Payment chasers that escalate
Three tiers, timed off each invoice's real age — warm, then firm, then the Late Payment of Commercial Debts Act with the interest and fixed sum calculated for you.
Collections & retention operations · Founder-led UK agencies
You will not lose a retainer to neglect.
ChiefStac watches your retainer clients the way an account director would — and tells you which one is quietly slipping before they give notice.
Nothing sends without your approval · Read-only accounting access
Owed at any time£26bnUK late payments
Average per business£17,000of it is yours
Spent chasing86 hrsper year, per business
Closing38 a day14,000 a year
Source — Late Payments Research, Small Business Commissioner / DBT / London Economics, July 2025
What it does
The work you keep meaning to get to
Every one of these is running today. Nothing on this page is a roadmap item.
Statutory interest, worked out
Bank of England base rate by period, plus the £40/£70/£100 fixed sums. The arithmetic is done in code, never by a language model, so the figure in your email is the figure the Act gives you.
Retainer Radar
Renewal dates, notice periods, and clients who have gone quiet — surfaced before the window closes, with a check-in drafted and ready.
Commitment follow-through
The things you said you'd send. Picked up out of your own sent mail, tracked, and put back in front of you before they turn into the reason someone leaves.
A daily brief at 07:00
Three things that need you, in your timezone, with the drafts attached. I read every one before it reaches you and write the reasoning line myself.
Nothing sends without your tap
Approved drafts land in your own Gmail as drafts. You press send. ChiefStac holds no scope that could send mail, and no write access to your accounting data.
The difference
A tool tells you. I tell you what it means.
Software can spot that an invoice is late. What you're paying for is the second column — and that's a person reading your account, every morning, before you do.
What the system surfaces
Marcus Bell · £5,200
62 days overdue
Tier 3 chase drafted
What I write next to it
Marcus has gone from paying in 20 days to not paying at all. That usually means their cash is tight, not that he's forgotten — so I'd stop being polite and put the statutory interest in writing.
Sample ledger, not a real client.
How it starts
The audit comes first
You don't sign up for a subscription and hope. You buy one piece of work, see whether the findings are worth anything, and decide after that.
30 minutes
Diagnostic call
Five questions about your receivables and your retainers. No pitch, no slides. You export a CSV from Xero — that's the only setup.
Roughly a week
The Revenue Leak Audit
A 14–16 page report: the specific ways money is leaking, ranked by what each one costs you a year, with the arithmetic shown and a recommended fix for each.
45 minutes
Findings call
I present it. Some findings you fix yourself this month — I'll tell you which. The ones that aren't one-time fixes are drift, and that's what the ongoing service is for.
If you continue
What lands, and when
| Deliverable | Cadence | Who does it |
|---|---|---|
| Daily brief — three things, drafts attached | Weekday 07:00 | Drafted, then reviewed by me before it reaches you |
| Payment chasers, 3-tier + statutory | As needed | You approve on your phone → your own Gmail |
| Client update drafts | Weekly | Same |
| Commitment follow-through | As needed | Same |
| Retainer Radar warnings + check-in drafts | As triggered | Same |
| Weekly review call | Weekly, 45 min | Me |
| Written one-pager after each call | Within 24h | Me |
| Monthly receipt — what came in, what's protected | Monthly | Computed, with my commentary |
| Re-audit | Quarterly | Me |
Scope
Division of labour
Your accountant looks backwards at what happened. I watch what's about to. Where something crosses the line, it goes to them and I'll say so at the time.
Mine
- Payment behaviour, DSO, aged debt
- Collections process and escalation
- Statutory interest — the arithmetic and the Act
- Revenue concentration, revenue at risk, renewals
Your accountant's
- Tax, VAT, statutory accounts
- Invoice finance and borrowing decisions
- Anything contentious beyond citing the Act
- Valuation, share schemes, R&D claims
Pricing
One audit. One retainer. No tiers.
One price for the diagnostic, one for the work that follows. There is no tier where the part that matters sits behind a bigger number.
Start here · one-off
£950
Revenue Leak Audit. One piece of work, delivered and presented — priced at exactly one month of the founding rate.
- Diagnostic call, 30 minutes
- 14–16 page report, findings ranked by annual cost
- Findings call, 45 minutes, presented by me
- Comes off month one if you continue
- The report is yours either way
Founding rate · clients 1–2
£950 / month
Two clients get this rate, and it holds for as long as they stay. You'll be asked what to build next, and your answer will decide it.
- Everything in the ongoing service
- Weekly review call, 45 minutes
- Quarterly re-audit
- Rate never rises while you're a client
From client three
£1,500 / month
The ongoing service at its standing rate.
- Daily brief, reviewed by me before release
- Drafts approved on your phone
- Weekly call and written one-pager
- Monthly receipt, quarterly re-audit
The audit costs one month at the founding rate. Carry on afterwards and it comes off month one — free if we continue, £950 if we don't. Either way the report is yours. Prices exclude VAT.
Questions
The ones worth asking
Does it email my clients on my behalf?
No — and it can't. The Gmail connection is scoped to reading threads and creating drafts. There is no send permission on it. Approved messages land in your own drafts folder; you open them and press send. That matters because the person being chased is also the person paying you every month. You decide when that relationship gets pushed, not a schedule you set up six weeks ago.
What access do you actually need?
Read-only on Xero. Gmail through a connection you create in your own Google account. The credentials are yours — revoke them at myaccount.google.com any time, without telling me. ChiefStac cannot modify your accounting data; the permission simply isn't there. Prefer not to connect anything yet? A CSV export from Xero is enough for the audit, and it takes about two minutes.
I just want the invoice chasing.
Then you're solving the cheaper half of the problem. A chased invoice recovers what's on it, once. A £4,000-a-month retainer that quietly leaves is £48,000 of revenue gone over a year. Chasing is in here and it works — three escalating tiers, statutory interest calculated where you're entitled to it. But it's the part that pays for itself in month one, not the part that matters in month twelve.
What's actually in the audit?
A small number of specific, ranked, costed findings — not a data dump. Each one states what was found, why it costs you money, the arithmetic behind the estimate, and what I'd do about it. The report carries between four and eight findings, ranked by annual cost. Every number is computed from your own ledger. Where a figure isn't knowable from your data, it says so instead of guessing. You'll be able to act on some of them the same week without me.
Are you an accountant?
No — different job. Tax, VAT and your year-end are your accountant's. Mine is the money already owed to you and the clients drifting away from you. Your accountant looks backwards at what happened; I'm watching what's about to. Where something touches tax, I'll say so and it goes to them.
Who is behind this?
Me. One person, by design. You get the person who reads your account every morning — not an account manager relaying it from someone who read it earlier. Every judgement call on your clients is made by the same head each day, which is the only way the pattern-spotting works. It also means a small number of clients at a time. Worth knowing if you're deciding when.
What if it doesn't find anything?
Then you have it in writing that your collections and retention are sound — with the workings, not an opinion. That's worth knowing. It's also uncommon: government research puts 28% of UK businesses carrying late payments at any one time, averaging £17,000 each.
Twenty minutes
Five questions, no pitch
- How much have you got outstanding right now?
- Who chases it, and how?
- Which client would hurt most to lose?
- How do you track when retainers come up for renewal?
- When did you last lose a client — and do you know why?
Or email afzal@chiefstac.uk