For agency and consultancy owners chasing overdue invoices

Turn overdue invoices into recovered cash — you only pay when it lands.

Send your aged-receivables list. LedgerClear returns a recovery-probability scored action plan per Account, then a Recovery Specialist runs the entire follow-up cascade — professional reminders through a licensed Placement partner — on strict no collect, no fee contingency.

No cost, no obligation. A Recovery Specialist reviews and approves every message before it sends — AI never contacts a Debtor directly.

56%
of US small businesses are currently owed money
QuickBooks/Intuit 2025 survey, 2,487 US small businesses
~$17,000
average amount currently owed per business
QuickBooks/Intuit 2025 survey
65% → 15%
recovery odds, 24 hours vs. 14+ days past due
CreditPulse DSO analysis, 2025 — directional, Inferred (single secondary source)
$15.2B
US debt-collection-services market, +3.7% YoY
IBISWorld 2025
Primary sources

Read the rules yourself — not just our summary of them.

Every licensing and consumer-protection boundary on this page traces to a specific primary source. These are the same references a Recovery Specialist checks before an Account moves tiers.

FDCPA "debt" definition

15 U.S.C. §1692a(5) defines the "debt" the Act covers as personal, family, or household obligations only — the reason a confirmed-commercial Account falls outside it. Read the statute — Cornell Law LII →

Full FDCPA text

15 U.S.C. §§1692–1692p, the complete Fair Debt Collection Practices Act as amended. Read the full text — FTC Legal Library →

Regulation F

12 CFR Part 1006, the CFPB's consumer debt-collection rule LedgerClear intentionally stays outside of by working confirmed-commercial Accounts only. Read Regulation F — CFPB →

State collection-agency licensing

License status for collection-agency partners used at the Aged/Placement Desk is verifiable through the multistate registry before any Account is handed off. Look up a license — NMLS Consumer Access →

Why late invoices stay late

Every day an Account sits unworked, the odds of getting paid keep falling.

Recovery odds decay fast — from roughly 65% within 24 hours of a missed payment down to roughly 15% after 14+ days late. Most small B2B service firms have no dedicated AR function: the founder or a generalist staffer tracks aging in a spreadsheet, sends inconsistent reminders, and either burns the relationship with awkward chasing or lets the invoice quietly age past the point of easy recovery.

15 days

Still easy to recover

An Account crossing 15 days past due enters the AR Concierge window — the highest-odds moment to act, before recovery probability starts its steep decline.

90 days

Odds have decayed hard

Past 91 days, an Account is evaluated for Standard Recovery Desk — firmer, still human-approved contact, because the easy-recovery window has closed.

180 days

Placement territory

Past 180 days, an Account is prepared with a full documentation package and handed to a licensed collection-agency partner — LedgerClear does not act as the collector itself until it holds direct state licensing.

Every Debtor LedgerClear contacts must be confirmed 100% commercial/B2B — never a consumer or personal debtor. That gate is what keeps every Account outside the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act's consumer-collection rules (15 U.S.C. §1692a(5) defines covered "debt" as personal, family, or household obligations only). It does not exempt LedgerClear from state licensing or unfair-practices law — see the compliance section below.

What completeness means here

What the AR Health Scan actually checks — and what it deliberately leaves out.

"Complete" has one specific meaning on every Account LedgerClear touches. It is not a promise that any given invoice gets paid.

Included

Every Account scored, not sampled

Every row on your aged-receivables list gets a recovery-probability band and a recommended Escalation Tier — not just the largest balances.

Included

Commercial confirmation, every Account

The hard account_type != "commercial" gate runs before drafting begins on every single Account — no exceptions, no override by AI.

Included

Human review before every send

A named Recovery Specialist reads and approves — or edits — the drafted message for every Account, every Escalation Tier, every time.

Included

A documented correspondence file

Every Account that reaches the Standard Recovery Desk or later carries a dated record of what was sent, what was promised, and what was disputed — the file Placement or Legal Referral needs to act.

Not included

No guarantee of recovery

No collect, no fee means $0 is owed on $0 recovered — it also means no dollar figure is promised on any Account before it is worked.

Not included

No direct collection past 180 days

LedgerClear does not act as the collector itself on Aged/Placement Desk Accounts until it holds direct state licensing; those Accounts go to a licensed partner.

Not included

No legal advice or representation

Litigation-track Accounts route to the partner attorney network. LedgerClear does not file suit, does not represent you or the Debtor, and does not advise on legal strategy.

Not included

No consumer or personal debt, ever

An Account that cannot be confirmed 100% commercial is hard-blocked before intake completes — not a judgment call an AI or a Recovery Specialist can waive.

What you get

One escalation ladder, five deliverables, all under one Contingency Fee model.

The same terms, every time: Account, Client, Debtor, Recovery Specialist, Escalation Tier, Promise-to-Pay, Contingency Fee.

