Direct debit
Xero integration
REPRESENT's clients sign a Direct Debit mandate before the engagement letter goes out. 97% of its invoices never go overdue, and the rest are paid an average of 1.3 days late.
At a Glance
Payment set up before the work starts
REPRESENT is a consultancy for accountancy practices, founded by James Sundin and Antoaneta Pop. It helps firms win clients, deliver their work, buy and sell practices, automate and plan their exit. It runs 37 fixed-fee productised services and has grown from a bootstrapped two-person startup to a business working in five countries.
REPRESENT joined Adfin in its first months of trading, before most of its clients had signed up, and has collected over £1m through Adfin across its UK entities since. It uses Adfin with Xero.
Before Adfin
With Adfin
Challenge
Choosing a payments setup before there was anything to collect
REPRESENT started with no clients, no revenue and a plan to deliver 37 services across five countries. James had spent twelve years in the accountancy sector and had run due diligence on payment providers more than once. The founders knew that whatever they chose in month one would need to work for a business much bigger than the one they had.
Two things decided it: how much of each invoice the provider would take, and how cleanly each payment would land in Xero.
“We understood the vision as to what we were going to create with REPRESENT. There are complexities. But the complexity that we weren't able to or even willing to accept was getting paid on time from our clients. It wasn't just about the solution that we needed when we started, but the solution that was going to allow us to scale.”
James Sundin · Co-founder and Chief Evangelist, REPRESENT
Solution
The mandate comes before the engagement letter
Direct Debit agreed during onboarding
REPRESENT asks for the Direct Debit mandate when a client agrees to work together, before the first invoice is raised. It has raised 48 mandates since it started trading and 32 are active. 95% of payments now arrive by Direct Debit, and for the few invoices that need a nudge, reminders go out by email, WhatsApp and SMS.
“Our vision when we started REPRESENT was to have all of our clients on a Direct Debit, learning from previous experiences and challenges. I never had a question about why we're doing it. This is how we set expectations with our clients. You sign up, you sign the Direct Debit, and we start working together.”
Antoaneta Pop · Co-founder and Chief of Enablement, REPRESENT
Card fees passed on without re-raising the invoice
Most card payments come from clients outside the UK, and REPRESENT decides per payment whether to absorb the fee or pass it on. James had seen how awkward that can be elsewhere.
“If you want to charge it onto a client, actually I need to cancel that invoice, re-raise that invoice, plus that fee associated to it. It was an absolute headache for finance. With Adfin we've got the option to either absorb that cost ourselves or quite literally within one click pass that on to them.”
James Sundin
Reconciliation that matches first time
The full invoice amount lands in Xero and Adfin bills its fee separately each month. The figures match, so Antoaneta can plan supplier payments and payroll from what she sees in Adfin.
“You raise an invoice, you get the full amount into the bank and into Xero, and then Adfin is raising the monthly fee. So it's very clean. I can plan my cash flow, I can plan my supplier payments.”
Antoaneta Pop
Results
Paid on time, with the money in the bank before payroll
REPRESENT's invoices are paid an average of 1.3 days late, against a UK average of 8.3 days , and 97% never go overdue at all.
The effect is less about getting paid faster than about knowing when the money lands, and being able to spend it.
“We are not cash flowing our clients' businesses with regards to services that we're delivering for them. We have the money in our bank ahead of paying our people. Our first two and a bit years in business: reinvestment, reinvestment, reinvestment. That supported our expansion from being a bootstrap startup with no clients, no revenue, no money, to five countries around the world.”
James Sundin
It also mattered when there were only two of them.
“When we started, it was just the two of us. There were other things that we needed to work on. It gives you time back to focus on the business rather than chasing clients for payments.”
Antoaneta Pop
Sources: Adfin platform data for all three REPRESENT entities, February 2025 to September 2026. UK average days late from Xero Small Business Insights, June 2026.