If you run your books in Xero, the honest starting point is that Xero already sends invoice reminders — and for plenty of businesses that is enough. The tools below matter when it is not: when the reminders have all gone out and nothing has come back, when a client replies and a human still has to write the answer, or when you are carrying the same dozen overdue invoices into a third month.
Every price here was read off the vendor's own pricing page on 23 July 2026 and is USD list, monthly. Chaser and Paidnice both publish in several currencies, and the figures circulating in other roundups are often the AUD or GBP ones — worth knowing before you compare.
First, what Xero's own reminders already do
Xero lets you set up to five invoice reminders, each pinned to a fixed number of days before or after the due date (set 0 to send on the due date itself). You write the template once, switch it on, and Xero sends on schedule. It is free, it is already in your subscription, and for a client list that mostly pays on time it clears the easy cases without anyone thinking about it.
Where it runs out:
- Five is the ceiling. Once the fifth reminder has gone, Xero has nothing left to send. An invoice sitting at 90 days gets the same silence as one at 120.
- The schedule is fixed, not repeating. Reminders fire at day offsets you hard-code once. There is no "keep nudging every week until this is settled."
- It does not read what comes back. A reminder is one-way. When a client writes to ask for a split, or to query a line item, that lands in someone's inbox and waits for a person.
- One template for everyone. The client who reliably pays on day 45 and the client who has gone quiet receive the same words.
Source: Xero Central — set up and add invoice reminders, checked 23 July 2026.
So the real question is not reminders or no reminders. It is what happens after the fifth one.
The shortlist at a glance
FetchDue — Free / $29 Pro / $149 Firm. An agent that works the overdue list: it drafts each follow-up, reads the reply, and drafts the answer, with you approving every send. Cheapest way to get past the five-reminder ceiling.
Chaser — from $259 (Compact), $779 (Core), $1,169 (Complete). The established receivables platform: templates, schedules, escalation paths and reporting, priced for finance teams rather than small studios.
Paidnice — from $69 (Essentials, 150 invoices), $99–$799 (Pro, by invoice volume), from $999 (Custom). A rules layer on top of Xero: late fees, discounts, statements and reminders, all automated on conditions you set.
Prices verified 23 July 2026 from chaserhq.com/pricing and paidnice.com/pricing. FetchDue pricing is our own.
FetchDue
Price: Free forever to add and track invoices by hand. Pro $29/mo. Firm $149/mo to run many agency clients from one console.
What it does with Xero: connects to your Xero organisation and reads your sales invoices and contacts, so the overdue list builds itself — nothing to import and nothing to keep in sync by hand. Each chase FetchDue sends is written back to that invoice's History in Xero, so the audit trail lives where your bookkeeper already looks. It touches no amounts and no customer-facing fields on your invoices.
Where it goes past a reminder scheduler: the chases go out from your own mailbox, so to the client it is the same thread with the same person. When a reply comes back, FetchDue works out what it means — a request to split becomes an installment plan for you to approve, a promise to pay is tracked and followed up if it slips, a question gets a drafted answer, and anything sensitive comes straight back to you. There is no fifth-reminder cliff, because the next step is decided from what the client actually said.
Who it suits: agencies, studios and consultancies running a book of clients where the relationship matters more than the process. If you would never let a third party sign a message to your client, this is the model that fits — nothing sends from a FetchDue address.
Where it does not: if you need multi-entity consolidated receivables reporting for a finance team, or a specialist on the phone chasing on your behalf, Chaser is the more complete platform.
Chaser
Price: Compact from $259/mo (4 users, 30 follow-up templates, 4 automated workflows; for revenue under $5M). Core from $779/mo (unlimited users and workflows, multi-entity). Complete from $1,169/mo (dedicated account manager, assisted onboarding, receivables forecast). A managed add-on, Chaser Care, starts at $447/mo for a specialist working your ledger. Yearly billing saves 10%. Verified chaserhq.com/pricing, 23 July 2026.
