MAC X chose Adfin from day one and tested it on its own billing first. Late payers fell from 42.9% to 4.4% while the team grew from one person to eight.
At a Glance
How MAC X got cash collection right in year one
MAC X was founded in October 2024 by Mark Craddock FCCA, after 30 years in practice including nearly two decades at Baldwins and Azets. The practice works with ambitious SMEs and owner-managed businesses, and in two years has grown from Mark on his own to a team of eight and more than 400 clients.
With no legacy provider to move away from, MAC X chose Adfin from the start, running it alongside Xero and Client Engager.
Before Adfin
With Adfin
Challenge
Building a new practice without building in admin
When Mark started MAC X, around 30 clients got in touch in the first month alone. He wanted the right foundations in place before growth outpaced them: a small set of systems the team could master, and a payments set-up that wouldn't need a team of its own as the client base grew.
At larger firms he'd seen how changing billing and payments became a multi-year job. At MAC X there was nothing to unpick, so he could choose deliberately.
“If you get cash collection right early, everything else, hiring, forecasting, client experience, gets easier.”
Mark Craddock · Founder and Director, MAC X
Solution
Payments and credit control in one place, tested on their own billing first
Tested on MAC X first
Mark compared the established providers with Adfin, then ran Adfin on MAC X's own billing before offering it to clients. The practice has been live on Adfin since January 2026.
“We wanted to be confident in the service ourselves before referring our clients to trust it too.”
Mark Craddock
Direct Debit from the first conversation
Clients see the services, the fees and the Direct Debit option during engagement through Client Engager. Clients who are unsure get a phone call to explain why.
“There's a little bit of nervousness about Direct Debit. It's just a bit of an education piece. Once clients understand what we're trying to do and why, the sign-up process has accelerated quite a lot.”
Mark Craddock
Collection agents for each kind of client
Direct Debit clients, pay-on-demand clients and clients who haven't agreed terms yet each get their own communications. Every message lets the client view the invoice and pay there and then.
“People getting consistent communication, consistent for who they are and how they want that communication. That's the most important thing.”
Mark Craddock
A live ledger in Xero
Adfin links to MAC X's own Xero, reconciles payments and shows who has paid and how. The team can see each client's history before they meet them.
“There's none of this, 'Oh, I haven't had my invoice.' We know you've had the invoice. We know you've signed a Direct Debit or haven't.”
Mark Craddock
Results
Late payers down to 4.4% as the practice grew
At the start of 2026, 42.9% of MAC X clients didn't pay on time. By the end of July it was 4.4%, and it's stayed around that level since. Mark says that when clients are late, the typical delay has come down from around 10 days to two to four.
Direct Debit payments collected each month tripled between January and September 2026. MAC X now has 115 active mandates, and 97.5% of Direct Debit collections go through first time.
“For a young, fast-growing firm, that's the difference between guessing what's in the bank next month and knowing. We've been able to plan hiring, investment and growth decisions with a level of cashflow predictability we simply didn't have a year ago.”
Mark Craddock
That predictability gave Mark the confidence to hire seven people in a year.
“We've employed from just myself to eight people in such a short space of time. Without that predictability of cash, I'd probably have been a bit nervous about it.”
Mark Craddock
For the team, the time has gone back to clients.
“Chasing a handful of failed payments a month is a completely different job to chasing hundreds. The team's time has shifted from admin to advisory, which is exactly where we want it as we scale.”
Mark Craddock
Sources: Adfin platform data for MAC X, December 2025 to September 2026, and figures supplied by MAC X. Late payments are invoices paid after their due date, measured on the same basis as the Adfin dashboard.