Once you pass fifty or so customers with overdue invoices, chasing payment by spreadsheet and memory stops working. Reminders get missed, nobody is sure which accounts are highest-risk, and cash that should be in your bank is sitting on someone else’s balance sheet. The gap between what you’ve invoiced and what you’ve collected is expensive, and it usually grows quietly.
I build custom credit control and debt collection software that fits the way your team already manages credit and recovers money: who gets credit and how much, your escalation rules, your customer segments, and how hard you’re willing to chase before a relationship suffers. The aim is cash in sooner, less manual admin around it, and a clear position under UK financial rules. You own the system outright, with no subscription running in the background.
Credit control or debt collection: which do you need?
Credit control starts before an invoice goes overdue. It decides who gets credit, sets limits, checks risk, holds orders when an account is over its limit, and sends the first reminders. Debt collection takes over when those reminders fail: work queues, calls, payment plans, disputes and, at the end, escalation to a solicitor or agency.
Most off-the-shelf tools do one half well. Chasing tools such as Chaser handle reminders but not credit decisions; collections platforms assume the debt already exists. If your problem spans both, one system that knows a customer’s limit, payment history and current chase stage avoids the side spreadsheet where those facts usually end up.
Where off-the-shelf software falls short
For straightforward cases, off-the-shelf software is the right call. If you run B2B invoicing with a few hundred regular customers, predictable payment patterns, a small collections team and a tidy Xero or QuickBooks setup, a custom build would be overkill.
It starts to fall short when your situation is less standard:
- Rigid workflows. Escalation logic is usually pre-set. If your rule is “escalate to legal only when the balance is over £10k and the customer has a poor payment history and the debt is 60-plus days old”, most platforms can’t express it without heavy workarounds. Credit approvals are the same: one approval hierarchy, when your decision may need sign-off from credit, sales and risk depending on customer tier or region.
- Generic dunning. Standard chasing sequences treat every customer the same. Seasonal accounts, structured settlements and customers on tiered discounts need different handling.
- Per-seat pricing that scales badly. Per-user licensing climbs as your collections team grows, or when sales and operations need to see account status too. The useful features, such as SMS, dialling, credit reporting and API access, are often separate modules.
- Hidden setup and migration costs. Onboarding, data migration and integration work frequently add several thousand pounds on top of the headline subscription.
- Weak integration with anything that isn’t modern. Most platforms connect cleanly to Xero, QuickBooks and Sage. Older ERP systems or a proprietary lending or servicing platform are a different story, and you end up re-keying data by hand.
- Ageing buckets that don’t fit. Fixed 0–30, 30–60 and 90+ buckets rarely match your payment terms or seasonal cycles, and getting from a DSO figure down to the invoice and its chasing history is often slow or missing.
- Compliance gaps. Many platforms are built around US collection rules. They may not enforce FCA contact-frequency limits, automate GDPR retention, or give you an audit trail solid enough to defend a complaint.
- Vendor lock-in. Data export is awkward, your configuration isn’t portable, and the price tends to move up at renewal.
So people build workarounds: a side spreadsheet, a few steps done by hand, a reminder someone keeps meaning to send. The cost isn’t only the licence fee. It’s the wasted hours and the debts that age past the point of easy recovery because nobody chased them in time.
What I build instead
I model the system on your entities and rules rather than a generic invoice-chasing template.
I start with your current process: who picks up which accounts, how credit limits are set and overridden, when reminders fire, and what triggers a call, a letter or escalation. Then I build software that supports it, so your team doesn’t have to relearn the job.
You pay once. There’s no subscription climbing at every renewal and no vendor holding your data. The system is an asset on your books.
It connects to what you already run. Xero, QuickBooks Online and Sage are the usual accounting integrations, with invoices pulled in and payments posted back so your ledger and your collections view never drift apart. Credit checks can call Experian or Creditsafe, and payments can come in through Stripe or GoCardless. For a legacy ERP or servicing platform with no real API, I use scheduled file transfer rather than leaving your team to re-key data.
UK compliance is part of the build. The system can enforce FCA Consumer Duty expectations on contact frequency and forbearance, automate GDPR retention and lawful-basis tracking, calculate statutory late payment interest on B2B debts, and keep an audit trail you can produce if a regulator or the Financial Ombudsman asks.
