--- type: Software Buyer's Guide title: 6 Best Dunning Software Tools in 2026 description: Paidnice, Chaser, Upflow, Kolleno, Satago and Credit Hound compared in 2026, ranked on how far the dunning sequence escalates, published price and verified reviews. resource: https://accounting.events/reviews/best-dunning-software/ tags: [best dunning software, dunning software, dunning automation, dunning management software, overdue invoice automation, payment reminder software, invoice chasing software] timestamp: 2026-08-27 --- **The six best dunning software tools in 2026 are Paidnice, Chaser, Upflow, Kolleno, Satago and Credit Hound, ranked on how far the dunning sequence escalates and whether the tool raises the late fee itself. Prices from £20 per user a month.** Paidnice suits a Xero or QuickBooks Online business that wants a different sequence per customer group, ending in a fee on the ledger. Chaser suits a team that wants email, SMS, letters and calls in one schedule. Upflow suits a finance team that tunes the sequence by the numbers. Kolleno suits an order-to-cash team on NetSuite or SAP. Satago pairs chasing with credit reports. Credit Hound is the Sage-channel chase worklist. **Related guides:** [the best credit control software UK](/reviews/best-credit-control-software-uk/), [the best debtor management software UK](/reviews/best-debtor-management-software-uk/), [how to choose credit control software for Xero](/reviews/credit-control-software-guide/) UK small businesses wait 29.3 days to be paid and settle 8.3 days past due, on Xero Small Business Insights data for June 2026. Both figures have edged in from 29.6 and 9.2 days a year earlier. The sector gap is the wider story: manufacturers wait more than twice as long as hospitality businesses, which is why one dunning schedule for every customer rarely fits. ## Dunning means two different things, and you need the second one The word covers two separate products. In subscription billing, dunning is retry logic against a card that has already declined. In accounts receivable, dunning is the escalating ladder of messages against an invoice a customer has not paid. Everything below ranks the second one. Card-retry dunning belongs to whichever billing engine holds the card. Stripe, Chargebee and Recurly all re-present a failed charge on a retry schedule and email the cardholder to update the card, and the number they are built to move is involuntary churn. Nothing in that stack reads an aged receivables report, and nothing in it raises a charge. Invoice dunning starts from a customer who was billed on terms and did not pay. There is no stored card to re-present, the balance is sitting on your ledger, and the number that moves is days sales outstanding. If your invoices are raised in Xero, QuickBooks Online or Sage, that is the ladder you are shopping for, and these six tools are the ones that run it. UK finance teams rarely use the word at all. Xero files these apps under Debtor Management, FreeAgent calls it Credit Control, and UK enterprise vendors sell it as Credit Management. Credit control is the wider job, because it also sets the terms and checks the customer before you invoice. Dunning is the chasing itself. An agency works the debt after you have stopped chasing it, and takes a cut of what it recovers. A repeated reminder - The same message every time - Easy to filter and ignore - Nothing changes when it is ignored - The customer learns the deadline is soft An escalating sequence - The tone rises at each step - A charge lands when the fee bites - The channel switches to get a reply - The deadline starts to cost something One message repeated is not a ladder. Every rung has to change something the customer can feel. ## How far each ladder goes: the table Read the escalation row first. Paidnice and Chaser raise the charge at the end of the ladder; Upflow sends the job back to your ERP; no interest mechanic is documented for Kolleno, Satago or Credit Hound. Channels and sender identity decide how the rungs in the middle land. | | [Paidnice logo](#paidnice) | [Chaser logo](#chaser) | [Upflow logo](#upflow) | [Kolleno logo](#kolleno) | [Satago logo](#satago) | [Credit Hound logo](#credit-hound) | | Revenue fit | $500k to $20m | £4m and under on the entry tier, tiers to £200m | ARR bands, under $10m to $50m and above | $1m turnover and above | Not published | Not published | | From (monthly) | £49 | £199 | Not published | $650 per user | £25 (inside Sage 50) | £20 per user (Sage 50) | | Sequence channels | Email, SMS | Email, SMS, letters, calls | Email, SMS, letters (calls and tasks are manual) | Email, SMS (letters and calls are not workflow actions) | Email, SMS (Premium and above) | Email, letters | | Sender identity | Your own authenticated domain (Pro and above) | Your