A CFO’s guide to cash collection software: tools, tips, and trends

Did you know you could be losing money due to inefficient cash collection processes? As per a Deloitte report, inefficient accounts receivable policies can trap valuable cash on your balance sheet. This can affect liquidity, and eventually, the profitability of your firm. Fortunately, there is a solution — cash collection software.

A cash collection software or a cash collection app optimises and automates the process of collecting payments from your customers. Read on to learn more about the cash collection process, what is collection software, and how to choose the best cash collection software for your business in 2025.

What is the cash collection process for companies?

The process of collecting payments from customers who have purchased goods/services from you on credit is called the cash collection process. It begins when you send the invoice to your customer.

It also involves tracking and reconciling payments, resolving discrepancies, and taking appropriate measures to resolve overdue accounts. This process is also known as accounts receivable management or credit management.

Cash collection example

Here’s an example to understand the cash collection process:

Company P sells ACs to another business C on credit with a payment term of 30 days. Company P sends an invoice to C with the details of the ACs sold and includes the due amount and deadline. A week before the due date, P emails C to remind it of the upcoming payment. Upon receiving the reminder, C sends the payment to P and confirms it by email.

Now, it is the responsibility of company P to record this payment, reconcile it in its accounting system, and update C’s account balance.

Cash collection methods - how do you manage cash collection?

Cash collection methods are ways in which a business can collect payments; some common methods are as follows:

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• Cash in advance: The customer must pay the full amount before the delivery of the product. This method eliminates the risk of non-payment and overdue.

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• Letter of Credit (LoC) : The customer could get a bank to guarantee the payment on their behalf with an LoC. The seller sends the products to the customer, the customer shows the LoC to the bank, and the bank then pays the seller. This method reduces the risk for both seller and customer.

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• Documentary collection: In this method, the bank collects the payments from the seller and sends it to the customer.

So, how do you manage cash collections? The perfect way to go about it is to sign up for a cash collection app or software. In this article, we will explain what cash collection software is and how you can choose one.

What is a cash collection software?

Cash collection software automates the cash collection process for your business. It can automate your business’s credit management, payment collection, invoicing, reconciliation, and other processes.

While choosing a daily cash collection software, ensure that it matches the following criteria:

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• User-friendly interface.

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• Advanced features, such as:

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  • Sending automated reminders to customers,

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  • Generating reports on the debt collection process,

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  • Scheduling recurring payments, payment reminders, and payment plans, and

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  • Personalising workflows for every customer.

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• Integration with accounting software and CRM.

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• Reliable, secure, and safe software.

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• Affordable and transparent pricing.

Best cash collection software in 2025

Based on the factors mentioned above, the following are the best cash collection software packages in 2025.

Agicap

Headquartered in Lyon, France with over 200 employees, award-winning Agicap lays claim to the lion's share of the cash management market. For Agicap, cash is king - so it is no surprise that a cash collection module should be part of their wider cash management package.

Agicap CashCollect gets you paid faster and easier. As the Accounts Receivable Automation (ARA) component of Agicap’s broader cash management platform, its goal is simple: to reduce delays in invoice collection and free your finance team from the burden of chasing late payments.

Because Agicap links in real-time with a company's ERP and accounting systems, it has access to in-depth data from your invoices - and can calculate powerful analytics as a result. Cashcollect acts as a central platform for your emails, reminders and call reports. Here your Accounts Receivable (AR) Team can:

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• Pinpoint outstanding amounts, and monitor ageing balance.

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• Locate the main payment delays and strategise accordingly.

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• Analyse DSO metrics.

Automation is what makes cash collection more efficient. And with Agicap CashCollect, you can automate your recovery plans for cash with a strategy combining email, direct mail and telephone. Plan it and execute it all from CashCollect, customising escalation as suits the sum involved and the relationship with the customer. Use in-built follow-up templates, and adapt them as you see fit.

CashOnTime

A similar size to Agicap - with around 300 employees - and based in Limonest, France, DIMO Software's package takes a different emphasis. Instead of offering powerful cash management across the board of Accounts Receivable (AR) and AP (Accounts Payable),  CashOnTime very much focuses on AR.

Similarities with Agicap include automated dunning processes (with customisation), real-time dashboards for tracking receivables, as well as excellent integration with accounting tools and ERP. CashOnTime is a real receivables specialist - almost a debt specialist - with multi-layered options for customising collection strategies as well as focussed debt collection and dispute management capabilities.

