Credit Control Manager

About 1st Formations: At 1st Formations, we empower entrepreneurs to start, run and grow their businesses with confidence. We’re a leading UK provider of company formation and compliance services, building a modern, integrated platform bringing together company formation, compliance, accounting, payroll and ongoing business support.

We have strong momentum and ambitious plans for growth:

• £18m annual revenue, including £9m AR
• Over 1 million companies formed
• Certified B Corp and Carbon Neutral Business
• Forecast to grow 5x–10x over the next three years

The Role: We’re looking for an experienced Credit Control Manager to take sole ownership of collections for our growing Accounting Service. This is a hands-on, standalone role with considerable autonomy. You will be responsible for designing and building our credit control and collections process from the ground up, and then running it day-to-day.

Our Accounting Service is sold alongside a company formation package, discounted from £139.99 to £1. Customers who select the package commit to 11 monthly payments for the Accounting Service, with those payments remaining due under the customer agreement, whether or not the customer completes the accounting onboarding process. Your job is straightforward: ensure contractual monthly payments are collected, missed payments are followed up on promptly, and arrears are resolved consistently and professionally.

This is not a traditional credit-risk role. You won’t be setting credit limits or negotiating commercial payment terms. The focus is on recurring contractual collections and creating a scalable collections operation as the Accounting Service grows.

What You’ll Be Doing:

• Design, document, and own the end-to-end credit control and collections process.
• Decide the collections timetable and contact strategy for missed and failed payments, including frequency of contact and escalation points.
• Create and continually improve customer communications, including email templates, reminders and telephone scripts.
• Personally manage day-to-day collections across a high volume of customer accounts by telephone and email.
• Handle objections and difficult conversations confidently, including explaining customers’ contractual payment commitments where required.
• Identify genuine billing or service issues and work with our Accounting, Onboarding, Customer Service and Finance teams to resolve them quickly.
• Establish clear escalation routes for unresolved arrears and recommend when accounts should move to the next stage of recovery.
• Maintain accurate records and provide management with clear reporting on arrears, collections, recovery rates, failed payments and reasons for non-payment.
• Identify opportunities to improve payment recovery through better communications, processes, automation and payment-retry workflows.

What We’re Looking For: You will need strong hands-on experience in credit control, collections, or recurring payment recovery, ideally within a subscription, professional services, or other high-volume customer environment. Just as importantly, we’re looking for someone who can build a collections function rather than simply inherit one.

You should be:

• Experienced in creating, redesigning or materially improving collections processes.
• Comfortable working independently and taking ownership of both the strategy and day-to-day collections activity.
• Confident and effective on the telephone, including dealing with objections, complaints and difficult payment conversations.
• An excellent written communicator who can create clear, professional and effective customer communications.
• Firm, persistent and commercially minded while maintaining a professional approach to customers.
• Highly organised and able to manage a large number of accounts, follow-ups and escalation actions.
• Comfortable using finance, CRM or payment systems and Excel/Google Sheets for tracking and reporting.
• Experience in accounting, bookkeeping or financial services would be useful but is not essential. Strong collections experience and the ability to build an effective process are more important.
• A CICM qualification, or progress towards one, would be welcome but is not essential.

What We Offer:

• Competitive salary and comprehensive benefits package
• Hybrid working
• A high-autonomy role with the opportunity to build and own a new collections function
• Genuine opportunities for progression as the Accounting Service and wider business grow
• The opportunity to influence customer experience, billing processes and product development
• A culture that values ownership, impact and continuous learning

Equal Opportunities: 1st Formations is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to creating a diverse and inclusive workplace. We welcome applications from individuals from all backgrounds and will make reasonable accommodations for candidates with disabilities or additional needs.