Free

AR Health Scan

The lead-magnet diagnostic. Send your aged-receivables list; LedgerClear scores each Account's recovery probability and returns a prioritized action plan in 24–48 business hours.

15–90 days

AR Concierge

AI-drafted, Recovery-Specialist-approved reminder sequence sent under your own brand voice; Promise-to-Pay tracking; weekly Recovered Dollars Report.

91–180 days

Standard Recovery Desk

A firmer, human-approved contact cadence, a documented correspondence file, and Recovery-Specialist-led negotiation on any Debtor response.

180+ days

Aged/Placement Desk

A complete, litigation-ready documentation package handed to a licensed collection-agency partner. Never performed in-house until LedgerClear holds direct state licensing.

Add-on

Monthly AR Health Dashboard

Ongoing portfolio-level aging visibility across all of your open invoices, whether or not each one is actively placed with LedgerClear. Flat fee, independent of Contingency Fee activity.

How it works

AI drafts and scores. A Recovery Specialist decides and sends. Every time.

Nothing reaches a Debtor without a human approval event. No phone call and no settlement negotiation is ever automated, at any scale.

01

Intake

Your aged-receivables list, invoices, Debtor contacts, and prior correspondence are collected and checked against the intake checklist — no Account proceeds with a missing required field.

02

Classify

Every Account is confirmed 100% commercial/B2B before anything else happens. Hard gate: IF debtor.account_type != "commercial" THEN HARD_BLOCK — never bypassable by AI alone.

03

Score

AI computes a recovery-probability band and recommends an Escalation Tier — a recommendation only, never an automatic tier change.

04

AI draft

AI drafts the escalating reminder sequence for the recommended tier, in your brand voice, from the gold-standard sequence library.

05

Human approve — the Recovery Specialist

A Recovery Specialist reviews tone and escalation step and approves — or edits and approves — before anything sends. Nothing sends unapproved. This is the human chokepoint the entire pipeline is built around.

06

Send / track

The approved message sends under your brand (AR Concierge) or LedgerClear's own identity where licensing allows; responses and Promise-to-Pay commitments are tracked.

07

Escalate or recover — human decision only

AI never decides to escalate an Account; it recommends, the Recovery Specialist decides. Funds recovered route to you minus the Contingency Fee; unresolved Accounts move to Placement or Legal Referral.

08

Learn

Every recovered, partial, lost, or disputed outcome feeds back into the gold-standard sequence library and the recovery-probability model, by industry vertical.

Pricing

Contingency, tiered by how aged the Account is. Never hourly.

The guarantee sits next to every price, not in fine print somewhere else.

AR Concierge · 15–90 days 8–12% Pilot rate: 10% flat, first 8 pilot Clients

AI-drafted, human-approved reminder sequence under your own name.

No collect, no fee — $0 owed if $0 recovered.
Standard Recovery Desk · 91–180 days 18–25% Tiered by Account size

Firmer cadence, documented correspondence file, human-led negotiation.

No collect, no fee — $0 owed if $0 recovered.
Aged/Placement Desk · 180+ days 30–40% Via licensed collection-agency partner

Litigation-ready documentation package, handed to the licensed partner.

Partner fee only — never charged twice.

Disputed amounts: no Contingency Fee is ever charged on any portion of an Account the Debtor disputes, until the dispute is resolved and a specific dollar amount is confirmed collectible. A disputed Account is routed to the exception queue rather than continuing on the standard cadence, and a Recovery Specialist — not AI — decides how and whether to pursue it further. Partial recovery: the fee applies only to dollars actually recovered — a $10,000 invoice with $6,000 recovered generates a fee on $6,000 only. Legal Referral is a flat fee paid to the partner attorney network, never billed as a LedgerClear service fee. The optional Monthly AR Health Dashboard ($99–$249/mo, flat) is priced and billed separately from — and never contingent on — recovery outcomes.

[PLACEHOLDER] First pilot cohort recovery rate (target ≥35% on AR Concierge Accounts) — published here once the first 8 pilot Clients complete a full cycle. No figure is shown until it is measured.

[PLACEHOLDER] First Client testimonial — added only with written permission from a real, named pilot Client. LedgerClear never fabricates a quote or a logo.

[PLACEHOLDER] Total Recovered Dollars to date — a live, auditable figure once real Accounts have cleared funds. Until then this stays blank rather than invented.

Proof

What we can show you honestly, right now.

LedgerClear is entering its pilot cohort. We're not going to invent a case study to fill this space.

Pending pilot cohort #1

The first recovered-dollars case study will appear here once pilot cohort #1 (8 Clients, 45-day cap) completes and outcomes are logged. Recovery-rate figures cited elsewhere on this page — for example the 35% 45-day recovery target on AR Concierge Accounts — are pilot targets, not guarantees, and are labeled Unverified until measured.

Sample deliverable

What an AR Health Scan actually looks like.

