When you’re short-staffed, unpaid invoices are the first thing to slip.
No one is hired just to chase money. The people you already have are busy keeping customers happy, answering phones, scheduling jobs, and putting out fires.
Meanwhile:
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Most businesses are regularly paid after the due date
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A big chunk of revenue often sits in the 60–90–120+ day bucket
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Teams spend hours every week “circling back” on overdue invoices
If you’re short on people, you simply don’t have those hours. So AR becomes a someday project, and “someday” rarely comes.
When you factor in salary, benefits, taxes and overhead, those “just 30 minutes a day” quickly add up to $30–$40+ per hour of fully loaded cost—hundreds of dollars a month—for an employee who lacks skip-tracing tools, bankruptcy screening, or knowledge of collection laws, and who usually has zero interest in acting as a part-time debt collector. In the end you’re paying a premium rate for slow, risky, and uncomfortable collections work that a specialized agency can do faster, safer, and purely on results.
The core issue: nobody truly “owns” collections
In a short-staffed operation, AR is treated like background noise:
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“We’ll call them after this busy week.”
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“Let’s get caught up on service first.”
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“We’ll tackle aging invoices next month.”
That next month never arrives.
The real problem isn’t bad customers; it’s lack of ownership and consistency:
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No one’s job is to be methodical about follow-up
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Nobody has proper training in handling excuses and pushback
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There’s no clear point where “late” becomes “collections”
So debts quietly age until they’re no longer worth the fight.
The hidden cost of “we’ll just hire someone”
On paper, hiring an in-house AR/collections person feels like the natural solution.
In reality, it’s expensive:
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Salary (often tens of thousands a year)
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Benefits, payroll taxes, software, workspace, training
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Manager time to supervise, review, and replace if they leave
And collections work isn’t steady:
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Some months they’re slammed
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Other months there’s not enough work to justify the cost
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If they’re mediocre, you pay a full salary for half the results
For a short-staffed business, that’s a heavy, permanent cost for a problem that’s irregular and spiky.
Why DIY collections rarely work well
Most businesses try to “share the load” internally:
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The receptionist makes a few calls
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The office manager sends some reminder emails
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Someone in accounting tries to chase old invoices on Fridays
Common outcomes:
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Awkward conversations – staff are afraid to be firm with customers they know
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Inconsistent follow-up – two calls… then nothing for 6 weeks
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No structure – every debtor is handled differently, depending on who picked up the file
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Legal risk – nobody is trained on collection laws, call-time limits, or what you can and can’t say
On paper, DIY collections look cheap.
In practice, they’re slow, stressful, and lead to a lot of quiet write-offs.
Why outsourcing is often cheaper than “doing it ourselves”
A professional collection agency is usually contingency-based:
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If they don’t recover, you don’t pay a fee
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If they do recover, you share a percentage of the money collected
Compare that to a full-time salary, benefits, and overhead—paid every month, whether or not your AR actually improves.
For a short-staffed team, outsourcing means:
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No fixed payroll cost for collections
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No training, turnover, or management headaches
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Staff stay focused on work that actually generates new revenue
You’re effectively trading “unpredictable write-offs and staff time” for “a predictable share of money you probably weren’t going to collect anyway.”
A four-step collection process that fits into your existing workflow
The fear with agencies is that they’ll be too harsh and damage relationships. A good one works in measured steps, not with a sledgehammer.
Think of it as a four-step ladder.
Step 1 – Gentle, branded reminders
This is the “soft touch” phase:
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Professional letters or emails mentioning your company
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Clear summaries of what’s owed and how to pay
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A friendly, “we need to get this squared away” tone
This alone cleans up a surprising number of accounts—people who simply forgot or misplaced the invoice.
Step 2 – Polite, persistent live contact
For those who ignore written reminders, the agency begins live outreach:
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Calls and, where allowed, text or email
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Trained collectors who spend all day handling excuses and delays
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Calm but persistent follow-up at different times of day
The tone is still respectful. The goal is to confirm the debt and get a realistic plan in place, not to threaten.
Step 3 – Deeper recovery tools
For tougher cases:
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Skip tracing to find new addresses or phone numbers
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Checking whether the debtor can realistically pay
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Offering structured payment plans or, when appropriate, settlements
Here, experience matters. Collectors know when to push, when to listen, and when a partial recovery is better than adding another year to your aging report.
Step 4 – Legal and credit escalation (for the few that need it)
A small percentage of accounts are simply refusing to pay. For those:
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Formal attorney letters or legal action may be considered (usually for larger balances)
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Where allowed and appropriate, accounts may be reported to credit bureaus
By the time an account reaches this stage, every softer option has been tried. This step is for won’t-pay, not can’t-pay, situations.
How this helps a short-staffed team in real life
The real win isn’t just more recovered money—it’s clarity and relief.
You set simple rules, such as:
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“Send accounts to Step 1 at 45 or 60 days past due.”
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“Move to live contact at 90 days if there’s still no payment.”
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“Only place accounts over $X, except for periodic cleanups of small, very old balances.”
After that:
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Your team continues to serve customers and run the business
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The agency handles the persistence, structure, and legal nuance
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Money that used to quietly die in the 90–120+ day column starts coming back in
The bottom line
Being short-staffed isn’t just a staffing problem—it’s a cash problem when overdue invoices are allowed to pile up.
You can:
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Ignore them and write off more every year
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Keep trying to squeeze collections into already overloaded roles
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Or plug in a four-step outsourced process that’s persistent, reputation-conscious, and paid for out of money you weren’t collecting anyway
If “we’re too short-staffed to chase AR” sounds familiar, that’s exactly why a structured, outsourced collections process isn’t an extra expense—it’s the missing piece in your revenue strategy.