In short
Collections automation software chases unpaid invoices, takes payment and records it without a person working each account. Finero’s agent, Fin, contacts every customer on its own schedule, puts a card and ACH payment page in each message, escalates disputes, and applies the cash back to your ERP, so DSO falls without new hires.
Key takeaways
- Fin decides who to contact and when, follows up across email, SMS and chat, and tracks every promise to pay.
- Customers pay inside the message through your existing processor, and payments are applied at the invoice line in your ERP.
- Pricing is published: Core is $399 a month with 200 paid invoices included, and goes live in 0 to 1 days.
Most collections automation software automates the easy half of collections: it sends reminders on a schedule and leaves the rest to your team. The hard half is everything after the reminder: the customer who replies with a question, pays part of the balance, promises to pay on Friday, or never opens email. Finero automates that half too, which is where DSO actually moves.
What collections automation software does
Tools in this category fall into three operating models. Reminder schedulers send the same emails to every customer as invoices age, which is what QuickBooks, Xero and most ERPs offer natively. Workflow tools organise a collections team: worklists, templates, analytics and prioritisation, with people doing the outreach. Autonomous platforms put an AI agent in charge of the cycle and escalate only the exceptions. Finero is the third kind; the reasoning is laid out in what autonomous AR means.
How Finero automates collections
Decide
Fin works out, invoice by invoice, who to contact, when, on which channel and in what tone, using escalation ladders by aging and value.
Reach out
Follow-ups go out before and after the due date across email, SMS and chat, at the time each customer is most likely to act. Promises to pay are tracked, not forgotten.
Get paid
Every message carries a hosted page where the customer pays by card, ACH or bank debit through your existing processor, one invoice or the whole open balance.
Resolve
Replies are read and sorted into disputes and questions, summarised, and routed to AR, sales or operations with the history attached.
Apply
Payments, short-pays and deductions are matched at the invoice line and posted back to your ERP, so the aging report stays accurate and nobody chases a paid invoice.
How collections automation reduces DSO
DSO has two parts: the part your payment terms produce, and the part your process adds on top. Collections automation works on the second. It starts contact before the due date instead of after it, follows up every invoice rather than the ones someone had time for, removes payment friction by putting the payment page in the message, surfaces disputes when they are raised instead of weeks later, and clears unapplied cash that otherwise keeps paid invoices on the aging report.
To see how much of your DSO is recoverable, use the DSO calculator, which compares your DSO with the best possible DSO your terms allow. The operational levers are covered in how to reduce DSO without hiring, and the cash-application side in cash application automation.
What to look for in collections automation software
- Who does the work. Does the software contact customers itself, or organise the work for collectors you employ?
- Payment inside the message. Can customers pay from the reminder, and through your existing processor or the vendor’s?
- ERP write-back. Does cash post back to the invoice line in your ERP, or does someone re-key it?
- Disputes and replies. What happens when a customer answers the email?
- Published pricing and time to live. Can you size the cost and the rollout before a sales cycle?
The AR software guide scores nine tools on these criteria, and the comparison pages set Finero against Upflow, Chaser, Versapay and HighRadius head to head.
Pricing
Finero Core is $399 a month, billed monthly and cancellable at any time. It includes 200 successfully paid invoices a month, with additional paid invoices at 0.1% of the amount collected, capped at $1 per invoice, and starts with a 30-day free trial. Scale is priced individually for higher volume and enterprise ERPs. See pricing for what each plan includes.