What AR software actually does
Strip away the marketing and accounts receivable software does four jobs. It knows what is owed, because it reads open invoices from your accounting system. It asks for the money, on a schedule, by email and sometimes by text or phone. It handles what comes back: “paid already”, “need a PO”, “wrong person”. And it gets the payment recorded against the right invoice so the asking stops.
The first two jobs are the easy ones. The last two are where your time actually goes, and where products differ. A tool that sends perfect reminders but leaves every reply in your inbox has automated the part that took five minutes and left you the part that takes the afternoon.
Bigger platforms add more modules: cash application from bank and lockbox data, credit checks, deductions for retail suppliers, cash forecasting, submitting invoices to customers’ AP portals. Useful if you need them. Expensive and slow to set up if you don’t.
Do you need it yet?
Late payment is common enough that most B2B businesses will hit the question eventually. In Intuit’s QuickBooks Small Business Late Payments Report 2026, 59% of the US owners surveyed had invoices more than 30 days overdue, and the average amount owed to them was $17.7K. The same report found only 26% of owners found digital chasing tools helpful, which is a fair warning that buying a tool isn’t the same as fixing the problem.
You probably need dedicated AR software when at least two of these are true:
- You have more than about 30 invoices open at once.
- Follow-up happens in bursts, when cash is tight, rather than on a schedule.
- Replies to reminders sit unanswered for days.
- You have been chased by a customer for chasing them after they paid.
- More than one person touches collections and nobody is sure who said what.
If none are true, your accounting system’s built-in reminders and a weekly routine are probably enough for now.
The twelve-question checklist
Ask every vendor all twelve. Ask for the answer in writing, and ask them to show you rather than tell you where they can.
| # | Ask | A good answer sounds like |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Which accounting systems do you connect to, and is mine live today? | A named list, with what’s live and what’s planned kept separate. |
| 2 | What do you read from my books, and what do you write back? | Specific record types. “Payments against invoices” is a good answer. “We sync everything” isn’t. |
| 3 | Do I have to move my invoicing into your product? | No. You keep invoicing where you do now. |
| 4 | Who decides when a reminder is sent? | You do, with rules you can read. Not a black box. |
| 5 | Can I approve every message before it goes, at first? | Yes, and it’s easy to switch off later. |
| 6 | What happens to a reply that says “we’ll pay Friday”? | The date is recorded, chasing pauses, and it resumes if Friday passes. |
| 7 | What happens to a dispute? | That invoice stops; the customer’s others carry on; it goes to a queue with the reply attached. |
| 8 | If a customer pays by check and I record it in my books, do reminders stop? | Yes, on the next sync, without you touching the AR tool. |
| 9 | What does a customer see when they click to pay? | A page for that invoice, card and bank options, no account to create. |
| 10 | What do you charge on payments, on top of the processor? | A number. Zero is a good number. |
| 11 | When does the first reminder reach a real customer? | A date. Be wary of “average go-live” figures. |
| 12 | How were your published results measured? | Sample size, time period, and how customers were chosen. If there’s no method, treat the number as marketing. |
Working out the real cost
The plan price is rarely the whole bill. Add these up for a full year before you compare vendors:
- Platform fee. Monthly or annual, and what it’s based on: seats, revenue, invoice volume or open invoices.
- Payment fees. Processor fees plus any markup the AR vendor adds. On a few hundred thousand dollars a year of card payments, half a percent is real money.
- Implementation. A one-off fee, plus your own team’s hours in setup calls.
- Add-ons. SMS credits, extra seats, extra entities, premium support.
- Exit cost. If you leave, does anything in your books depend on the tool? It shouldn’t.
Many vendors in this category don’t publish prices at all. That doesn’t make them bad products, but it does mean you should get a written quote that covers all five lines above before anyone books a kickoff call.
How to run a fair trial
Demos use clean data. Your ledger isn’t clean, and that’s the point of a trial. Pick ten of your real overdue invoices, including at least one disputed, one where the contact has left, and one that was paid but never recorded. Then watch what the tool does with each.
A trial scorecard you can copy. For each of the ten invoices, note: did the first reminder read like something you’d send? Did the reply get handled correctly? Did anything go to a customer you didn’t expect? Did the payment, if one came, land in your books?
Score the writing harshly. Your customers will read these emails as coming from you. If you find yourself editing every draft in week two, the tool is saving you typing, not time.
Finally, check the off switch. Pause everything for one customer, then for everyone. If it takes more than a minute to stop all outgoing reminders, think hard about what happens on the day something goes wrong.
OnDue’s own answers
It would be odd to publish a checklist and skip ourselves. OnDue is in early access; here are its answers today, including the weak ones.
| # | OnDue today |
|---|---|
| 1 | QuickBooks Online and Xero are live. NetSuite, Sage Intacct, Business Central and others are Coming soon |
| 2 | Reads open invoices, customers, contacts and payments. Writes nothing today; pay-page payments will be written back once the pay page launches. |
| 3 | No. You keep invoicing in QuickBooks Online or Xero. |
| 4 | The cadence: days 1, 7, 14 and 30 after the due date for early-access accounts. Custom cadences are coming soon. |
| 5 | Yes, every message, always, for now. An automatic mode is coming soon. |
| 6 | The date is recorded, reminders hold until the day after it, and resume if it isn’t paid. |
| 7 | Chasing pauses on that invoice only and it comes to you with the reply attached. |
| 8 | Yes, on the next sync (every 15 minutes), and the ledger is checked again before each reminder. |
| 9 | Nothing yet: the card and ACH pay page is Coming soon |
| 10 | Zero. When the pay page launches, Stripe’s standard rates apply and OnDue adds nothing. |
| 11 | As soon as you approve the first draft. We don’t publish an average because we haven’t measured one. |
| 12 | We have no published results yet, and won’t publish any without the method. |
Sources
- Intuit: QuickBooks Small Business Late Payments Report 2026
- Entry prices: the vendors’ own pricing pages, linked from our comparison pages with the date each was read.