Pick by revenue band and ledger first. Chaser fits established agencies from about £2m to £200m turnover; Paidnice fits £500k-to-£10m agencies on Xero or QuickBooks from £49 a month; Satago suits small UK agencies wanting funding too; ezyCollect suits the AU and NZ mid-market on MYOB; Kolleno suits £10m-plus multi-entity groups.
Key takeaways
Generic software lists rank credit control tools for any business. Recruitment has sharper requirements: weekly invoice volume, self-billed client accounts, and late fees that stay inside the UK statutory rate.
The industry starts from behind. REC's 2024/25 UK Recruitment Industry Status Report found 35% of member firms experienced bad debt in the past year, against a 29% average across other sectors. Sonovate's data puts the average recruitment agency's wait to be paid at 56 days, and the Atradius Payment Practices Barometer UK 2025 found 51% of UK B2B invoices are overdue.
Software will not fix weak terms, but it enforces them without anyone drafting an email.
The ATS and pay-and-bill layer (Bullhorn, JobAdder, ETZ, FastTrack360) raises the invoice, and Xero or QuickBooks holds the receivable, but nothing in that chain owns collecting it. Bullhorn's invoicing product covers billing profiles and invoice formats, with no follow-up features at all. Credit control software fills that gap, sitting on the ledger.
The full process is in our guide to credit control for recruitment agencies; this page is about the tools. The category goes by several names, credit control software, invoice chasing software, accounts receivable automation; they describe the same job: getting the invoices in your ledger paid.
Five criteria matter more for recruitment than for a generic buyer:
Chaser serves the £2m-to-£200m band, Paidnice the £500k-to-£10m band on Xero or QuickBooks, Satago small UK agencies that also want funding, ezyCollect the AU and NZ mid-market, and Kolleno £10m-plus groups on enterprise ERPs.
| Tool | Revenue fit | From (monthly) | Ledger integrations | Late fees | Per-group sequences | Statements | Payment plans | Portal | Credit checks | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Chaser | £2m to £200m | £199 | Xero, QuickBooks, Sage, NetSuite, Dynamics 365 | Yes (global only) | Yes | Monthly only | Yes | Yes | Yes | 4.98 (374, Xero App Store) |
| 2. Paidnice | £500k to £10m | £49 / $69 | Xero, QuickBooks Online | Yes (per group) | Yes | Yes (any schedule) | Yes | Yes | No | 5.0 (Xero App Store) |
| 3. Satago | Small UK businesses | Not published | Xero, Sage, QuickBooks | Not verified | Not verified | Not verified | Not verified | Yes | Yes | Not published |
| 4. ezyCollect | AU/NZ mid-market, 200+ debtors | ~A$275 + setup | Xero, MYOB, QuickBooks, NetSuite, SAP B1 | No | Yes (higher tiers) | Monthly | Yes | Yes | Yes | 4.9 (35, Xero App Store AU) |
| 5. Kolleno | £10m upward (per-user) | $650 USD/user | NetSuite, SAP, Sage Intacct, Dynamics 365, Xero, QuickBooks | None found | Yes | Via portal | Yes | Yes | Yes | 4.9 (99, G2) |
"Not verified" means the feature could not be confirmed from the vendor's public materials. Prices are the vendor's published or last-verified from-prices as at July to August 2026; ezyCollect and Satago do not publish pricing, so confirm by quote.
Best for established agencies, £2m to £200m revenue
The most complete UK credit control suite: reminders, credit checks, posted letters, and a collections route in one tool, for agencies with a finance function and serious invoice volume.
Chaser is one of the most established names in UK credit control and covers the widest surface: reminders send from your own Gmail or Outlook inbox, with payment plans, a payer portal, and built-in credit monitoring. Verify current pricing on the vendor’s site.
The honest limitation. One global late-fee rule that cannot vary by client group, and statements send monthly only on a fixed day, an awkward fit for weekly temp billing.
Best for SMB agencies, £500k to £10m
Accounts receivable automation for SMBs on Xero and QuickBooks: reminders, statutory late fees, statements, and payment plans that run themselves at a flat monthly price, which matters as UK late-payment rules tighten.
Paidnice is built for the agency where the policy has to run itself: reminder sequences per client group with self-billed accounts excluded, statements on the schedule you choose including consolidated accounts, payment plans, and a customer payment portal. Customers cut their average wait for payment in half, within 30 days. Verify current pricing on our site.