More debtors, more collectors, new escalation rules or a new payment channel go in without a rebuild, and changes come from the person who built it.
Features and modules
I scope features to what your credit and collections team needs. The common building blocks:
Debtor and account records. A single view of each customer: contact details, relationship type, risk profile, preferred contact method, do-not-call flags and the GDPR lawful basis for holding the data.
Credit limits, scoring and holds. Limits per customer or group, risk scoring against your own criteria with optional bureau checks, approval workflows for new or raised limits, and holds that stop a sales order or shipment when an account is over its limit or overdue. Every override is logged with who approved it and why.
Invoice and payment tracking. Open balances, due dates and terms, with partial payments, write-offs and unallocated cash matched to invoices rather than fudged.
Work queues and prioritisation. Accounts assigned to collectors and ordered by the factors that matter to you: balance, age, risk, customer value.
Configurable reminder and escalation workflows. Reminder waves and escalation steps that fire on payment status and debt age, tuned per customer segment, with the conditional logic your business uses.
Promise-to-pay tracking. When a customer commits to a date, chasing pauses until then and restarts automatically if the money doesn’t arrive.
Multi-channel communication. Email, SMS, letters and call logging in one place, with templates and a timestamped history against every account.
Payment plans. Instalment arrangements with their own schedule, reminders and adherence tracking, including non-standard amortisation where you need it.
Dispute handling. Capture a dispute, pause chasing where appropriate, track it to resolution and keep the evidence.
Payment processing and self-service. Card and bank payments through the major gateways, plus a portal where customers can view invoices, pay, raise a query or request a plan.
Reporting and dashboards. DSO, ageing buckets set to your own terms, recovery rate by collector and channel, bad debt analysis and cash-flow forecasting, with drill-down from any figure to the invoice behind it.
Compliance and audit. Contact-frequency checks, retention rules, role-based access, encryption, and a tamper-evident log of every credit decision, override, write-off and contact.
Mobile access for field agents and managers, including offline use where the work calls for it.
How I build it
I build in phases, so you get a working system early and the risk stays low.
First Gear. I talk to your credit and collections staff, map the current process and its exceptions, confirm your integration list, and agree what success looks like. You get a working prototype of one core workflow on your own data and a fixed-price build plan.
Phase one: the core (about a month). Debtor and invoice import, automated email reminders, payment tracking, an ageing report, basic work queues and your first accounting integration. Getting this live early means the real workflow gets tested with real data.
Phase two: the depth (about a month). Credit limits and holds, SMS and call logging, configurable escalation, payment plans, dispute handling, the FCA and GDPR rules, fuller analytics and the self-service portal.
Migration, testing and rollout. I import customer records, open invoices, historical payments and credit limits, deduplicate customers, and reconcile open balances against your ledger before go-live. Then I roll out in stages, often running the new system alongside the old one so nothing falls through at cutover.
Training. Collectors usually need a day or two, managers similar on reporting, finance a session on payment reconciliation. Documentation comes with it.
Much of the effort on a project like this goes into data migration and integrations rather than the screens you see. Legacy debtor data often has stale contact details and duplicate accounts, and cleaning it is what makes the automation trustworthy, so I plan for it from the start.
What it costs, and what you get back
A custom build is a larger upfront commitment than a SaaS subscription. Most builds cost £2k–£10k, fixed at the end of First Gear. Advanced workflows, multi-channel outreach and a full compliance engine are added as later phases.
Over three to five years the comparison usually narrows or reverses, because SaaS costs are easy to underestimate:
- Per-user seats add up as the team grows, and useful features are often separate modules
- Setup, migration and integration fees of several thousand pounds are common on the SaaS side too
- Once a custom system is built, there are no licence fees
- Software that matches your existing process needs less retraining
- You own the system, so it’s an asset on your books rather than a permanent expense
- You don’t face a re-platforming project when you outgrow a vendor’s tier
The bespoke argument is strongest when SaaS would need heavy customisation anyway, when per-seat costs are climbing, or when integration with a legacy or proprietary system is the real blocker. I’ll give you my view on which applies in our first conversation.
