Can an AI agent chase overdue invoices in Xero and HubSpot?

Yes, with limits. An AI agent can read your overdue invoices in Xero, look up the customer in HubSpot, draft a reminder that fits what is actually going on with that account, and log what it did against the company record. What it should not do, at least for the first few months, is send anything without a person approving it, or keep chasing a customer who has disputed the invoice or told you they are struggling to pay.

Xero's built-in invoice reminders already cover the simple case: a scheduled email a set number of days before or after the due date. The HubSpot and Xero integration puts invoices and payments on the HubSpot record, so sales can see who has paid. Neither of them reads the context around the debt: the payment date a customer promised on the phone, the open support ticket about a faulty delivery, or the renewal your account manager is about to close.

That context is what an agent adds. It is a custom build against the Xero and HubSpot APIs, our AI projects start from A$10,000 ex GST, and the version worth running keeps a person approving every message until the drafts are consistently right. With the Christmas shutdown close, here is where each option stops and which Australian rules an agent has to follow.

What do Xero's own invoice reminders already do?

Xero can email customers automatically when an invoice is coming due or overdue, on a schedule you set against the due date. Partner guides describe three defaults at 7, 14 and 21 days overdue. Xero's help centre would not load for us to confirm that, so check your own settings.

On Xero's product ideas forum, users and a Xero community manager both refer to a current limit of five reminders. On 31 August 2026 Xero marked the request for more as in development, saying its "Get paid without chasing" work will bring multi-step plans that go beyond the five-reminder limit, adjusted to each customer's payment history. Xero has not given a release date.

Where Xero reminders stop today:

• One schedule for everyone. A customer who forgot and a customer who is disputing the invoice get the same email on the same day.
• No CRM context. Xero does not know about the promised payment date in HubSpot, the complaint ticket, or the deal sales is working on.
• Nobody gets told. Reminders do not hand a difficult account to its owner, and users on the same forum note they simply stop after the last one in the schedule.

If your overdue list is short and your customers are similar, switch Xero reminders on and stop there. An agent is for a long list of accounts that each need different handling.

If you want the basics of what an AI agent is before going further, this video from our YouTube channel is a crash course for business owners.

What does the HubSpot and Xero integration sync, and what does it leave out?

Xero by HubSpot (Data Sync) syncs four things. Contacts and products sync one way or both ways. Invoices sync from Xero to HubSpot, or both ways. Payments applied to invoices sync across too. HubSpot says changes in Xero are picked up every 30 minutes and changes in HubSpot reach Xero within a few minutes, and only payments created after you connect the app come across.

The integration is available on every HubSpot plan, and custom field mappings need at least Data Hub Starter. Our guide to connecting HubSpot and Xero covers the setup order and the traps.

It moves data and stops there. It does not send reminders, decide who to chase, or tell anyone an account needs a call. HubSpot's article does not list credit notes among the synced objects either, so balances can disagree. If yours already do, read why HubSpot, Xero and Power BI numbers do not match before you point an agent at either of them.

What would an AI agent add on top?

Here is how we would build it. Each step uses something the Xero or HubSpot API supports today.

The shape we would build. The dollar threshold for escalation and the overdue limit for a credit hold are set by your finance team.

• Read what is overdue from Xero. The Xero Accounting API returns invoices with their status, amount due and due date, and has an aged receivables by contact report. The agent only reads Xero, and never edits an invoice.
• Pull the relationship from HubSpot. For each overdue customer: the account owner, open deals and their stage, tickets opened recently, notes or emails mentioning a promised payment date, and what was sent last time.
• Sort the situation. Forgot to pay, promised a date that has passed, disputed the invoice, mentioned hardship, or a large or sensitive account. Each has its own rule.
• Draft the reminder to match. A plain nudge for the customer who forgot, a reference to the date given for the one who promised, and no reminder at all for a dispute or hardship.
• Route for approval before anything is sent. The draft lands as a HubSpot task or Slack message for your finance lead to approve, edit or reject. The Xero API can email a copy of the invoice to the customer, so the reminder goes out with it attached.
• Escalate to the account owner. Above a dollar threshold you set, or for any account tagged as sensitive, the agent skips the email and asks the account owner to make a call.
• Write it back to HubSpot. The sent reminder is logged on the company record with a follow-up task and a collections status, so sales sees what finance sees.
• Flag a credit hold for sales. When an account passes your overdue limit and has an open deal, the agent sets a credit hold property and tells the deal owner before another order goes in. If you have set up automated credit limits in HubSpot, the agent feeds the same fields.

Xero reminders, the integration or an agent: which does what?

Get the integration clean first, because the agent trusts what the HubSpot record says.

What rules should an invoice chasing agent follow?

An agent that emails customers about money needs written rules before it goes live. These are ours.

