Xero connects with over 1,000 apps that help small businesses and their advisors succeed, with most available in the Xero App Store. Each month we celebrate an app partner who stands out for helping small businesses thrive. Find out more about becoming a Xero app partner here.

August has arrived, and this month we’re celebrating our app partner of the month Chaser – an accounts receivable management app that helps small businesses maintain and improve their cash flow. Chaser was also one of our launch app partners for the Xero App Store. You can read more about the Xero App Store here.

Chaser CEO, Sonia Dorais, gave us the rundown on Chaser’s mission to help small businesses through improved credit-control, how they’ve saved their customers time and what’s next on their horizon.

Helping soothe late-payment pressures

Late payments are the bane of many small businesses across the world. ‘The State of Late Payments’ research conducted by Xero and Paypal found that in an average month, 48% of invoices issued by small businesses are paid past their due date, which over a year means that owners or managers are spending at least two working weeks chasing late payments.

Chaser was founded in 2014 to tackle this frustrating problem. A stressful, uncomfortable and often manual task, invoice chasing is a problem for small businesses everywhere. Chaser wants to change this onerous process, with a determined mission to help small businesses worldwide get paid in a quick, efficient and friendly way.

“Chaser works with small businesses and accountants and bookkeepers globally, to automate the end-to-end credit control process. This helps them save time and get invoices paid faster, whilst protecting their customer relationships,” says Sonia.

“With Chaser, small businesses can credit check, monitor debtors, chase invoices, collect payments and recover debt in one place – seamlessly connected with Xero.”

Maintaining great relationships

Requesting payments on outstanding invoices can be an awkward task, and may put a strain on relationships between small businesses and their customers. The team at Chaser have focussed on building their features around reducing this awkwardness. By focusing on key things like clear communication and simplifying payments, Chaser can help maintain great relationships.

It starts from a centralised communication hub that allows businesses to personalise and manage their payment reminders. An hourly sync with Xero means that Chaser is up-to-date on the latest payments before automated reminders are sent. A new payment portal then provides an easy way for customers to manage any outstanding and paid invoices, and choose how to pay.

“Chaser users can link customers to their dedicated portal through automated payment reminder emails. When payments are made, these are automatically and instantly reconciled in Xero,” explains Sonia.

Times can get tough, so Chaser also offers Payment Plans to help ease the burden some customers may face. Users can set these up to help their customers pay invoices in more manageable instalments. For older debts, Chaser users can choose to take up additional services, such as Chaser Collections and Outsourced Credit Control.

Save time and get paid faster

Digital agency Glaze Digital uses Xero and Chaser, and have seen their days to pay reduce from 88 to 64. This means they now get paid an average of 24 days earlier. Co-founder Richard Megaw says, “The time-saving alone is enough justification for us, let alone the improvements in our credit control. It’s definitely a job function I no longer have to do, and that lets me focus more of my time on other tasks.”

Ravi, Director at Wren Accountancy, says that they’re also seeing reduced days to payment since using Chaser,  “We are getting paid 36 days faster – with our debtor days down from 60 to 24”.

Continually improving

Chaser is a team dedicated to serving their customers first. They work closely with their user base to take on feedback and prioritise issues. 2021 saw them using this feedback to release a huge expansion of services, and they’re keen to further improve and optimise these offerings.

“After working hard to provide users with more of the features they need, Chaser’s initial focus will be on optimising and refactoring the back-end of our software. This will improve speed and performance for our users,” Sonia explains.

“We look forward to continuing to support Xero users to get paid in an efficient and friendly way.”

So, take the stress out of getting paid on time by checking out Chaser in the Xero App Store.