Reducing overdue invoices by 60% with Trove and Xero

Scroll through certain corners of LinkedIn and you would think business owners are racing to replace their accountants with AI. Why pay for decades of experience when you can prompt your way to month-end?

The data tells a different story: business owners want more from their accountants than ever before. In a 2025 survey, 68% of small businesses said their accountant made them more productive,1 a clear shift from traditional expectations that accountants only offer compliance services.

This is the trend that James Ripley is seeing. As CEO of Venn Accounts, a fast-growing UK accounting firm, he describes the reality on the ground:

“Running a business in 2026 is more complex than ever, from supply chain disruption to regulatory pressure and rising employment costs. Most founders don’t want to take on financial risk themselves. They want a partner they can rely on to take that off their plate.”

Building an outsourced finance function

As trusted advisors, accountants are well positioned to support stretched founders.2 Venn Accounts is one of them. Responding to demand from their clients, they decided to move beyond compliance and offer a full finance function service. 

James explains what that means:
“We’ve moved beyond delivering compliance and now take ownership of the entire finance function. That includes payroll, supplier payments, cash flow management, and credit control. To deliver this consistently at scale, we build our service around best-in-class software.”

At the heart of Venn Accounts’ offering is Xero. They have always been a Xero-first practice and its rich application ecosystem means they can build a system customised to each of their clients.

“We work with high-growth businesses where change is constant, from new hires, new markets, new challenges. In that environment, a one-size-fits-all finance setup quickly breaks down. Xero’s ecosystem allows us to build a tailored tech stack around each client, rather than forcing them into a generic solution.”

Try before you buy

Always on the lookout for new software, the Venn Accounts team recently rolled out Trove, a debtor management software that automates the process of collecting overdue invoices. 

“One of our clients was struggling with overdue invoices and that’s a sensitive issue that needs handling carefully. We needed a solution that was effective, but also aligned with how we and our clients communicate with customers.”

As they do with all new software, the Venn Accounts team first trialled Trove themselves. Most of Venn Accounts’ customers are on direct debit but they were still building up unpaid invoices each month where a direct debit had failed or a bank transfer had slipped through the cracks.

They started using Trove to follow up with late payers automatically, all via their finance@ email address. Within two weeks, overdue invoices were down 60% and Days Sales Outstanding – a measure of how quickly invoices get paid – had improved by 22%.

The results have remained strong. As new invoices become overdue, Trove automatically gets in touch with the relevant customer to get the invoice paid. Using this system, 98% of invoices are consistently paid within two weeks of the due date. The remaining 2% are exceptional cases that Trove flags to the team. Here Venn Accounts can bring a human touch, working closely with the affected customer to find a path to payment.

Customising their service at scale

Having thoroughly tested Trove, Venn Accounts was able to implement it for their client and solve their problem. Doing this at scale, they have moved from providing checkbox compliance services to being a trusted member of their client’s team. It’s also what James prefers.

“This is where we add the most value, embedding ourselves into the client’s day-to-day operations and improving how their finance function actually runs,” says James. “It’s a fundamentally different model to traditional year-end compliance work.”

Learn more about Trove and other debtor management apps that integrate with Xero in the Xero App Store. 

1 https://gusto.com/resources/gusto-insights/beyond-the-books

2 https://www.xero.com/uk/media-releases/us-state-of-the-industry-report-2025/