own Gmail or Outlook mailbox | Upflow infrastructure, custom subdomain or your own SMTP | Custom sending domain, set up by an account manager | Satago mailbox on Basic, your own inbox from Premium | Not published | | Escalates to a charge | Yes (per customer group) | Yes (one global rule) | No (via your ERP only) | None found | Not verified | None found | | Payment plans | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Not verified | None found | | Portal | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Not verified | No (PayThem payment links only) | | Ledger integrations | Xero, QuickBooks Online | Xero, QuickBooks, Sage, NetSuite, Dynamics 365 | Xero, QuickBooks Online, NetSuite, Sage Intacct, Stripe Billing, Chargebee, Zuora | NetSuite, SAP, Sage Intacct, Dynamics 365, Xero, QuickBooks Online | Xero, Sage, Sage 50, QuickBooks, KashFlow, FreeAgent | Sage 50, Sage 200, Sage Intacct, Xero | | Rated (source, count) | 5.0 (82, Xero App Store) | 4.98 (374, Xero App Store) | 4.8 (233, G2) | 4.9 (99, G2) | Not verified | 5.0 (11, Sage UK Marketplace) | | Last verified | Aug 2026 | Aug 2026 | Aug 2026 | Aug 2026 | Aug 2026 | Aug 2026 | "Not verified" means the rung could not be confirmed from the vendor's public materials. "Not published" means the vendor prints no figure. "None found" means the vendor documents that rung in neither direction. Every price is the vendor's own published or last-verified from-price, stamped with the month it was read. ## The seven rungs of a dunning ladder Seven rungs cover almost every sequence sold in this category. Vendors count them differently and name them differently, and the useful question is not how many steps a tool advertises but which rung it can still act on without a person. | Rung | Typical day | Channel | Tone | What it asks for | | **1. Pre-due nudge** | Day −7 | Email | Informational | Confirmation the invoice is approved for payment | | **2. Due-date notice** | Day 0 | Email | Neutral | Payment today, on the agreed terms | | **3. First past-due** | Day +3 to +7 | Email | Factual | Acknowledgement that the invoice is now overdue | | **4. Firm reminder** | Day +14 to +21 | Email and SMS | Direct | A payment date, in writing, from a named person | | **5. Final notice** | Day +30 | SMS or letter | Formal | Payment by a stated date, or the charge applies | | **6. The charge** | Day +30 to +45 | A document on the ledger | Contractual | The late fee or interest, as a receivable | | **7. Handoff** | Day +60 onward | Call, then letter before action | Terminal | Payment, or the account leaves the ladder | Day offsets are the common pattern rather than a vendor setting. Every tool below lets you move them; what they do not all let you do is reach rungs 5, 6 and 7 without a person. The five stages every vendor here documents. Rungs 5 to 7 in the table above are where the six separate. ## 1. Paidnice Best for Xero and QuickBooks Online businesses that want the sequence to end in a charge, $500k to $20m ### What is it best for? For a business on Xero or QuickBooks Online that wants a different reminder ladder per customer group, closing with a fee raised on the ledger rather than a fifth email. **Fits:** Businesses on Xero or QuickBooks Online from about £500k turnover, with the sweet spot between £1m and £20m, with or without a credit controller **Regions:** United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, United States, Canada, South Africa **Entry cost:** £49/mo on Essentials, covering 150 invoices, 600 emails and up to 2 team members; Pro from £74/mo with unlimited users and no per-seat fee. Verified Aug 2026 **Rated:** 5.0 from 82 [Xero App Store](https://apps.xero.com/uk/app/paidnice) reviews, verified 20 August 2026; 4.9 on [Capterra](https://www.capterra.co.uk/software/254868/paidnice), review count not published **Awards:** Winner, New Zealand Small Business App of the Year, Xero Global App Awards 2026; 2025 Xero Global Small Business App of the Year **Runs on:** Xero, QuickBooks Online, Stripe, Pinch Payments, CloudDepot, HubSpot, Pipedrive, Zapier. NetSuite, Sage Intacct, MYOB and Dynamics 365 Business Central on the Custom plan only **Statutory late fees:** Yes. A Bank of England base rate toggle applies the base rate plus your own percentage, using the correct base rate for each period an invoice spans, and policies sit under customer groups so different groups run different rules at once **Does best:** Running several dunning ladders at the same time, one per customer group, each closing with an invoice late fee or a statement interest charge posted to the ledger The sequence starts before the due date and firms up on the cadence you set, by email and by SMS. Contact groups decide which ladder a customer gets, so a wholesale group, a retail group and