• A person approves every send at first. Move the plain "you may have missed this" category to automatic sending only after a long run of drafts approved with no edits. Disputes, hardship and large accounts stay with a person permanently.
• Tone rules, written down. Polite, short, factual: invoice number, amount, due date, how to pay, who to contact. The agent cannot offer discounts or extensions.
• Never threaten. The ACCC and ASIC debt collection guideline says you must not threaten legal or other action you are not permitted to take, have no authority to take, or do not intend to take. The agent never mentions legal action, collection agencies or credit reporting. That is a human decision.
• Stop on dispute or hardship. Any reply that questions the debt or mentions difficulty paying stops the sequence for that customer and goes to a named person.
• Count every contact. The guideline recommends contacting a debtor no more than three times a week or 10 times a month, and an email, a text and a voicemail are three contacts. If Xero reminders stay switched on, the agent has to count those too.
• Keep an audit log and an undo. Every change is logged with the previous value, so a wrong credit hold can be reversed. A sent email cannot be unsent, which is why approval comes first. More in can you undo what an AI agent just did.

Before go live, the agent runs against past overdue cases with known right answers, including disputes it must refuse to chase. Here is how we test an AI agent before it talks to a customer.

Which Australian rules apply when you chase invoices?

The debt collection guideline. The current edition of the ACCC and ASIC Debt collection guideline for collectors and creditors is dated April 2021, and ASIC publishes it as Regulatory Guide 96. It applies to creditors collecting their own debts as well as to collection agencies. It was written with individual debtors in mind, and it says many of the same laws and principles are relevant to collecting business debts, small business debts in particular. It sets out how the regulators read the consumer protection laws they enforce, so treat it as the standard your agent is held to.

The Privacy Act. The names and email addresses of people at your customers, and details about a sole trader, are personal information. Under the Australian Privacy Principles you use it for the purpose you collected it (APP 6) and take reasonable steps to protect it (APP 11), including what the agent sends to its AI model. From 10 December 2026, APP 1.7 to 1.9 add a further duty: if a computer program makes, or does something substantially related to, a decision that could significantly affect a person's rights or interests, your privacy policy has to say so. The OAIC says this can apply even when a person reviews the output, so check an automatic credit hold on a sole trader against it.

The Spam Act. This one is less settled. The Spam Act 2003 defines a commercial electronic message by its purpose, such as offering or promoting goods or services, and a reminder to pay an existing invoice does not obviously have that purpose. The Act also treats a message of no more than factual information as a designated commercial electronic message: no consent or unsubscribe link needed, but it must identify the sender. We found no ACMA guidance on payment reminders specifically, so keep reminders strictly factual with no offers or promotional links, name the sender, and ask your lawyer if you need certainty.

What does an invoice chasing agent cost to build?

Our AI projects start from A$10,000 ex GST, plus running costs for the AI model and hosting that depend on invoice volume. The state of your data moves the price more than the agent does. A single Xero organisation, HubSpot companies already matched to Xero contacts, and account owners filled in on every company make for a short build. Several Xero organisations, duplicate customers, or promised dates kept in someone's inbox all add work.

Start small: one Xero organisation, invoices more than 30 days overdue, a person approving every send, and a weekly look at the drafts. Widen it once they are right.

Frequently asked questions

Does Xero send automatic overdue invoice reminders? Yes. Xero can email customers on a schedule set against each invoice's due date, with a current limit of five reminders. Every customer with reminders on gets the same schedule.

Does the HubSpot Xero integration chase overdue invoices? No. It syncs contacts, products, invoices and payments so HubSpot shows invoice and payment status, but it does not send reminders or decide who to chase.

Can AI chase invoices without a person checking? It can, but we would not start there. Begin with a person approving every reminder, move only plain reminders to automatic sending after a long run of unedited approvals, and keep disputes, hardship and large accounts with a person.

How often can you contact a customer about an overdue invoice in Australia? The ACCC and ASIC debt collection guideline recommends no more than three contacts a week or 10 a month, counting each email, text and call separately.

Do payment reminders need an unsubscribe link under the Spam Act? A reminder that only asks for payment of an existing invoice is unlikely to be a commercial message, and factual messages are exempt from the unsubscribe rule but must identify the sender. ACMA has no specific guidance on payment reminders that we could find, so keep them factual and free of promotions.

Sources

• Invoice reminders: increase the number of reminders that can be set up, Xero Product Ideas, for the five-reminder limit and the 31 August 2026 in development update.
• Connect HubSpot and Xero (Data Sync), HubSpot Knowledge Base, for synced objects, directions, timing and the Data Hub Starter requirement.
• Xero Accounting API OpenAPI specification, Xero, for the invoice, invoice email and aged receivables by contact endpoints.
• RG 96 Debt collection guideline for collectors and creditors, ASIC and ACCC, April 2021, for scope, threats, disputes, hardship and contact frequency.
• Read the Australian Privacy Principles, OAIC, for APP 6 and APP 11.
• APP 1.7 to 1.9 Transparency Obligation fact sheet, OAIC, September 2026, for the automated decision rules from 10 December 2026.
• Spam Act 2003, Federal Register of Legislation, for the section 6 definition and Schedule 1 factual messages.
• Avoid sending spam, ACMA, for consent and sender identification rules.

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If your finance team spends December chasing the same accounts by hand, see our AI engineering work or talk to us. Tell Matt how your team chases overdue invoices today, and where promised payment dates get recorded. He will talk you through how we would connect Xero and HubSpot to an agent, and which parts are worth automating first.