Whereas Agicap, with its multi-purpose simplicity, would be suitable for any size of company, CashOnTime would suit medium-to-larger companies with complex receivable needs.

Clearnox

A smaller fintech company than Agicap and CashOnTime, Clearnox has less than 50 employees working out of Paris, France. Similar to CashOnTime, Clearnox offers out-and-out debt collection software. 

Key features include:

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• Automated reminders via email/SMS.

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• Payment plans and online payment service portals.

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• Integration with accounting software.

Clearnox is less in-depth than CashOnTime, and would suit smaller companies with straightforward receivables needs. Pricing reflects this, starting at €20/month per user.

"When the need is greatest, Clearnox is there" - is what the company claims. And, to be fair, the firm has attracted a fair following with its ambitions to save customers up to 30% in cash flow and 50% in receivables time - with €700m in receivables managed and 150,000 customers 'dunned' per month.

Esker

Esker is a big fish in financial software, with a global workforce estimated at over 1,000 headquartered in Wisconsin, USA. This firm's main focus is on document process automation. Its AR and AP services are aimed squarely at enterprise-level firms, where Esker's robust automation processes are worth the investment and complexity. 

Esker's cash collection software offers standard features - ie multi-channel dunning (email, SMS, calls) and multiple customisation options for follow-ups - alongside advanced features such as EDI invoice conversion. (EDI or "Electronic Data Interchange" is a document exchange format popular with large companies that has been around since the 1970s).

What really makes Esker attractive for huge companies is its Esker Synergy AI which leverages "deep learning, machine learning, NLP, LLMs, Generative AI etc." to make payment predictions and decision-making recommendations around cash collection, as well as analyse content and extract data.

TIS (formerly Cashforce)

Firms looking for cash collection and management software often search for Cashforce. This was a stand-alone product focused on working capital management and cash forecasting, with a cash collection component. 

In 2022, Cashforce was acquired by Treasury Intelligence Solutions (TIS) - who bill themselves a global leader in payment optimisation and cashflow forecasting for enterprise-level companies. Cashforce technology was absorbed into the TIS product, and TIS does not nowadays appear to offer dedicated cash collection - although it does offer B2B payment optimisation, transaction routing and simplified reporting and analysis.

Xero

A well-known name, Xero offers all-in-one accounting for small to medium companies. Headquartered in Wellington, New Zealand, this company offers simple services for low cost - with prices ranging from $15-$78 per month.

Cash collection is not an area that Xero pushes in its marketing. But it certainly offers capabilities in:

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• Invoice creation with automated payment reminders.

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• Online payment options for clients via Stripe/GoCardless.

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• Bank reconciliation and some receivables tracking.

With good integration of payment pathways and a broad range of basic accounting features, Xero is a good choice for UK and US-based micro businesses needing some straightforward accounts receivable functions. But this is certainly not a dedicated cash collection package.

Quickbooks

With over 7 million users and 750 integration apps, Quickbooks (by Intuit) can lay claim to being a true favourite in the field of all-in-one accounting for small to medium businesses. Intuit boast over 14,000 staff headquartered in California, USA and offer prices ranging from $35 a month for one user, to $235 a month for 25 users.

Available with Quickbooks is a similar range of functions as offered by Xero above, and Sage 50 below:

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• Automated invoice creation with "Pay Now" links (via PayPal, Stripe, and QuickBooks Payments).

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• Real-time AR tracking with dashboards.

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• Automatic payment matching and reconciliation, thanks to live bank feeds.

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• Multi-currency invoicing for international clients.

Compared to specialised cash collection modules, there is limited automation here - with no AI-driven dunning or native SMS reminders. For companies which just need collections, Quickbooks is probably too light in collections and overkill in other areas.

Sage 50

Sage is a behemoth of the accounting software market, with around 11,000 employees headquartered in Newcastle, UK. Sage 50 sits alongside Sage Accounting and Sage Business Cloud Payroll as Sage's offerings to small business.

For the sake of simple integration, Sage 50 cash collection is a popular choice for companies that already use Sage as their main accounting package. It offers:

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• Automated invoice creation with "Pay Now" buttons linked to popular integrations like Stripe, PayPal and GoCardless.

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• Real-time AR tracking via dashboards.

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• Some automatic payment to invoice matching via live bank feeds.

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• Tools for chasing late payments.

Seamless integration with the wider Sage package is a great benefit, as is the flexible payment collection offered via multiple gateways. But for firms without Sage in their tech stack, Sage 50's cash collection might be overshadowed in terms of native automated dunning by many other packages, as well as in the area of AI; unlike dedicated cash collection software, it doesn't prioritise advanced automation or predictive analytics. So very small firms as well as very large ones might want to look elsewhere, particularly if they haven't got Sage already.