a disputed-accounts group each run their own timing and their own wording at once. On Pro and above, reminders send from your own authenticated domain, and sender profiles set the From name, the reply-to address and a BCC per policy, so accounts@ can open the sequence and a named director can close it. Rung 6 is a document rather than a message. Two charge types exist and both can sit on the same group: an invoice late fee per overdue invoice, and a statement interest charge against the whole overdue balance. The interest figure is computed at the moment the statement sends rather than at the last policy run, so what the customer opens carries that morning’s number, worked on the balance net of any credit on the account. Compounding runs by default, and simple interest is a setting you choose rather than one you inherit. Payment plans, prompt payment discounts, automatic statements including consolidated parent accounts, and a customer payment portal all sit in the same product, so the ladder can offer a way to settle at every rung rather than only at the end. **Limitations with Paidnice.** The ladder has no letter rung and no call rung, so it runs on email, SMS and the charge. Xero and QuickBooks Online are the only native ledgers; the four Custom-plan ledgers are a build rather than a standard connector, and some payment features differ between the two natives. Essentials seats two people. On the fifth criterion Chaser's 4.98 from 374 reviews beats the 5.0 from 82 above. ## 2. Chaser Best for teams that want every channel in one schedule, up to £4m on the entry tier ### What is it best for? For a finance team with a named credit controller that wants email, SMS, letters and calls running from one chasing schedule, with credit checks in the same tool. **Fits:** UK-centred businesses with a named credit controller; the entry tier is priced for £4m turnover and under, and the tiers run to £200m, though Chaser’s own pricing page states £100m **Regions:** UK-registered, trading since 2014, sells worldwide **Entry cost:** £199/mo on Compact for turnover to £4m with 4 users; Core £599/mo to £10m; Complete £899/mo above that. Verified Aug 2026 **Rated:** 4.98 from 374 [Xero App Store](https://apps.xero.com/uk/app/chaser) reviews; 4.5 from 68 on [G2](https://www.g2.com/products/chaser/reviews) **Awards:** Xero App Partner of the Year 2023 **Runs on:** Xero, QuickBooks, Sage 50, Sage 200, Sage Intacct, Sage Business Central, NetSuite, Dynamics 365, AccountsIQ, SAP, HubSpot, Gmail, Outlook **Statutory late fees:** Yes. Four calculation types including a Bank of England base rate type, recalculated daily, but one global rule only, which cannot vary by schedule or customer group, and no fee is raised on payment-plan or partially paid invoices **Does best:** The widest channel set in this comparison inside one schedule, with Creditsafe credit checking and monitoring alongside it Chaser has been in the market since 2014 and builds a schedule from Before Due, Overdue and Paid steps, with only the final overdue step repeating. Reminders send from the team's own Gmail or Outlook mailbox, and the same schedule adds SMS, posted letters and an automated call. The call is a one-way text-to-speech message that announces itself, cannot understand a response, and is unavailable in New Zealand; a credit controller can also place and record a call in the app on Core and above. Its in-app credit report is supplied by Creditsafe and carries a credit score with a recommended limit, the customer's payment score, credit event history, and Companies House filing and director data, with continuous monitoring and a late payment predictor on top. A payer portal, dispute flagging and integrated collections through a partner sit at the end of the ladder. **Limitations with Chaser.** Every rung except email is metered, so SMS, letters, calls and credit checks are billed as credits on top of the subscription and a long ladder costs more to run. Statements go out monthly on a fixed day, so a statement cannot be timed to a rung. The terminal rung is a single rule for the whole ledger. Instalment dates sit outside the chasing schedule, which the [payment plan guide](/reviews/best-payment-plan-software/) covers in full. Compact caps the team at four users, and the entry price rose roughly four to five times when Chaser moved off its old invoice tiers. ## 3. Upflow Best for finance teams that tune the sequence by the numbers, ARR bands from under $10m to $50m and above ### What is it best for? For a finance team that wants to see which segments respond before it commits to a cadence, and to measure the sequence with countback DSO afterwards. **Fits:** B2B finance teams that manage by metric, quoted in ARR bands: under $10m, $10m to $50m, and $50m and above **Regions:** New York head office, Paris origin, customers in 30-plus countries **Entry cost:** Not published. Upflow prints no figures and quotes by ARR band; the free Discover tier is analytics only and has to be arranged through sales. Third-party captures from 2024 put Grow at $440 a month and Scale at $880 **Rated:** 4.8 from 233 [G2](https://www.g2.com/products/upflow-upflow/reviews) reviews; 4.5 from 15 on [Capterra](https://www.capterra.co.uk/software/193097/Upflow) · [Xero App Store listing](https://apps.xero.com/us/app/upflow) **Awards:** Not published **Runs on:** Xero, QuickBooks Online, NetSuite, Sage Intacct, Stripe Billing, Chargebee, Zuora **Statutory late fees:** No, via your ERP only. Upflow's own documentation points the job back to the ERP and there is no native computation **Does best:** Measuring the sequence, with countback DSO against best possible DSO, collection effectiveness and an at-risk rate above 90 days Upflow builds multi-step workflows out of email, SMS, letter, call and task actions, timed against invoice age, customer behaviour and risk profile. Email, SMS and letters send on their own; calls and tasks land in a queue for a person. The analytics are the reason to buy it: dashboards you can filter by workflow, country or account manager, scheduled by email, so you can tell which rung of the ladder actually moves cash. Sending runs through Upflow's own infrastructure by default, with a custom subdomain or your own SMTP as the alternatives. A branded portal, saved payment methods, disputes and customer-set promises to pay sit alongside the workflow. **Limitations with Upflow.** Automatic actions fire once a day at a fixed time, on business days only, which puts a floor under how finely a sequence can be timed. Sending through your own SMTP disables open and click tracking, so the tuning data and the sender identity pull against each other. No native late fees, so the charge goes back to your ERP. Its answer to a plan is a customer-initiated part payment plus a promise to pay, rather than a schedule the tool runs. The QuickBooks link polls every five minutes with payments landing in Undeposited Funds for manual reconciliation. Upflow prints no price at any tier. ## 4. Kolleno Best for order-to-cash teams on NetSuite or SAP, $1m turnover and above ### What is it best for? For a NetSuite or SAP order-to-cash team that wants the sequence triggered by ledger events and the cash matched back automatically afterwards. **Fits:** Order-to-cash teams above $1m turnover on the entry plan, with published tiers stepping at $10m, $100m and $1bn **Regions:** London head office, founded 2020, selling internationally **Entry cost:** $650 per user a month on BusinessPay, $545 on annual billing, minimum one user, for turnover above $1m; Business Plus $1,245 per user. Verified Aug 2026 **Rated:** 4.9 from 99 [G2](https://www.g2.com/products/kolleno/reviews) reviews; 5.0 from 18 [Xero App Store](https://apps.xero.com/uk/app/kolleno) reviews; 5.0 from 8 on [Capterra](https://www.capterra.co.uk/software/227932/Kolleno) **Awards:** G2 Best Software Awards 2024 **Runs on:** NetSuite, SAP S/4HANA and Business One, Sage Intacct, Dynamics 365, Workday, Oracle JD Edwards, Epicor, Infor, Odoo, Zuora, Xero, QuickBooks Online **Statutory late fees:** None found. No feature page or help article documents a late fee or interest calculation **Does best:** Trigger-based sequences with conditional branches and run-hour restrictions, sitting on top of the deepest cash application in this comparison Kolleno starts a sequence from an event rather than a date alone: an invoice created, a payment posted in the ERP, an email bounce, a file upload. Conditional branches split the ladder, run-hour restrictions keep messages inside working hours, and auto-escalation moves an account up a tier. Email and SMS send automatically; letters and calls exist as capabilities but not as workflow actions. AI is included at every subscription tier in three forms: insights, a copilot drafting messages for review, and an agent working a collections policy unattended. Behind the sequence sits cash application: remittance emails parsed into suggested matches, BAI2, NACHA and ISO 20022 bank files, one-to-many matching and credit-note offsets, so a chase stops the moment the money is matched. **Limitations with Kolleno.