The honest limitation. Not an enterprise cash-application platform (no bank-file matching), no built-in credit checks, and some features vary between Xero and QuickBooks.
Best for small UK agencies that also want invoice finance
A credit control and invoice finance hybrid: the same login that reminds your clients can fund the invoice while you wait for them to pay.
For a small agency funding weekly payroll out of 30-to-60-day receipts, the follow-up need and the borrowing need arrive together, and Satago serves both, with customer risk insights and credit control as a service on top. If the funding gap is the bigger problem, start with the guide to recruitment agency cash flow.
The honest limitation. Pricing is unpublished, depth on late fees, per-group sequences, and statements is not verifiable from public materials, and the platform is finance-first, so the credit-control layer runs thinner than the dedicated tools here.
Best for AU and NZ agencies on MYOB, 200+ debtors
The AU and NZ receivables specialist: Sidetrade-owned automation with the deepest MYOB and local ERP coverage in this list, now carrying its parent’s AI investment.
Sydney-founded and acquired by Sidetrade in October 2025, ezyCollect is the strongest fit where the ledger is MYOB or a local ERP the UK tools ignore, with consolidated reminders, monthly statements, and payment plans. Timing matters there: CreditorWatch’s April 2026 Business Risk Index put Australian late payments at their highest since January 2020. Verify current pricing on the vendor’s site.
The honest limitation. No late-fee or interest automation at all, so interest is handled manually in your ledger, and setup fees plus annual contracts raise the true entry cost.
Best for large groups, £10m upward, per-user pricing
An AI order-to-cash platform for enterprise finance teams: cash application and reconciliation at a scale the SMB tools in this list do not attempt.
London-founded Kolleno is AI-led order-to-cash for the problem the other four do not solve: matching thousands of client payments to invoices across entities and currencies, alongside reminder workflows, payment plans, a branded portal, and credit risk scoring. Verify current pricing on the vendor’s site.
The honest limitation. Per-user pricing is a different budget class from everything else here, and no late-fee or interest feature was found, ruling out the statutory-interest pattern for UK agencies.
Pick by revenue band and ledger platform first, features second; most shortlists resolve to one tool per size bracket.
💡 Paidnice insight
The pattern we see from £1m-to-£10m agencies on Paidnice is consistent: one firm sequence for direct clients, self-billed accounts excluded, consolidated statements weekly, and interest applied automatically then waived by a named person as a goodwill lever. Which tool you run matters less than making those four decisions once.
Quick answers to the questions finance teams ask when they shortlist credit control software for a recruitment agency.
What does credit control software cost for a recruitment agency?
Entry prices as at July to August 2026: Paidnice from £49 a month for 150 invoices, Chaser from £199 a month revenue-tiered, ezyCollect from about A$275 a month plus setup on an annual contract, Kolleno from $650 USD per user per month, while Satago does not publish pricing.
Watch the pricing metric, not the headline number: per-user and revenue-tiered models climb steeply as a temp desk grows, while flat invoice tiers do not. Verify current pricing on the vendor's site.
What is the best Chaser alternative for a recruitment agency?
Paidnice is the strongest alternative if Chaser's single global late-fee rule or monthly-only statements are the constraint: it applies fees and statements per customer group at a lower entry price. Satago is the alternative if you want invoice finance in the same platform. If built-in credit checks and posted letters matter most, Chaser remains the better buy.
Why can't the ATS or pay-and-bill system handle this?
Because they stop at invoice creation. Bullhorn's invoicing product describes billing profile capture and invoice formatting, not follow-up, and ETZ's automatic overdue texts and emails work per invoice, with no statements, interest, or escalation. The receivable lives in your ledger, so credit control has to run there.
Do late fees or reminder timing matter more?
Timing. Practitioner consensus is consistent: the earlier the follow-up, the likelier the payment; the first overdue week matters far more than the fifth. The fee's job is mostly to exist on the statement as a deterrent, applied consistently and waived deliberately; automated reminders plus fee automation beat either alone. When to charge and when to waive is covered in late payment fees for recruitment agencies.
Should self-billed accounts get reminder emails?
No. A client that self-bills raises the invoice itself and pays to the terms in its master agreement, so reminder emails achieve nothing and can irritate the client's payables team. Your tool must exclude those accounts from sequences and manage them on statements and approval-lag reporting instead.
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