls that escalate while an invoice stays unpaid. A dunning process is simply that sequence written down so it happens the same way every time, whoever is on duty.
How do accounts get onto the chase list?
On its own. Every customer is matched to a chase ladder, and the nightly sweep opens a case for anyone owing more than that ladder’s minimum. Which ladder they get depends on how the account is classified, so a vulnerable customer and a commercial one are not chased the same way. A ladder can begin before the due date, so a case may open while the invoice is still current. Nobody has to run a report first, and you can still add an account by hand.
Will a customer who has just paid still get chased?
Not if we can help it. The chase reads the invoice ledger directly, in the same system that raised the invoice, so there is no second copy to go stale. The daily sweep closes settled cases, and nothing is sent without a final eligibility check first. The limit is how fast a payment reaches you and gets recorded, not a sync between two systems.
Can I stop chasing a particular customer?
Yes, in several ways. A "do not chase" flag on the account suppresses credit control entirely. A hold pauses a case until a date you choose and then resumes on its own, and you decide whether it stops contact, charges, service restrictions or all three. Recording a billing dispute against an invoice holds that debt by itself and keeps it out of the nightly sweep until the dispute is settled, so nothing embarrassing goes out mid-argument. A complaint can pause chasing across the whole account.
What happens if a customer says they will pay later?
You record it as a promise to pay, with the amount and the date. The chase pauses while the promise stands, and a short grace period means a payment a day or two late is not treated as a broken promise. Miss it properly and the case reopens at the top of the worklist with a broken promise notice of its own, so it does not quietly become a bad debt. The customer can also set the date themselves from a link in the reminder, within a window you control, which saves a phone call on the accounts that were only ever going to pay late.
Do reminders go out without anyone checking them?
That is your choice, step by step. A step can send automatically, queue for approval so someone reads the wording before it leaves, or simply wait to be done by hand. Many resellers automate the early polite reminders and keep a person on the later, firmer ones. The daily run can also be held until your finance team releases it.
How does this relate to credit limits?
The billing platform already tracks credit exposure per customer, covering the total balance, unbilled calls, unsent invoices and overdue invoices, with a separate call limit per number. When a customer passes a limit, a task is raised automatically. Credit control chasing and credit limits work off the same live figures.
Can I take payment during the chase?
Yes, and you can see what a customer is already set up to pay with while you work the case. Depending on the providers configured for your account, that can mean a secure payment link, a Direct Debit mandate through GoCardless, or a card payment through Stripe. A payment link can go out by email or by text. The billing side of the same workspace keeps a worklist of customers who owe money and have no working way to pay you automatically, which is usually the most profitable list in the system.
What does aged debt mean?
Aged debt is what you are owed, grouped by how overdue it is, usually in 30, 60 and 90 day bands. The older a debt gets the less likely it is to be paid, so the shape of the aged debt report matters as much as the total.
What are debtor days?
Debtor days estimates how long your customers take to pay you, worked out as trade receivables divided by annual credit sales, multiplied by 365. It is the same measure American software calls DSO. It comes off your balance sheet rather than from each invoice, so read it as an indicator rather than an exact average. HMRC uses the same formula and warns that a normal figure varies a lot between trades. Compare it to your own payment terms: the gap between the two is the part credit control can close.
Is this the same as debt recovery software?
No. Debt recovery software is built for collecting debts that have already gone bad, often by an agency acting on your behalf. Credit control runs earlier, on live customer relationships you intend to keep, and its purpose is to stop an overdue invoice from ever becoming a recovery case.
Is late payment chasing regulated in the UK?
It depends on the debt and the customer, and the platform is built for that. Each account carries a protection classification, and that classification picks the chase ladder, so a residential customer, a sole trader and a large commercial account are not treated the same way. Accounts marked vulnerable get a support review before any chase contact at all, and no charge or service restriction can go through on one until two different people have approved it. Beyond that: chasing a business debt is not licensed activity, and the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998 sets out what interest and recovery costs you may add. Consumer debt collection can be regulated. A plain payment reminder with no promotion in it counts as a service message rather than marketing, as the ICO explains. The software gives you the controls; take advice on your own policy.
Next step

Stop Chasing From a Spreadsheet

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