Illustrative example built from a fictional aged-receivables list — not a real Client, Debtor, or Account. This is the shape and level of detail every real AR Health Scan returns.

Illustrative — not real data
AccountInvoice ageRecovery probabilityRecommended tier
ACC-1042 · [Redacted Co.]9 daysHigh · ~62%AR Concierge
ACC-1088 · [Redacted Co.]47 daysMedium · ~31%AR Concierge
ACC-1113 · [Redacted Co.]134 daysLow · ~14%Standard Recovery Desk
ACC-1029 · [Redacted Co.]211 daysAged · ~6%Aged/Placement Desk

Each row in a real AR Health Scan links to the full recommended reminder sequence, the Recovery Specialist's notes field, and a one-click path to approve escalation. Recovery-probability bands are model estimates, shown as a range, never a guarantee.

FAQ

The questions every owner asks before sending an Account.

Does this count as debt collection requiring a license?
The AR Concierge tier (15–90 days past due) is structured as an extension of your own billing desk: messages send under your Client brand and name, which most states do not treat as third-party debt collection. Accounts at 180+ days move to the Aged/Placement Desk, routed to a licensed collection-agency partner, because LedgerClear does not hold direct state collection-agency licensing yet. This is not legal advice; state rules vary and are tracked on a state-by-state roadmap pending attorney review.
Does FDCPA apply?
The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (15 U.S.C. §1692a(5)) covers debt from transactions primarily for personal, family, or household purposes. Every Debtor LedgerClear works is confirmed 100% commercial/B2B before first contact, so FDCPA's federal consumer-collection rules do not apply to that Account. State unfair-and-deceptive-practices statutes and licensing rules can still apply, and LedgerClear complies with those separately.
What happens to disputed invoices?
No Contingency Fee is ever charged on any disputed portion of an invoice. A disputed Account is pulled off the standard reminder cadence and routed to the exception queue immediately; a Recovery Specialist, not AI, decides how and whether to pursue it further, only after the dispute is resolved and a specific dollar amount is confirmed collectible.
What if the client refuses to pay after multiple attempts?
Accounts crossing 91 days past due are evaluated for the Standard Recovery Desk; a Recovery Specialist, not a timer alone, confirms the move. Accounts crossing 180 days, or assessed as unlikely to recover through direct contact, are prepared with a full documentation package and handed to a licensed collection-agency partner (Aged/Placement Desk) or, on a litigation-track Account, to the partner attorney network (Legal Referral).
Is this the same as a collections agency?
No. A traditional commercial collection agency is built for accounts already written off, charges 15–40% contingency across the board, and can take 120–180 days just to get itself licensed and onboarded in some states. LedgerClear is priced and staged for invoices that are simply late, at a lower blended rate in the early window, with a human Recovery Specialist as the only voice a Debtor ever hears — and routes to a licensed partner only once an Account is genuinely aged.
Resource center

Glossary and related reading, for anyone doing this in-house.

You don't need to send LedgerClear anything to use these. They're the same terms and thresholds our Recovery Specialists work from.

Glossary

Account — one overdue invoice or grouped balance tracked through the escalation ladder.
Debtor — the commercial entity that owes the Account.
Escalation Tier — AR Concierge, Standard Recovery Desk, or Aged/Placement Desk, set by days past due and Recovery Specialist judgment.
Promise-to-Pay — a Debtor's dated commitment to pay a specific amount by a specific date, tracked against actual payment.
Contingency Fee — the percentage of dollars actually recovered; never hourly, never charged on disputed amounts.

Full operating blueprint

The complete dossier behind this desk — market sizing, competitor landscape, and the deterministic release gates that keep every send human-approved.

View the blueprint dossier →

When to keep this in-house

If total overdue AR is under roughly $10,000, or you have staff capacity for a consistent weekly follow-up cadence, a spreadsheet and a firm process may be enough. Contingency pricing works best once the dollar amount and the number of stale Accounts outgrow what one person can chase reliably.

Related sources

See the primary-source basis above for the FDCPA, Regulation F, and state-licensing references this desk operates within.

Compliance

The licensing boundary, stated plainly.

"LedgerClear does not provide legal advice, does not represent itself as a law firm, and does not collect consumer/personal debt under any circumstance."

This exact sentence is used, unmodified, on this page, in every engagement letter, and in any public content that discusses licensing or legal scope. Every Debtor is confirmed 100% commercial before first contact and again before Placement — a hard, deterministic gate that cannot be cleared by AI alone. This page is not legal advice, and state collection-agency licensing requirements vary and change; consult qualified counsel before relying on any of it operationally.

Page content and primary-source citations last reviewed 2026-07-18.

Start here

Get your free AR Health Scan.

Tell us roughly what's owed. We'll follow up to arrange your aged-receivables list and return a recovery-probability read within 24–48 business hours — no cost, no obligation.

Free, no obligation. A Recovery Specialist reviews every submission personally — this form does not commit you to any Escalation Tier.