Accounts receivable software helps companies automate the process of persuading customers to pay the cash they owe—on time and without fuss. In lean times, it can be a very smart investment.
Software like this helps many companies maintain sufficient cashflow to keep the lights on. After all, the average US business has as much as 24% of its monthly revenue tied up in overdue invoices: this can push businesses to rely on short-term loans or worse—close down.
This article will help you decide which accounts receivable software is the best fit for your business, with a focus on two of the industry’s leading solutions, Upflow vs Chaser. Even if you’re not considering these two options in particular, you’ll gain a useful sense of which questions to ask your vendor of choice.
What’s the benefit of using accounts receivable software?
Accounts receivable software can help you:
- Ensure that invoices are paid on time, so you have enough liquidity and are not constantly moving money around in order to pay your bills.
- Gain visibility over what you’re owed, making it easier to create accurate budget reports and forecasts.
- Free up your finance teams’ time, which may otherwise be wasted tracking invoice payments and sending ‘gentle reminder’ emails.
- Avoid writing off unpaid invoices as expenses, which can be your only viable option when customers refuse to pay.
Do I really need accounts receivable software?
Perhaps not. This entirely depends on how big of a problem unpaid customer invoices are for you. Many of the leading accountancy tools offer some limited accounts receivable automation, and if you only have the odd client missing payments here or there, it will be enough. For example, Quickbooks, Xero, Netsuite and Sage Intact all allow you to track invoices, payments, and identify delinquent accounts.
If you need a more robust solution to ensure your clients pay on time, first ask the account manager at your accountancy automation platform, and explore whether add-ons are available to your existing tool.
If they can’t offer a feature that’ll solve your problem, then yes, you need accounts receivable software.
Chaser vs Upflow at a glance
Chaser vs Upflow: a detailed comparison
Here’s a rundown of the factors to consider when choosing between two leading accounts payable platforms. Even if neither Chaser nor Upflow made it to your shortlist, you’ll find inspiration in this list of considerations.
Features comparison
Chaser offers:
- A convenient payment portal for your customers which you can link to directly from invoices, reducing the friction for them to pay up. It also offers multiple payment options for them.
- SMS payment reminders at intervals of your choosing. These are typically read and responded to quicker than emails or phone calls. There’s a link in the text to the payment portal.
- Live calls from your Chaser account so you can conduct the entire payment chasing process from one place.
- Automated calls from your Chaser account so you can pre-record a message and schedule it to send to late payers.
- Credit checking services for your customers, so you can identify who may default on their payments and streamline your approval process. This also means you can extend credit to customers who are likely to pay you back on time.
- A dashboard recording your customers’ payment behavior so you can avoid doing business with bad payers in the future.
- Debt collection services, so you don’t have to write off bad debt.
Upflow offers:
- A convenient payment portal for your customers. Upflow also provides a customer portal that offers different options for your customers to pay you.
- SMS payment reminders.
- Live calls directly from your Upflow accounts so you can conduct the whole chasing process from one place. The platform also records whether your call was answered, rejected or sent to voicemail.
- The ability to send physical letters from your dashboard.
- An analytics dashboard for key accounts receivables metrics so you can make detailed forecasts on when you’re expecting cash to come in, and understand your cashflow in real time.
- A feature to create detailed campaigns for how you plan to chase customers depending on the account type, persona and the age of the invoice. You can schedule calls, emails and letters to go out, whichever feels most appropriate.
Pricing
Chaser costs $49 /month for up to 50 invoices per month, $129 / month for up to 150 invoices per month, $369/month for up to 400 invoices per month or a custom tier for those who need even more.
Upflow costs $0 if you just want to measure your accounts receivables data. $440/ month if you’re chasing up to $3 mill a year in revenue, $880 / month if you’re collecting up to $6 mill a year in revenue, or an enterprise tier which involves speaking to their team.
Integrations
Chaser integrates with many tools that an SMB might rely on to manage their finances: Xero, Quickbooks, Sage, AccountsIQ, FreeAgent, Dynamics 365 Business Central, Freshbooks, Sage 200Cloud, Oracle ERP, Oracle Netsuite, SAP, FinancialForce, Epicor, Zoho Books and Zapier
Upflow integrates with most of the tools a slightly larger company might rely on: Netsuite, Chargebee, Quickbooks, Stripe Billing, Xero, Zuora, Sage Intacct and more via API.
Both platforms also offer an API, if you have devs in house.
Company info
Upflow’s HQ is in New York. With a team of 11 - 50 people, they got Series A funding in 2021. It’s been around since 2018.
Chaser, meanwhile, has a team of around the same size but is based in London. They’re also VC funded and closed their last round in 2019. They were founded in 2013.
Security and Compliance
Upflow has extremely robust security policies. It is compliant with SOC 2, maintaining a Type 2 certificate, and has committed to a yearly external audit program. They have a defined vulnerability disclosure policy, including a reward program to encourage security researchers, users and partners to spot any chinks in their armour.
It is comparatively quite difficult to find information about Chaser’s security measures. However, they do encrypt customers’ data when it is transferred between the platform and your browser. They also request all customers to use 2-factor authentication.
Both companies are compliant with GDPR.
Target market
Both Chaser and Upflow are geared towards clients who sell business-to-business. It seems that Chaser predominantly works with smaller clients, where businesses that use Upflow are often growing, with between 50 and 750 employees.
Customer reviews
Judging by the reviews on GetApp, Chaser’s customers are very happy with the platform indeed. Chaser has won fans for its intuitive interface and ease of use. Many also mention that it offers great ROI, saving so much time and money in speeding up the customer payment process that it effectively pays for itself. The most common complaint is a rather small one: that clients sometimes mistakenly reply to emails sent via Chaser with non-payment related queries.
GetApp’s reviewers also have plenty of praise for Upflow, which is also considered very easy to use. Reviewers also mention that Upflow’s support staff are remarkably responsive and friendly. The most frequent complaint is, again, email related: some clients who are chased using Upflow mistake emails coming from “@upflow.com” addresses as spam. However, there is a customisation option available to send @Upflow emails via your own domain, so this shouldn't cause an issue.
Support and resources
Chaser offers an extensive range of self-guided content on everything related to accounts receivables. If shaking money out of your customers is a big problem for you, it’s worth checking out this knowledge base whether or not you eventually choose this product! Think email templates, call scripts and guides on what to do if your customers really refuse payment.
If you become a Chaser customer, you can contact their support desk via Chat or email. Reviews describe their support agents as helpful and responsive.
Upflow also offers support via chat and email. Reviewers often mention that their support team are very receptive to feedback, and regularly make product tweaks based on customer complaints. Clients on Enterprise tiers get a dedicated Customer Success Manager to ensure they’re getting the most out of the platform.
Conclusion
The most enthusiastic reviews of both Chaser and Upflow mentioned one line time and again: “It pays for itself!” If your company is one of the many that regularly writes off unpaid invoices as bad debt, then using either platform would positively impact your bottom line.
Chaser seems ideally suited to smaller B2Bs. Much of their marketing is around keeping your clients on side, which implies that their users’ accounts are small enough for personal relationships to be business-critical. However, unlike Upflow, they also offer debt collection services, which is a helpful option if you have problems with non-payments.
Upflow, with its sleeker branding and watertight security practices, is clearly geared towards businesses that are on the larger side, or growing fast.
It’s also important to note that whilst Chaser and Upflow both have rave reviews, the latter costs significantly more. Even as a larger business, it may be wise to test the cheaper option first and investigate whether it could scale with your business, before turning to Upflow.
