What is credit & collections management?

Effective debt collection actually starts at the very beginning of the customer relationship when you set initial credit terms for your customer. Those credit terms determine when and how often your customer will be invoiced, how many days they have to pay their bill, and when collections actions will be triggered.

The better job you do at extending appropriate credit terms to your customers, the fewer challenges you'll have down the line collecting payment. It's also why having a collections management system that connects credit and debt collection makes more sense than using separate point solutions.

In this article, we'll explore the components of AI automation credit/collections software and take a closer look at some of the key players in this market.

What to look for when evaluating B2B credit & debt collection management systems

So what does a "good" software platform for managing credit and collections look like? Well, at minimum, it should:

• Serve as an intelligence layer that sits on top of your existing infrastructure, integrating customer and credit data into one interface and serving as a single source of truth
   
• Streamline new customer onboarding with fully digitized credit applications, AI-driven risk scoring, rules-based credit limits, and automated approvals for low-risk accounts
   
• Trigger regular credit reviews of customer credit limits, risk categories, and credit terms
   
• Automate dunning and payment reminders based on customized collections strategies
   
• Prioritize collections actions based on risk, balance, or promise-to-pay dates
   
• Centralize dispute management and automatically adjust collections activities based on dispute status
   
• Offer a self-service customer portal with secure invoice viewing and payment options
   
• Comprehensive, customizable dashboards showing real-time views of receivables, customer activity, and team performance
   
• Provide accurate predictions of potential blocked orders, customer payment behavior, and collections estimates
   
• Enable easy collaboration with sales, customer service, the customer, and other parties without needing to leave the platform
   

What are the best B2B credit & debt collection software apps?

Enterprise companies looking to modernize their credit and collections processes have plenty of options to choose from. Here are six of the top platforms compared.

Esker

Founded in 1985, Esker has 15 locations worldwide with corporate headquarters in Lyon, France and U.S. headquarters in Middleton, WI. It primarily serves the life sciences, chemical, luxury goods, food and beverage, manufacturing, and electronics industries.

Key credit & collections functionality

• Secure customer onboarding
   
• Credit application monitoring, review, and validation against specific credit policies
   
• Credit approval, credit risk monitoring, and financial statement analysis
   
• Blocked order management
   
• Customizable collections strategies for company, customer group, and customer levels
   
• Automated payment reminders
   
• Collection call prioritization based on customer risk level
   
• 360-degree view of customer data on one screen
   
• Internal communication between credit, collections, customer service, and sales teams
   
• Customer portal and online payment options
   
• Esker Anywhere™ mobile application
   
• Customizable dashboards and reporting
   
• Five languages supported: English, French, German, Spanish, Italian
   

AI capabilities

The Esker Synergy Agent is an AI-powered agent within Esker’s agentic AI framework that helps teams analyze customer risk, make credit decisions, and focus on critical collections accounts. It:

• Prioritizes customer accounts and credit reviews
   
• Highlights key scoring changes, risk signals, and critical customer events
   
• Generates customer credit summaries using financial, risk, and business data
   
• Answers natural language questions about a customer’s credit and risk profile, payment behavior, and dispute status
   
• Recommends actions based on customer context
   
• Reprioritizes collection calls based on risk level and expected payments
   
• Supports collections calls with pre-call prep, live transcriptions, and call summaries
   
• Assists users in replying to customer inquiries with AI-generated responses
   
• Helps users adopt and optimize their use of the solution through documentation-based guidance
   

ERP integration

Esker offers pre-built integrations to most major ERPs and CRM systems, including Salesforce. It's also compatible with any ERP using REST APIs or file-based exchanges. In addition, Esker integrates with a wide variety of credit bureaus, including Altares, Dun & Bradstreet, CreditRiskMonitor, Ellisphere, and Experian.

Implementation & support

Implementation times vary based on the customer's existing environment and needs. Once implementation occurs, customers are assigned a dedicated customer advocate during the first 90 days of use. The customer advocate provides:

• Post-transition check-in calls every two weeks for the first three months
   
• Custom report assistance
   
• Custom view and dashboard assistance
   
• Assistance connecting customers to additional training
   

After the first 90 days, customers can opt for one of three levels of ongoing support.

• Standard: access to online Esker resources, support knowledge base, documentation, and training
   
• Silver: dedicated customer advocate, custom report assistance, view and dashboard assistance, business reviews, and process improvement analysis
   
• Gold: all silver-level features plus operational metrics, customer workshop with advocate, and two free passes to the Esker All Access Conference
   

Overall platform

Esker offers a complete suite of agentic AI finance solutions covering:

• Source-to-pay (S2P) 
   
• Sourcing
   
• Supplier management
   
• Contract management
   
• Procurement
   
• Accounts payable
   
• Expense management
   
• Payment and supply chain financing
   
• Order-to-cash (O2C) 
   
• Credit management 
   
• Customer inquiry management
   
• Order management
   
• Invoice delivery
   
• Payment processing
   
• Cash application
   
• Claims and deductions
   
• Collections management 
   

Billtrust

Founded in 2001, Billtrust has U.S. offices in California, New Jersey, and Tennessee, and international offices in India and Poland. It serves the manufacturing, distribution, equipment and heavy machinery, transportation and logistics, business services, retail, and medical and healthcare industries.