Cash collection system: Optimise your debt management

These cash collection software tools can be leveraged by any business looking to optimise its cash flow, improve customer relationships, and reduce bad debts. A cash collection software ensures this by automating your invoices, sending payment reminders, reconciling payments, and getting insights into your cash performance.

Software like Agicap offers features such as multi-channel payment platforms, real-time dashboards, AI-powered forecasting, and personalised customer engagement. This can help any small, medium, and large-sized business by streamlining their cash collection and management processes and improving their profitability.

How do I make a cash collection schedule?

Building a cash collection schedule is a core operation of cash collection software. This schedule can then be used to organise cash collection, whether automated or manual. And,in the case of broad-view software like Agicap, such a schedule can then be used to power cash management and forecasting functions with live, accurate data.

1. Gather data on all outstanding payments in the form of an 'ageing report' ie. showing all details of payments that have been 'ageing' without being paid.

2. Segment invoices by length of ageing ie. 1-30 days overdue, 1-60, etc.

3. Assign expected payment dates (based on the terms of the contract and/or historical behaviour from this particular customer).

4. Build a schedule table, showing invoice details, sorted by ageing (and therefore priority).

5. Develop collection strategy based on individual customer risk profile, size of amount owed and how 'aged' the overdue payment is.

6. Plan collection action for each invoice on your schedule (ie. assign data, categorise action: email/call/escalation, and assign a team member).

7. Review and update schedule regularly.

Is credit risk management software part of cash collection software?

Credit risk management is sometimes part of cash collection software. And that's because assessing credit risk can drive the prioritisation of collections; in other words, customers assessed to have a higher credit risk get prioritised and escalated faster, since the risk of them defaulting on payment altogether is deemed to be higher.

Credit risk driven cash collection is suitable for enterprise companies. The added complexity involved is typically not worth the investment for smaller companies with less receivables volume to manage. Hence enterprise specialists like Esker and HighRadius, for example, offer credit risk driven collection.

Why opt for a cash collection software?

Successful companies use cash flow collection software to reduce human errors arising out of manual processes involved in collecting cash from customers.

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• Cash flow collection software can help businesses improve service delivery by automating invoices, unpaid invoice reminders, payments, and reconciliations.

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• It can help businesses improve cash flow visibility, reduce bad debts, and enhance customer relationships.

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• Cash flow collection software can help businesses avoid unpaid invoices by providing timely alerts and flexible payment options. Additionally, it can help businesses resolve disputes with customers more efficiently by providing dispute resolution features.

Conclusion

Essentially there are 3 types of cash collection software:

1. Dedicated debt recovery packages suitable for small and medium businesses at low cost and complexity

2. Multi-layered cash collection packages suitable for medium and enterprise-level businesses dealing with massive volumes of invoices; often featuring AI and very sophisticated customisation options

3. Integrated software like Agicap's CashCollect, which offers robust cash collection features as part of a broader mandate of eye-in-the-sky cash management and forecasting.

Agicap CashCollect boasts some impressive figures:

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• 50% time saved in Accounts Receivable (AR) management.

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• 30% reduction in non-payments.

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• 10% reduction in DSO (Days Sales Outstanding).

Where this package really stands out is in its usefulness to CFOs in offering such an immediate overview of cash inflow - including cash flow forecast. With CashCollect, you can monitor key payment metrics at a glance, as well as drill down by customer/type of account/salesperson. That's standard. But teams with the full Agicap package enjoy precision cash forecasting in the bigger picture thanks to the granular detail captured by CashCollect.

As Sayantan Bhowmick, VP of Finance at Smarter Travel observes, "The key benefit of the Agicap platform is you're going to have a full 360 degree transparency of your cash flow situation." Learn more by watching the following video.

Why Agicap is leading the future of cash collection

Agicap stands out in the evolving landscape of cash collection software by blending automation, analytics, and user-centric design. From real-time invoice tracking and automated follow-ups to consolidated AR dashboards, it offers a smarter, more efficient way to manage receivables. More than just reducing DSO, Agicap helps finance teams stay strategic — while preserving strong client relationships. For CFOs seeking visibility and control over their cash flow, Agicap provides a powerful yet accessible solution across desktop and mobile.

Ready to see it in action? Book a free demo with Agicap today and explore how it can transform your cash collection process.