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Role · Finance

Credit Controller

Turns invoices into cash. Most of the job is preventing the reasons an invoice will not be paid, not arguing with people who will not pay — the second is rare and the first is constant.

Also called: Collections specialist · Accounts receivable clerk · Credit manager · AR analyst

Sits in
Finance
Reports to
Financial controller or finance manager
Owns these steps
Raising the invoice, Accounts receivable and collection, Payment and cash application
Measured on
Days Sales Outstanding (DSO)

What the job actually is

The credit controller is responsible for the money customers owe: deciding how much credit they get, watching the ledger, making sure invoices are approved for payment before they are due, resolving what stops them, and allocating the cash when it arrives.

The popular image is confrontation. The reality is administration and timing. In business-to-business trade, the overwhelming majority of late payments are not refusals — they are failed matches, missing goods receipts, absent approvers, invoices sent to the wrong destination. Nobody has decided anything; the invoice is simply somewhere without an owner.

Which makes the defining skill early, specific contact with the person who can actually release payment, backed by evidence to hand. A controller who chases at day 60 with no proof of delivery is doing a much harder version of the same job.

Responsibilities

  • Set and review credit limits, and check credit before orders are accepted rather than after.
  • Confirm invoices are received, matched and approved for payment ahead of the due date.
  • Work the aged debt ledger by value and risk.
  • Log queries and route them to whoever can actually answer them, with deadlines.
  • Run a consistent escalation ladder — statement, reminder, demand, hold.
  • Recommend and administer credit holds, with sales informed before the customer.
  • Allocate incoming payments to specific invoices and investigate every difference.
  • Reconcile the ledger against customers' own open item listings.
  • Produce the cash forecast from actual payment behaviour rather than from invoice due dates.
  • Escalate to legal action, agency or write-off as a deliberate decision.

A typical day

A realistic one, including the interruptions.

  1. 08:00Post yesterday's bank receipts and allocate them to invoices. Two payments have no remittance advice.
  2. 09:00Investigate a £717 short payment: part credit note, part an unagreed freight deduction traceable to a negotiation four months ago.
  3. 09:45Pre-due calls — six invoices issued last week. One has failed matching on a goods receipt posted to the wrong line.
  4. 10:30Chase the customer's accounts payable to correct the receipt; get a name and a date rather than a promise.
  5. 11:15Aged debt review by value. Three accounts carry 60% of the overdue balance.
  6. 13:00Query log: four open, two waiting on despatch for proof of delivery. Escalate one that has been open eleven days.
  7. 14:00Credit check on a new customer whose first order has just been received; set an opening limit and tell sales.
  8. 14:45Recommend a credit hold on an account 74 days overdue. Speak to the account manager before anything is sent.
  9. 15:30Reconcile a customer's open item listing against ours — two invoices they claim never to have received.
  10. 16:15Update the cash forecast and flag the two accounts likely to slip past month end.

Documents they handle

Systems they work in

  • Accounting or ERP receivables ledger
  • Aged debt and collections reporting
  • Customer accounts payable portals
  • Bank feeds and statement imports
  • Credit reference agencies and credit insurance platforms

Skills that matter

  • Persistence without antagonism, sustained over months
  • Understanding how a customer's accounts payable process actually works
  • Reconciliation and the patience to find a £25 difference that recurs monthly
  • Knowing what evidence settles a query and having it filed in advance
  • Judgement about when a payment problem is a solvency problem
  • Enough commercial awareness to know what a credit hold will cost as well as save
  • Clear written communication — most collections happens in email, permanently on record

Who they work with

  • Account Manager — Payment behaviour, opening doors on overdue accounts, and the commercial cost of a hold.
  • Inside Sales / Sales Coordinator — Credit status before order acceptance, and the purchase order references invoices depend on.
  • Despatch Coordinator — Proof of delivery, and holding consignments on accounts placed on stop.
  • Customer accounts payable — Invoice status, approvals, queries, remittances — the most important relationship in the role.
  • Finance management — Cash forecast, provisions, write-offs and escalation decisions.
  • Legal or collection agencies — Recovery, once the commercial route is exhausted.

Where the job leads

  • Credit controller → Senior credit controller → Credit manager
  • Credit controller → Financial controller, via broader finance roles
  • Credit controller → Accounts receivable or shared service team leadership
  • Credit controller → Commercial finance or business partnering
  • Credit controller → Credit risk and insurance specialisms

Questions this role gets asked at interview

Useful from either side of the table.

  • 01When would you first contact a customer about an invoice, and what would you say?
  • 02A customer pays £717 less than the invoice with no explanation. Walk me through what you do.
  • 03Why do most B2B invoices get paid late?
  • 04How would you decide whether to put an account on stop?
  • 05The account manager asks you to stop chasing their biggest customer. How do you handle it?
  • 06What is a three-way match and why should you care about it?
  • 07How would you build a cash forecast from the ledger?
  • 08What information do you need filed against an invoice before you would need to chase it?

Common questions

›Is credit control just chasing money?

No, and companies that treat it that way collect slowly. The larger part is preventing the reasons an invoice will not be paid: checking credit before orders are accepted, making sure invoices carry the references that let them match, and confirming approval before the due date. Chasing is what is left when prevention has not happened.

›What is the difference between credit control and collections?

Credit control is the whole discipline — who gets credit, how much, on what terms, monitored over time. Collections is the narrower activity of recovering what is already overdue. A business strong on collections and weak on credit control spends its time recovering money it should never have been owed.

›When should an account be put on stop?

When exposure exceeds what the business is willing to lose, judged against a written limit rather than a mood. It needs a named approver, written notice before it takes effect, and sales told first. Stopping supply silently, by letting a delivery quietly fail to arrive, costs far more relationship than the debt is worth.

›How is a credit controller measured?

Usually on DSO, which is a poor single measure because it moves with sales volume — a strong sales month makes collections look worse and a weak one makes it look better. Read alongside it: the ageing profile, the value of invoices in query, the percentage paid on time, and unallocated cash. The set describes what DSO alone cannot.

›Should credit control report to finance or to sales?

Finance. The role exists partly to constrain commercial decisions — declining an order, holding a delivery — and reporting into the function whose targets those decisions restrict makes the constraint unenforceable. Close working with sales is essential; reporting to them is not.

Tools this role uses

Built for exactly this job — downloadable, self-contained, and no account required.

Reviewed 2026-08-15. Job titles, reporting lines and scope vary widely between companies — this describes the work rather than any one organisation’s job description.