What does it cost to hire a credit controller in the UK?

An employer pays around £32,731 a year for a full-time credit controller on the median salary, once employer National Insurance and the minimum pension contribution are added, and about £34,731 in the first year with recruitment. ONS figures for 2025 put the full-time median salary at £28,532, with the middle half of full-time credit controllers earning between £25,020 and £34,408. At the median the employer's National Insurance comes to about £3,530 and the pension contribution to £669; software and cover come on top.

How much is a credit controller paid?

Credit control has an ONS group of its own. "Credit controllers" is SOC 2020 code 4121, which also takes in credit control administrators and assistants. The Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings for 2025, in the provisional edition the ONS published on 23 October 2025, gives the group's gross annual pay for full-time jobs in Table 14.7a: a median of £28,532, a 25th percentile of £25,020 and a 75th percentile of £34,408. These are UK-wide figures. The National Careers Service gives a narrower range by experience, from £21,000 for a starter to £32,000 for an experienced credit controller. Someone who runs a ledger alone in a business with a few hundred live accounts, and who is trusted to agree payment plans, is likely to sit towards the top of the range.

What does an employer pay on top of the salary?

• Employer National Insurance. GOV.UK's rates for the 2026 to 2027 tax year are 15% on each employee's earnings over £5,000 a year, which is £3,530 on the median salary. An employer who qualifies for the Employment Allowance can set up to £10,500 a year against that bill, so a business with only a few staff may find the allowance covers some or all of it.

• Pension. Under automatic enrolment the employer pays at least 3% of qualifying earnings, which are the pay between £6,240 and £50,270 a year. On the median salary that is £669 a year.

• Holiday. Statutory paid holiday is 5.6 weeks a year, at least 28 days for a full-time worker. The salary pays for about 46 working weeks, and the statements and reminders still fall due in the other six.

• Recruitment. The CIPD's Resourcing and talent planning report 2026 puts the median cost per hire for employees below senior management at £2,000, counting in-house time, advertising, agency fees, vetting and onboarding. That is a survey median from a small sample: 223 employers who could estimate their cost to within a fifth. Added to the employment cost, it brings the first year to about £34,731.

The sum leaves out a seat in Sage 200 or Business Central, the credit insurance or credit reference subscriptions the role runs on, and the owner's or finance manager's time while the new person learns which customers pay late and which pay never.

What does a credit controller do all week?

The National Careers Service describes the job as checking credit ratings and opening credit accounts, speaking with customers to organise repayments, processing payments and keeping records up to date, producing credit reports for management, and starting legal proceedings when a debt is not paid in the agreed time. Most of a working week goes on sending statements and reminders on the day each one falls due, matching payments to invoices, finding the proof of delivery or the signed timesheet a customer says they never had, and keeping notes so the next reminder is the right one, smaller tasks that description leaves out. In a wholesaler that means a few hundred accounts on 30-day terms. In a haulier the invoice waits on the POD and the POD waits on the driver. In an insurance brokerage the credit controller chases premiums against a fixed renewal date.

Can AI do part of a credit controller's job?

An AI worker can take the part that is the same every day. Given one written job and a person who approves its work, it can send each reminder on the day it falls due in wording you have approved, read the replies and sort them, chase the missing POD or timesheet from your own people, log every contact on the account, and prepare the aged debt report from the ledger. It is scoped to work in the accounts system you already run, and anything that changes what a customer owes waits for a person.

What stays with a person?

A person keeps:

• every phone call;

• a customer's request for time to pay, and the decision to give it;

• credit limits and new accounts;

• disputes and credit notes;

• any message that tells a customer where to pay, because a false change of bank details is how invoice fraud works;

• charging interest, stopping supply, the final letter and any step towards a debt collector or a court.

Those are the conversations and the judgement a credit controller is hired for. With the reminders handed to an AI worker, they can fill the person's week.

Should you hire a credit controller, or split the job?

Count how many of your overdue accounts would pay on a reminder alone, and how many need a call. The first group is the case for an AI worker. The second is the case for a person, and may not need a full-time one. Our comparison of AI staff with hiring an administrator sets them side by side, and what it costs to hire an administrator runs the same arithmetic for a general admin post. Our starting price is on the homepage.

An AI worker could be scoped to send the reminders, sort the replies and keep the notes, leaving the calls, the disputes and any request for time to pay to a person. Does your ledger need reminding more often than it needs a phone call? Talk to our agent.