If your accounts team knows a customer is overdue but your sales reps, dispatch and field staff keep taking their orders and booking their jobs, the problem isn't your people. It's that the "on stop" decision lives in Xero or MYOB, while the people taking the orders work in a different system: the job system (simPRO, ServiceM8, AroFlo), the stock and order system (Cin7, Unleashed) or the CRM (HubSpot). The status never reaches the screen where the order is taken, so goods leave the warehouse and techs turn up on site for customers who aren't paying.
Picture a normal Tuesday. The accounts receivable officer has a customer 60 days overdue and has rung twice. She marks them as on stop and emails the sales team. By Thursday, one rep has missed the email and keyed a new order from the customer's buyer, the warehouse has picked and packed it, and the truck is gone. Meanwhile a service coordinator has booked a tech for the same customer's maintenance call-out next week, because the job system shows them as a normal account. Nobody could see the stop.
Signs you have this problem
- Accounts emails or messages "don't supply X" and hopes everyone reads it.
- Someone has typed "STOP" or "ON HOLD" into the customer's name, in Xero, in the job system, or both.
- Orders go out to accounts that are well past their terms, and you only find out when the next statement run shows the balance growing.
- Reps, inside sales and service coordinators can't see a customer's balance owing or overdue days on the screen where they take orders or book jobs.
- Your credit policy (terms, limits, when an account goes on stop) isn't written down, or it's written down but nobody can apply it without asking accounts.
You're not alone in this. A request on Xero's own product ideas board, "Contacts – Automatic Credit Hold/Stop", was opened in December 2012, has 94 votes, and was marked "not planned" by Xero in February 2024. People are still adding to it in October 2026. One user wrote that they had "to edit the customer's details to show 'STOP' in the customer name to alert our sales team." Another put it simply: "a basic function, Sage manage it with on hold tick box."
Why it happens between systems
The decision and the action sit in different places. Accounts decides who's on stop, and they work in Xero or MYOB, where the aged receivables are. Sales, dispatch and service work in the job, stock or CRM system, where the orders and bookings are. Each system holds its own copy of the customer, and the hold status only lives in one of them, if anywhere.
Accounting packages aren't built to stop operations. Xero lets you set a credit limit on a contact and warn when a new invoice would go over it. That helps inside Xero, but most of your team never opens Xero, and by the time an invoice is raised, the goods have usually shipped or the job is done. A credit limit also misses the customer who is under their limit but badly overdue.
Payments land in one system and the others don't hear about it. Even where your order or job system has a credit hold or credit limit of its own, it needs to know what the customer owes and how late it is. That starts in the accounts, when payments are reconciled. If the other system only updates when someone clicks a sync button, or only knows about invoices it raised itself, its picture can be days out of date.
The rules live in someone's head. "Thirty-day accounts go on stop at 60 days overdue, unless they're a key account and the GM says otherwise" is a sensible policy. When it's only in the credit controller's memory, nobody else can apply it, and it changes depending on who's asking.
Buying another app rarely fixes it on its own. Debt-collection tools chase the money, but they don't stop the next order or booking in your operations system.
What it costs you
Cash tied up in customers who aren't paying. Every order you supply to an overdue account adds to a balance you're already struggling to collect. You've already paid for the stock, the freight and the tech's time.
Bad debts that started as "just one more order". When a customer is in trouble, the last few orders before they stop paying altogether are often the ones you never see. Stopping supply early is one of the few levers you have, and it only works if it actually stops supply.
Leverage and credibility you lose. "We'll release the order when the overdue invoices are paid" is a strong position. It disappears when the rep delivers the day after accounts asked for payment.
Time spent policing it by hand. Someone checks every order against an overdue list or rings accounts before dispatch, until they're on leave.
Margin you can't see. A customer who looks profitable on sales can look very different once you count the extra credit, the slow payment and the write-offs. If you can't see that, see why you can't see margin by customer in a wholesale business.
What fixing it generally involves
Start with the simplest steps. Some of this is a policy and a habit, not a project.
- Agree a written credit policy. Set out the terms for each type of customer, when an account goes on stop (for example, a set number of days past terms, or over the limit), who can put it on and take it off, and who can approve an exception. If the rule is clear, it can be applied by anyone and later by a system.
- Name one owner for the hold. Usually that's accounts or the credit controller. Everyone else follows the status rather than making their own call.
- Use what your order or job system already has. Some stock and order systems have a credit hold tick box or credit limits that stop or warn on new sales orders. Cin7 Core, for example, has both. Check what your system offers, turn it on, and check how and when it learns about payments made in Xero or MYOB. If your job system has no hold field, a customer tag or a required note that shows on booking is better than nothing.
- Send sales and dispatch a daily overdue list. A short list each morning of accounts on stop or past terms, with the amount and days overdue, is a cheap, effective first step. Make checking it part of order entry and job booking.
- Make "on hold" show where the work is taken. The status needs to appear on the order screen, the booking screen and the customer record in the CRM, not in a separate email.
- Pass the status automatically from the accounts to the other systems. This is the step that removes the manual chasing. Once the policy is agreed, a small integration can read overdue balances from Xero or MYOB every night (or as payments come in), apply your rules, and set the hold flag or tag on the customer in your job, stock and CRM systems. When the customer pays, the hold comes off the same way. It can also alert accounts when someone tries to book work or raise an order for a held account. This is the kind of third-party software integration we build at Kenomont. It's usually a modest piece of work, because the systems already hold the data.
If a daily list and your system's own hold feature do the job, stop there. The integration is worth it when you have several systems, several people taking orders or bookings, or holds that need to come off quickly once a customer pays.
This problem is common in wholesale and distribution, where reps and warehouses supply on account, and in trades and field service, where commercial customers keep booking work while their invoices sit unpaid. It's one example of what disconnected business systems cost growing businesses. Our Xero and MYOB integration and migration guides cover how the accounting side connects to everything else.
Frequently asked questions
Can I put a customer on hold in Xero?
Not as a true on-hold status. Xero lets you set a credit limit on a contact and warn when a new invoice would take them over it, but there's no "on stop" setting that blocks orders or jobs. The request for one on Xero's product ideas board has been open since 2012 and is marked "not planned". Many businesses type "STOP" into the contact name as a workaround.
How do I stop my sales team supplying customers with overdue accounts?
Write down your credit policy, make one person or team responsible for putting accounts on and off hold, and make the hold status visible where orders are taken. A daily overdue list helps straight away. For a lasting fix, pass the hold status from Xero or MYOB into your order, job and CRM systems automatically.
Can simPRO, ServiceM8 or AroFlo see that a customer is overdue in Xero?
The standard links between job systems and Xero or MYOB are mainly built to send invoices to the accounts, not to bring overdue status back. Check your system's settings and help pages, because features change. Where it doesn't come across, a customer tag or flag set from the accounting data can show the hold when someone books a job.
What's the difference between a credit limit and putting an account on stop?
A credit limit caps how much a customer can owe in total. Putting an account on stop is a decision to stop supplying, usually because invoices are overdue, whatever the total. A customer can be well under their limit and still be months behind, so most businesses need both.
If customers on stop are still getting orders and jobs from your business, book a free initial chat and we'll talk through where the status gets lost and what to fix first.