QuickBooks Online is doing its job. Are your customers doing theirs?
Open your QuickBooks Online A/R Aging Summary right now and ask yourself three questions:
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How much is sitting over 30 days past due?
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How much is stuck at 60–90+ days?
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If that money was in your bank account today, would your stress level drop?
QuickBooks’ own research says over half of small businesses are owed money, with an average of about $17,500 in unpaid invoices, and US businesses together are sitting on hundreds of billions of dollars in A/R.
Most of those businesses already use QuickBooks.
So the problem isn’t just “we need better software.”
The problem is what happens after you send the invoice.
What QuickBooks Online gets right about A/R
QuickBooks Online actually gives you a solid collections toolkit—if you turn it on and use it consistently.
Invoice & A/R basics
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Create clean invoices quickly
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Track who owes what, and for how long
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Run A/R Aging Summary / Detail by customer, date range, and balance
Built-in “early collections” tools
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Automatic reminders: schedule polite nudges before and after due dates
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Automatic late fees: apply a fee to overdue invoices based on your rules
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“Pay Now” buttons: let customers pay online via card or bank transfer
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Recurring invoices & autopay: ideal for retainers and subscriptions
If you only send an invoice and hope for the best, you’re using maybe 30% of what QuickBooks can do for collections.
| Already using Quickbooks? Have unpaid bills? Need to transfer your unpaid accounts to a collection agency? Contact us We will show you how easily you can submit accounts for collections using a simple online form.
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Do this inside QuickBooks before you ever call a collection agency
Think of it as your QBO Collections Setup:
1. Turn on automated invoice reminders
Stop relying on “I’ll remember to email them.”
Set up 2–3 reminders around the due date, for example:
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7 days before due
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On the due date
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7–10 days after due
Once you configure it once, QuickBooks keeps nudging them for you.
2. Enable online payments on every invoice you reasonably can
If customers have to:
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Find their checkbook
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Print the invoice
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Drive to the bank
…you’ve already lost momentum.
Let them click “Pay now”, choose card or bank transfer, and be done in 30 seconds.
3. Decide where you’ll charge late fees – and stick with it
You don’t have to hit every client with a fee. But for chronic late-payers, auto late fees:
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Signal that you’re serious about due dates
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Compensate (a little) for the extra hassle
Set it once. Let QuickBooks add it automatically.
4. Make A/R aging a weekly habit, not a quarterly surprise
Every week, run:
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A/R Aging Summary
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Filter by 61–90 and 90+ days
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Tag these as “risk” customers in your notes or custom fields
These are the accounts that are quietly turning into bad debt.
When a QuickBooks invoice becomes a collections problem
At some point, reminders, late fees, and “Pay now” buttons stop working. That’s your line in the sand.
Common rules small businesses adopt:
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Time-based rule
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If an invoice is 60–90 days past due and the customer isn’t responding or keeps breaking promises, it’s a collection candidate.
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Amount-based rule
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Very small balances (say, under $50–$100):
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One or two reminders, then you decide: batch them to an agency or write them off.
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Larger balances (hundreds or thousands):
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Get a phone call, maybe one last email, then escalate sooner rather than later.
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Behavior-based rule
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Bounced checks, “the check is in the mail” for months, or complete ghosting after multiple reminders are all signs that more software nudges won’t change the outcome.
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Once an account hits your thresholds, you stop treating it like a “normal” QuickBooks invoice and start treating it like what it really is: a recovery project.
What a collection agency does that QuickBooks never will
QuickBooks is superb at tracking and nudging.
Collection agencies exist for the people who ignore all of that.
A good agency can:
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Call, email, and text over a long period with a consistent strategy
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Talk through payment plans, settlements, and partial payments
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Use skip-tracing to find moved or hiding debtors
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Escalate a minority of cases toward legal remedies when appropriate
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Work directly from your QuickBooks exports (aging reports, customer info, invoices)
QuickBooks tells you who owes you money.
A collection agency focuses on how to actually get it back.
You need both.
QuickBooks Online + Nexa: layering real collections on top of your A/R
If your A/R Aging report in QuickBooks Online shows:
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Too many invoices over 60–90 days, and
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A growing pile of “we’ll pay soon” customers
…your problem is no longer a reporting issue. It’s a collections issue.
That’s where Nexa comes in.
Nexa is an information portal that helps businesses using tools like QuickBooks Online find suitable collection agencies:
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Nexa is not a collection agency.
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We do not perform any credit reporting.
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You tell us about your business, invoice sizes, and A/R headaches.
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We share those collection requirements with carefully shortlisted agencies that we believe can handle your type of debt in a professional, compliant way.
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It is completely your decision whether or not to use their services.
You’ve already invested in QuickBooks Online.
Make it do its part: reminders, fees, payment links, clean reports.
Then, for the invoices that still don’t move, add the one layer QBO doesn’t have:
a focused, third-party collection partner who treats your receivables like money, not just numbers on a screen.