Accounts Receivable Specialist: Hire One or Outsource the Work?

When invoices start slipping past 60 days, the obvious fix is to hire an accounts receivable specialist. Sometimes that is the right call, but often it brings more cost and management than a small business needs. This guide covers what the job involves, what a hire really costs, the alternatives side by side and the questions to ask before you choose.

What an accounts receivable specialist does

An AR specialist (in smaller companies, often called an AR clerk or collections specialist) owns the path from invoice to cash. Here is a short job description you can adapt if you decide to hire.

Accounts receivable specialist job description

Accounts receivable specialist, full time or part time. Reports to the owner, controller or office manager.

• Send invoices or check they went out correctly, with PO numbers and backup documents, and upload them to customer AP portals where required.
• Confirm receipt and approval of large invoices before the due date.
• Follow up on past-due invoices by email and phone, and log every payment promise.
• Work billing disputes and short payments with sales, operations or project managers until they are resolved.
• Apply incoming payments to the right invoices and clear unapplied cash and deductions.
• Keep customer records current: AP contacts, remittance details, vendor setup forms and certificates.
• Prepare the weekly AR aging report and flag accounts for credit hold.
• Escalate accounts that need an owner call or a decision on formal collection.

Skills: comfortable on the phone, persistent but polite, organized, good with Excel and your accounting system (QuickBooks Online, Xero or an ERP), and discreet with financial information.

Notice the mix. Part of the job is accounting (applying cash, credits, reconciling accounts) and part is communication (calls, emails, negotiating a payment date). People who are strong at one are not always strong at the other, which is one reason AR hires are hard to get right.

When a small business needs one

No revenue threshold tells you it is time. The signs are practical:

• Follow-up happens only when cash is tight, then stops when it isn’t.
• The owner or a project manager spends hours every week chasing payments.
• Your bookkeeper is supposed to handle collections, but month-end always comes first.
• Past-due balances grow even though sales are steady.
• Disputes sit for weeks because nobody owns them.
• Unapplied payments and old credits make the aging report unreliable.
• Your line of credit depends on clean, current receivables.

If several of these sound familiar, you have company. The QuickBooks Small Business Late Payments Report 2026 found that 59% of US small businesses have invoices more than 30 days overdue, and that 51% of businesses with overdue invoices say cash flow is a problem, against 36% of those without.

On the other hand, if you have a handful of customers who pay reliably, you probably don’t need anyone dedicated. A clear process and a weekly check of the aging may be enough.

The full cost of hiring an accounts receivable specialist

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics groups AR clerks with bookkeeping, accounting and auditing clerks. The median pay for that group was $24.36 per hour, or $50,670 per year, in May 2025 (BLS). Your local market, the experience you need and skills like a second language can move that number either way.

The wage is only the start. A hire also brings:

• Payroll taxes: the employer’s share, plus any required contributions where you operate.
• Benefits: health coverage, retirement contributions, paid time off.
• Recruiting: job ads, an agency fee if you use one, and your own hours screening and interviewing.
• Training: weeks of reduced output while the new hire learns your customers, your systems and your billing quirks.
• Management time: someone has to set priorities, review the work and answer questions every week.
• Tools: a computer, a phone line, software licenses.
• Cover: when your one AR person is on vacation or out sick, follow-up stops unless someone else picks it up.
• Turnover: if they leave, you pay for recruiting and training again, and the knowledge of who to call at each customer leaves with them.

An illustrative first-year estimate

The table below is an estimate built on assumptions, not a benchmark. Replace each line with your own numbers; your payroll provider and accountant can give you the real cost of benefits and taxes where you operate.

On these assumptions, a $50,670 salary becomes close to $80,000 in year one, about 57% more than the wage alone. That still leaves out cover for vacations and the cost of a resignation in month ten. A part-time hire cuts the wage, but not the recruiting, the training or the management time.

The alternatives, compared

Hiring is one of six realistic options. Here is how they compare.

These options combine well. AR software plus a person who calls beats either one alone, and an outsourced AR team often works next to your bookkeeper, who keeps the books while the team handles follow-up.

A decision checklist

Answer these honestly before you post a job ad:

• Is there enough work for a full-time person? Count active accounts, invoices per month and the hours already spent on follow-up. If the real workload is well under a full week, a full-time hire ends up underused or doing unrelated tasks.
• Who will manage them? If the answer is “the owner, when there’s time,” the role will drift.
• Is the problem capacity or process? If invoices go out late or with the wrong PO number, or there is no credit policy, fix that first. A new hire won’t.
• Do you need phone follow-up? If emails get most customers to pay, software may do. If the past-due list is long, someone has to call.
• How much does continuity matter? Can follow-up stop for two weeks in August without hurting cash?
• Should customers keep seeing your name? If the relationships matter, rule out anything that contacts them under someone else’s name.
• Who will produce the reporting? A lender or partner may expect a weekly aging and DSO trend.
• Do some customers need follow-up in French? A bilingual hire is harder to find.

Whoever ends up doing the work, the free toolkit gives them a head start: an aging report template, a follow-up log and 12 email templates.

Questions to ask any outsourced AR provider

If you lean toward outsourcing, these questions separate a solid provider from a risky one.

Data access

• What access do you need to QuickBooks Online, Xero or our ERP? Can it be a separate user that we control and can switch off at any time?
• Who on your team sees our data, where is it stored and what happens to it when we end the contract?

Whose name they use

• Do you contact our customers in our company’s name or yours, and from which email address and phone number?
• Can we review and approve your email templates and call scripts?

Who customers pay

• Will customers keep paying us directly, into our existing account? The answer should be yes. Be wary of any setup where payments pass through the provider, and never accept a change to your remittance details that you haven’t verified yourself.

Reporting

• What do we receive each week? At a minimum: the aging, payment promises, open disputes, actions taken and accounts that need our decision.
• Do you track DSO and collection effectiveness over time?

Scope limits

• What won’t you do? A good provider is clear, for example: no legal action, no credit bureau reporting, no consumer debts.
• What happens when an account stops responding? You should get it back with its full history, so you can decide whether to talk to an attorney or a licensed collection agency.

Contract terms

• Is the fee flat, hourly or a percentage of what is collected? A percentage changes the provider’s incentives.
• Is there a minimum term, a setup fee or a notice period? Who keeps the notes and contact history at the end?

For reference, Extra Myle works on a flat monthly fee with no percentage of collections, follows up in your company’s name, and your customers always pay you directly. You can see how fees are set on our pricing page and what the service covers on our outsourced AR management page.

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