The Late Payment Audit

Customers who paid you late
still owe you money.

Statutory interest and compensation stay claimable for six years, even on invoices that were eventually paid. Almost no business ever claims them. We audit your historic ledger, find what was left on the table, and pursue it, starting with the customers you no longer trade with.

Run the free auditHow it works
Free to run · 18% of anything recovered, 15% on a credit control subscription · nothing if we recover nothing Claims issued in Clearline's name as your agent Ended relationships by default: live customers only if you say so
The arithmetic

Six years of small sums add up to real money.

Every late business-to-business invoice carries interest at base rate plus 8% and fixed compensation of £40 to £100. On its own, one invoice is a rounding error. Across six years of trading, it is a meaningful sum that legally belongs to you and that nobody has ever asked for.

6 years
The limitation period for claiming statutory interest and compensation in England and Wales
£40–100
Fixed compensation per late invoice, regardless of how small the invoice was
£4–7k
Typically unclaimed on a ledger of 100 late invoices
£0
What the audit costs to run, and what you pay if nothing is recovered
How it works

Four steps, and you control the third one.

STEP 1

Send six years of sales history

A single export from Xero, QuickBooks or Sage: invoice dates, due dates, payment dates and amounts. Nothing else is needed and nothing is shared with anyone.

STEP 2

We calculate every entitlement

Invoice by invoice, using the statutory reference rate in force for each period, we work out the interest and compensation that accrued and was never claimed. You get a written report showing the total, the yearly breakdown and the biggest single claims.

STEP 3

You choose the scope

The default is former customers only, where there is no relationship left to protect. You can add live customers, exclude anyone, or claim nothing at all. It stays your decision, debt by debt.

STEP 4

We claim it

Claims go out on Clearline letterhead as your appointed agent, so nothing lands on yours. Recovered sums are remitted within two working days of clearing, less our 18% fee on what we actually collect.

The honest version

When this is a good idea, and when it is not.

Worth doing

Former customers. You stopped trading with them anyway. The claim is pure found money and there is no goodwill at risk.

Customers who treated you badly. Chronic late payers you have written off relationally, whether or not you have written off the debt.

Live disputes. Statutory entitlements are useful negotiating capital when a current balance is being argued over.

Insolvency situations. If a customer is heading under, every claimable penny should be in the claim.

Usually not worth doing

Your best current customers. A retrospective interest claim on a valued relationship buys you a few hundred pounds and costs you goodwill you cannot price. We advise against it and exclude them by default.

Anyone you are mid-negotiation with on something more valuable than the claim.

Very small histories. If your ledger holds a handful of late invoices, the audit will find hundreds rather than thousands. We will tell you that before you spend any time on it.

We would rather tell you the audit is not worth running than take a fee for pursuing your best customer over £180 of interest. The relationship math matters more than the arithmetic, which is exactly why you set the scope and not us.

Find out what six years left behind.

Send your sales history and we will tell you, in writing, exactly what is still claimable, which customers it sits with, and what it is realistically worth. Free, and yours to keep whether or not you instruct anything.

Run the free audit →
No card. No commitment. Upload your sales history and the figures are on screen in about a minute; the written report follows.
Questions

Is this really allowed?

Yes. Payment of the principal does not extinguish the statutory interest and compensation that accrued while the invoice was overdue. Those sums remain a debt in their own right and stay claimable for six years from the date they fell due, in England and Wales. What tends to surprise people is not the law but the arithmetic: hundreds of small entitlements nobody ever invoiced.
Some will, straight away, because the claim is legally correct and clearly set out. Some will negotiate. Some will ignore it, and where the sums justify it we escalate exactly as we would with any other debt. Historic claims recover at a lower rate than current invoices, which is why they sit in our 18% tier, and why we are careful to set realistic expectations in the report rather than after you instruct.
It is a fair concern, and it is the reason claims are issued by us as your agent rather than on your letterhead, and the reason ended relationships are the default scope. In practice a company that paid you six months late for three years is not surprised to receive a statutory claim, and businesses that pay on time never receive one.
Nothing. The audit and the report are free, whether or not you instruct anything afterwards, and there is no obligation of any kind. If you instruct claims, we take 18% of what we recover and nothing if we recover nothing.
Two to three working days for most ledgers once we have the export, longer for very large histories. Every month that passes retires a little more of the claimable window, since anything older than six years drops out permanently.
Free audit

Find out what was left on the table.

Send six years of sales history and we will tell you, in writing, exactly what is still claimable and what it is realistically worth.

Run the free audit
Find out what your unpaid invoices are really worthFree 60-second recoverability report. No card, no commitment.
Free ledger scan