Who this is for
These sectors buy custom credit control and collections software because their workflow has something a generic platform struggles with, usually the escalation logic, the data model or the compliance picture.
Lenders and financial services running multi-stage collection on consumer credit, where FCA Consumer Duty applies, forbearance has to be handled properly, and the system needs to connect to a loan servicing platform with no off-the-shelf integration.
Healthcare providers and medical billing chasing patient invoices with care around financial hardship, coordinating insurance payments, and tied into patient management systems.
Utilities and energy suppliers managing high volumes of consumer accounts under Ofgem rules, with vulnerable-customer protections, payment plans and billing-system integration.
Professional services such as law, accountancy and consulting, chasing time-and-materials or project invoices, where multi-partner approval, retainers and blended-rate billing make recovery anything but standard.
Manufacturers and distributors collecting on trade credit at net-60 or net-90, needing consolidated receivables across locations, credit checks that gate sales orders, and escalation rules that handle parent-subsidiary account structures.
Construction firms tracking retentions, staged billing and subcontractor credit across projects.
Subscription and software businesses chasing multi-currency receivables with dunning that differs between trial, annual and usage-based customers.
Property management tracking rent and service-charge arrears against lease terms, with tenant communication and a landlord-facing view.
Education providers recovering student and course fees with communication that stays measured.
A custom build encodes the sector-specific logic, the escalation rules, account structures and compliance constraints, that generic software can’t bend to fit.
Common Questions About Custom Credit Control and Debt Collection Software
When does it make sense to build credit control software instead of using a SaaS tool? ›
If you invoice on standard terms, have a small finance team and run Xero or Sage, a tool like Chaser or Credit Hound will usually do the job and I'll tell you so. A build pays off when the standard tools can't model your process: multi-tier credit approvals, credit checks that hold a sales order or a shipment, intercompany or multi-currency rules, unusual payment arrangements, or a ledger in an ERP nothing integrates with.
How does a custom build compare on cost to SaaS debt collection software? ›
SaaS is cheaper to start, then the fee grows with seats, invoice volume and add-on modules such as SMS, dialling or credit reporting, and setup or migration charges sit on top. Most of my builds cost £2k–£10k, fixed at the end of First Gear, with no licence fees after that and the code yours to keep. For a collections team of more than a few people, or where SaaS would need heavy customisation anyway, the three-to-five-year cost often favours building.
What's a realistic development timeline? ›
A focused first version, with debtor and invoice import, automated email reminders, payment tracking, an ageing report and one accounting integration, usually goes live within a month. Credit limits and scoring, work queues, SMS and call logging, payment plans, dispute handling and the FCA and GDPR rules follow as later phases of about a month each. The go-live date is fixed in the build plan at the end of First Gear.
Do you need FCA authorisation, and can the software help? ›
If you collect on consumer credit, such as personal loans, credit cards or regulated finance, the activity is regulated and your firm needs FCA authorisation. Collecting purely commercial B2B debt is generally not regulated. I build software, I'm not your compliance adviser, but I build to support FCA Consumer Duty expectations: contact-frequency limits, forbearance for customers in difficulty, and a complete audit trail you can produce if a complaint reaches the Financial Ombudsman.
Can it charge statutory late payment interest? ›
Yes. For B2B debts, the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998 lets you claim interest at 8% above the Bank of England base rate plus a fixed recovery charge per invoice. Several off-the-shelf tools leave this out. I can build the calculation in and let you switch it on per customer, so you don't charge a key account by accident.
Can you integrate with our accounting system and ERP? ›
Yes. The common ones are Xero, QuickBooks Online and Sage, ERPs such as NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics and SAP through their APIs, payment collection through Stripe or GoCardless, and credit bureaus like Experian and Creditsafe. I build two-way sync where it's needed, pulling invoices in and posting payments back, so your ledger and the collections view agree. For older systems with no real API, I use scheduled file transfer instead.
How do you handle GDPR and data retention for debtor records? ›
The system records the lawful basis for holding each debtor record, usually legitimate interest or contractual necessity, and enforces retention rules so resolved accounts aren't kept indefinitely. It supports subject access requests, rectification and erasure once a debt is closed and any statutory hold has passed. Encryption, role-based access and a tamper-evident audit log are built in, and the data can be hosted in the UK.