A marketing agency CFO should count the staff hours spent chasing late client invoices, then put the reminders on software with AI sorting client replies for a named person, before approving a hire for collections.
The American Association of Advertising Agencies, in guidance published 30 August 2023, says clients often try to negotiate extended terms of 60, 90 or even 120 days. London Economics, working for the UK Department for Business and Trade and the Office of the Small Business Commissioner, surveyed 1,455 UK businesses between 15 January and 7 February 2025, and the department published the report on 30 July 2025. It treats payment terms longer than 60 days as late payment, alongside overdue invoices. Businesses with more than 250 employees that were affected by late payment spent an average of 1,084 staff hours a year chasing unpaid debtors, on a table base of 50 large businesses, affected or not. Respondents were asked for their hours in the last month, and the authors warn they may not have known exactly how many staff hours go on chasing. The report gives these hours by size only, and says future research could explore how impacts vary for businesses in specific sectors.
The software should send every reminder on a fixed schedule, the first before the due date, asking the client's accounts payable team to confirm the invoice is logged against a purchase order. In the same survey, relatively few businesses offering trade credit reported that over the last year they had introduced or increased an overdue penalty (6%), requested a purchase order before delivery (5%) or chased invoices before the stipulated payment date (4%); London Economics says it is possible that being more active in these practices would reduce how often businesses face late payment, although at the cost of additional staff resource. A separate survey for the same department, 300 telephone interviews run by IFF Research in January 2024 across five sector groups and published 19 September 2024, asked businesses why they pay their own suppliers late. Of the 138 that gave a share of supplier invoices they pay late, 36% cited administrative errors, 31% disputed invoices and 23% technical issues, including invoices getting lost or failing to deliver. Asked what drives late payment or long payment times in their sector, 40% of the 274 with business customers named those customers being paid late themselves, 24% administrative errors and 8% disputed invoices. The authors say the survey's results cannot be considered representative of the business population.
An AI model should read each client reply and sort it as paid, scheduled, missing a purchase order or disputed. The accounts receivable lead acts on the first three while the account lead who owns the client takes every dispute and every reply that fits none of the four, and automatic reminders on that invoice end.
In month one, everyone who chases a client, account leads included, logs chasing hours each week, while the accounts receivable lead exports every open invoice with its due date, payer contact and purchase order number. From month two, when the reminders start, the controller checks a sample of the model's sorting each week, and in month three everyone logs hours again on the same form, the controller's checks included.
If month three's hours are at or above month one's, the CFO switches the reminders off and budgets the hire; where they fell, the CFO sizes any hire on month three's hours. In London Economics' figures, affected businesses with 50 to 249 employees averaged 324 chasing hours a year, on a table base of 266, affected or not.