Key credit & collections functionality

• Automated auto-assignment and auto-decisioning workflows
   
• Automated credit reviews of the entire portfolio
   
• Visibility into aging balances and critical KPIs, including CEI and ADD
   
• Cases – a dedicated disputes management and automation portal
   

AI capabilities

Billtrust employs an embedded AI intelligence layer (Billtrust Insights360) that analyzes buyer behavior and provides insights across core accounts receivable (AR) workflows, including invoicing, payments, cash application, collections, and credit. 

• Agentic Credit Lines analyzes payment behavior, credit utilization, and external data to flag early risk.
   
• Agentic Procedures segments customers by financial risk and recommends the most effective communications for payment reminders.
   
• Agentic VOIP provides live transcriptions of collections calls, summarizes key information,  and documents next steps.
   

ERP integration 

Billtrust’s platform is ERP-agnostic. It connects to ERP systems with ready-made direct connectors or custom integrations. It also integrates with major credit agencies.

Implementation & support

Billtrust offers Collections Quickstart that aims to achieve initial go-live in 45 days or less. Implementation begins with standard, default configurations and templates covering critical collections needs with the ability to scale into additional features and products across the platform.

In addition to expert-led implementation, Billtrust customizes solutions and configurations, provides online training, and offers buyer adoption campaigns that encourage buyer portal utilization.

Overall platform

Billtrust is an AR platform made up of two components covering the credit-to-cash cycle: Cash Engine (invoicing and payments) and Cash Accelerator (credit, collections, cash application).

Quadient

Founded in 1924 in France as Agence Havas, the company began by pioneering mailing technologies for business communications. In 2019, it rebranded as Quadient, expanding its focus to automation intelligence across communications, finance, mail, and parcel management. The company has offices in Europe, the US, Canada, Latin America, and Asia serving organizations in the finance, healthcare, education, insurance, retail, utilities, and public sectors.

Key credit & collections functionality

• Automated credit management functions
   
• Automated collections processes
   
• Centralized dispute tracking and resolution
   
• Inbound customer email interpretation
   

AI capabilities

• Predicts payment behavior
   
• Flags anomalies, sorts disputes, and flags exceptions most likely to delay cash collection
   
• Monitors invoices and payment statuses, tracks trends, and builds forecasts via an AI assistant
   
• Uses agentic AI to read incoming emails, identify the right next step, and prepare the action for review to reduce manual logging and followup
   

ERP integration

Quadient integrates with major ERP, finance, and other enterprise systems, including SAP, Oracle, NetSuite, Sage, Quickbooks, and the Microsoft suite.

Implementation & support

Quadient implementation includes five stages:

• Phase 1: project management - outline key dates and deliverables
   
• Phase 2: preparation and kickoff - set up user accounts and conduct kickoff call with stakeholders
   
• Phase 3: build and setup - sync to ERP and complete data reconciliation
   
• Phase 4: setup and testing - check all the connections, test workflows and settings, and train users
   
• Phase 5: go-live - training is completed and customer is assigned a personal customer success manager as the point of contact for ongoing support
   

Overall platform

The Quadient Suite offers customer communication management, accounts payable (AP) automation, AR automation, invoice delivery, and a cash dashboard. The company also provides mail and shipping automation as well as parcel delivery via secure lockers and tracking tools.

SAP

Founded in 1972, SAP is the global standard of ERP software. With offices in 130 countries, SAP serves a wide variety of industries, including construction and real estate, telecommunications, defense and security, government, agribusiness, retail, manufacturing, financial services, and energy and natural resources.

Key credit & collections functionality of S/4HANA Cloud

• Customer credit, collections, and dispute management
   
• Customer credit risk assessment and monitoring, including automated customer scoring and limit determination
   
• Real-time credit evaluation and credit checks of sales documents (with the SAP S/4HANA Cloud solution for credit integration)
   
• Credit limit processing and blocked order releases
   
• Past-due account prioritization
   
• Real-time monitoring of customer interactions
   
• Automated payment reminders and followups
   
• Embedded 360-degree, live analytics dashboards
   

AI capabilities

SAP's Accounts Receivable Assistant orchestrates a selection of specialized AI agents to help teams by:

• Focusing collections agents on the most critical accounts
   
• Providing account background information
   
• Surfacing next-best-action recommendations
   
• Preparing and sending out customer communication
   
• Providing a 360-degree view of customer accounts
   
• Displaying overdue items, balances, dispute cases, promises to pay, resubmissions, and contact history in one place
   

ERP integration

SAP credit management and collections management connect to existing internal SAP systems as well as external information providers. Data is exchanged via XML interfaces, meaning it can connect to both SAP and non-SAP systems.