What it does with Xero: Chaser is Xero-native and long-established there. It reads your ledger, groups invoices by customer, and runs scheduled multi-step follow-up sequences with escalation, plus receivables reporting and a customer payment portal.
Where it is strong: breadth and maturity. If you want per-workflow control, a large template library, multi-entity support and reporting a finance function will accept, this is the category incumbent and it shows.
Where it costs you: the entry tier is $259/mo before you have chased anything, which is a real number for a small studio. And a sequence is still a sequence — it schedules and escalates, but a reply still lands on a person to interpret and answer. You are paying for a better scheduler, not for someone reading the inbox.
Paidnice
Price: Essentials $69/mo (150 invoices, 600 emails, up to 2 users). Pro is tiered by invoice volume: $99 at 300 invoices, $179 at 600, $279 at 1,000, up to $799 at 4,000 — with unlimited users, a custom sending domain and multi-entity support. Custom from $999/mo above that. Extra entities are $29/mo; SMS is metered from $0.10 per message. Verified paidnice.com/pricing, 23 July 2026.
What it does with Xero: this is Paidnice's whole pitch. It sits on top of Xero (also QuickBooks Online and Stripe) and automates the policy layer your accounting software will not: late fees, early-payment discounts, automated statements, quote reminders and email or SMS reminders, driven by rules you configure once.
Where it is strong: if your problem is that you have a late-fee policy nobody applies consistently, Paidnice applies it, every time, without anyone having to be the bad guy. The volume-tiered pricing also means a business sending a lot of invoices pays roughly in proportion to that.
Where it costs you: it is a rules engine, and rules do not read replies or negotiate. The invoice count caps are real — 150 invoices a month on Essentials goes quickly for an agency billing retainers plus projects — and the jump from $69 to $99 to $179 arrives sooner than most people plan for.
How to choose
Three questions settle it for most people.
1. Is your problem the sending, or the answering? If invoices simply are not being nudged, Xero's five built-in reminders may already fix it for free, and Paidnice will handle the fee and statement policy on top. If your invoices are being nudged and the replies are what pile up, a scheduler will not help you — that is the case for an agent that reads and drafts.
2. Who has to be on the message? Agencies usually cannot afford a third-party name on a client thread. Check whether follow-ups go out from your own mailbox or from the vendor's system, because that single detail decides how the client experiences all of it.
3. What is the invoice actually worth? At $259/mo, Chaser needs to be pulling forward real money to pay for itself. At $29 or $69, the maths is much easier. Start from your overdue balance, not from the feature list.
FAQ
Does Xero have built-in invoice reminders? Yes. Xero supports up to five invoice reminders, each set to a fixed number of days before or after the due date, sent from a template you configure. They are included at no extra cost. They do not repeat beyond those five, do not vary by client, and do not read replies.
Do I need invoice chasing software if I use Xero? Not always. If your clients mostly pay after one or two nudges, Xero's own reminders are enough. It becomes worth paying for when invoices routinely survive all five reminders, when replies need answering, or when you want late fees and payment plans applied consistently rather than whenever someone remembers.
What is the cheapest invoice chasing tool for Xero? Of the three here, FetchDue at $29/mo (with a free tier for tracking by hand) is the lowest paid entry point, then Paidnice at $69/mo, then Chaser at $259/mo. All prices USD list, verified 23 July 2026.
Will chasing software send emails to my clients from my address? It depends on the tool. FetchDue sends from the mailbox you already use, so the follow-up continues the existing thread. Paidnice offers a custom sending domain on its Pro tier. Check this before you buy — it is the difference between a client reading a note from you and reading a notice from a system.
Does it write back to Xero? FetchDue writes each chase into the invoice's History in Xero, which is an internal, append-only audit trail — so your bookkeeper can see what was sent without leaving Xero. It does not alter amounts, line items or anything the client sees.
Also worth reading: Best invoice chasing software for QuickBooks, best invoice chasing software for agencies, and the head-to-heads — FetchDue vs Chaser and FetchDue vs Paidnice. If you want the mechanics rather than the comparison, see how it works.