Implementation & support

SAP provides product-specific implementation packages for go-live and continuous improvement. Delivered by SAP experts, these offerings give teams hands-on guidance to adopt the software and achieve results.

SAP also offers three ongoing support plans.

• Foundational success plan: onboarding resources, self-service training content, software support, and security services
   
• Advanced success plan: everything in the foundational plan plus innovation and adoption guidance, and AI-driven quality and process guidance
   
• Max success plan: everything in the advanced plan plus a dedicated success plan manager, premium support response SLAs, transformation advisory services, and tailored AI use case adoption services
   

Overall platform

The SAP ecosystem contains a wide range of financial transaction tools, including invoice management, payments, AR, AP, accounting, travel management, and more.

Sidetrade

Founded in 2000, Sidetrade has offices in North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific, and serves enterprise customers in 85 countries. It focuses on the construction and mining, consumer packaged goods, financial services, information and communication technology, life sciences, manufacturing, retail, professional services, transport and logistics, and utilities and environmental industries.

Key credit & collections functionality

• Automates credit risk assessments
   
• Helps control and monitor credit insurance
   
• Provides decision support for order releases
   
• Prioritizes, segments, and executes next-best-action activities for collections
   
• Automates routine collections messaging and followups
   
• Centralizes dispute capture and resolution
   
• Delivers cash performance and forecasting intelligence
   
• Gives customers direct access to statements, invoices, dispute submission, and payment options
   
• Provides collections performance analytics and benchmarking 
   

AI capabilities

Sidetrade software includes two types of AI agents: Aimee agents and customer agents.

Aimee agents are ready-to-deploy AI agents that execute actions autonomously within existing workflows across the O2C lifecycle while remaining governed by business rules and human oversight. Key actions these AI agents take include:

• Data summaries
   
• Auto-generated, optimized responses
   
• Autonomous outbound calling
   
• Instant financial reporting
   
• Escalation and governance
   
• Multilingual execution
   

Customer agents are custom agents users can build and deploy so they are tailored to any enterprise process, policy, or workflow. Customers can build and modify agents independently — no custom code required.

In addition, Aimee IQ is a conversational interface for users to interact with Sidetrade software. Using Aimee IQ, users can ask a question, get an insight, and trigger an action through a single interface.

ERP integration

Sidetrade software connects with existing ERP, CRM, billing, banking, and communication systems through their core platform.

Implementation & support

Sidetrade delivers an average of 5000 training hours per year in six languages. It also offers certification tracks for administrators, credit managers, and collectors.

Overall platform

Sidetrade offers a modular suite of O2C tools, including e-ordering and e-invoicing, collections, dispute management, cash application, deductions and claims, analytics, and a self-service AR customer portal.

Versapay

Founded in 2006, Versapay has offices in Atlanta, GA, and Miami, FL, with employees across the U.S. and Canada. It primarily serves the manufacturing, wholesale distribution, and professional services industries.

Key credit & collections functionality

• Real-time visibility into customer payment history, aging reports, and Days Sales Outstanding (DSO)
   
• Connects credit, collections, and sales teams on a single cloud platform
   
• Customer segmentation
   
• Customizable dunning templates
   
• Secure, self-service payment portal
   
• Automated workflow execution and outreach cadences
   
• Dispute and exception management
   
• One collector workspace for account context and action
   
• Comprehensive performance dashboards
   

AI capabilities

Versapay uses AI and machine learning (known as Versapay Intelligence) to:

• Analyze customer behavior signals and historical payment patterns to automatically segment accounts by risk level
   
• Analyze past payment trends to predict which customers are likely to pay and when
   
• Scan customer messages and interactions in real-time to detect tone and sentiment
   
• Auto-prioritize daily task lists for collectors, draft routine communication cadences, and handle predictable follow-up touches automatically
   

In addition, Versapay Assistant summarizes complex customer histories, including payment patterns, overdue balances, active credits, and the oldest open invoice.

ERP integration

Versapay offers native integration with several of the top ERP systems, including Oracle NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, NAV and F&SCM, and Sage Intacct. It can also be configured to receive and send data from any ERP using file-based and API integrations. In addition, Versapay can integrate with existing banking services, including lockboxes.

Implementation & support

Versapay implementation includes working with a dedicated implementation specialist and client success manager who guide customers through the process. 

Post-implementation, it provides access to a customer support portal and offers best practices and self-service training resources.

Overall platform

Versapay's accounts receivable automation platform brings together invoicing, collections, payments, cash application, and reporting.

Credit & collections management made easy 

Tired of messy, manual credit and collections processes that frustrate your customers, overwhelm your team, and block cashflow? If you're ready to start benefiting from all the advantages of AI automation, Esker can help. 

Find out how we empower organizations like yours to create efficient, effective credit and collections strategies adapted to your specific business and customer needs by visiting our collections management page.