** $650 per user a month with a $1m turnover floor puts Kolleno above the budget of most small businesses, and the second tier doubles that. No late fee or interest function is documented anywhere in its materials, so the ladder ends at the message. Letters and calls are not workflow actions, and a custom sending domain is set up by an account manager rather than self-serve. Reviewers name navigation and reporting depth as the recurring weak points. ## 5. Satago Best for Sage 50 and Xero teams that want credit data with their chasing, no revenue band published ### What is it best for? For a Sage 50 or Xero business that wants the reminders, the credit report and the invoice finance from one provider. **Fits:** UK businesses in the Sage and Xero ecosystem. No revenue band published **Regions:** United Kingdom only **Entry cost:** £25/mo Standard and £45/mo Plus inside Sage 50, with Plus included on selected Sage 50 subscriptions; standalone £45/mo Basic, £80 Premium, £200 Platinum. Verified Aug 2026 **Rated:** Not verified. No review score could be confirmed from a primary source at the August 2026 check **Awards:** Not published **Runs on:** Xero, Sage, Sage 50, QuickBooks, KashFlow, FreeAgent **Statutory late fees:** Not verified. No late-fee or interest mechanic is documented in the material checked, and feature verification is an open gap on this vendor **Does best:** Putting a credit score and a suggested credit limit next to the chasing schedule, in the same subscription, with invoice finance from the same provider Satago runs two businesses at once: chasing and risk insights on the software side, single and full invoice finance on the lending side. The embedded bundle inside Sage 50 covers payment reminders, statements, thank-you emails, customer grouping and scheduling, at £25 a month for the Standard tier, and Sage states that Plus is included with selected Sage 50 subscriptions, though which subscriptions is not published. The sequence itself is customisable emails on customisable schedules, grouped by customer. What surrounds it is the credit data: full credit reports on an annual allowance, customer credit scores, suggested credit limits and real-time notifications, so an account heading for trouble is visible before the ladder starts. **Limitations with Satago.** The standalone Basic plan caps you at 100 email reminders a month and sends from a Satago address; your own inbox needs the £80 Premium tier, and SMS starts there too. No late-fee or statutory-interest mechanic is documented and no review score could be verified, so two of the five criteria cannot be scored for Satago at all. The footprint is UK-only. ## 6. Credit Hound Best for Sage-first teams that want a chase worklist, priced per user with no revenue band published ### What is it best for? For a Sage 50 or Sage 200 credit controller who wants a daily worklist saying who to call and why, with the automated reminders running underneath it. **Fits:** Sage-first finance teams. No revenue band published; the product is priced per user **Regions:** Core market is the UK Sage channel, with Sage 50 connectors for UK and Ireland, the US and Canada, and pricing published in GBP, EUR, USD, CAD, AUD and ZAR **Entry cost:** £20 per user a month on Sage 50 and Sage Accounting; £51 for the first user then £35 each on Sage 200 and Xero; the PayThem payment module is £38/mo on top. Verified Aug 2026 **Rated:** 5.0 from 11 reviews on the Sage UK Marketplace; 4.5 from a single review on [G2](https://www.g2.com/products/credit-hound), which is too small a base to read as a quality signal **Awards:** Not published **Runs on:** Sage Accounting, Sage 50cloud, Sage 100cloud, Sage 200 Standard and Professional, Sage Intacct, Infor SunSystems Cloud and Xero. No QuickBooks Online connector **Statutory late fees:** None found. No interest, late fee, surcharge or fixed-sum function appears in the vendor's product pages, cloud feature list, FAQs, product guide or Sage-hosted brochure **Does best:** Turning the chase into a worklist, with promise-to-pay tracking, a promised-cash view and structured dispute management with automated follow-ups Credit Hound automates collection paths that chase by invoice age, and it groups customers so the frequency and the urgency of the chasing can be tailored per group. Reminder emails and reminder letters both sit in the path. Where it differs from the rest of this list is what happens after the message: a task dashboard tells a credit controller who to call, a promise to pay is recorded and rolls into a promised-cash report, disputes are logged with a reason and notified automatically, and an overdue account can be frozen. Pricing is published openly, which is unusual in the Sage reseller channel, and the entry price at the Sage 50 end is the lowest in this comparison. **Limitations with Credit Hound.** It chases; it does not charge. No late fee, interest, statutory interest or fixed sum appears in the vendor's documentation, and nothing describes writing a charge back to the ledger. No payment plans, and no SMS step in the sequence. There is no QuickBooks Online connector, payments are a separate £38 a month module of payment links rather than a portal, per-user pricing on Sage 200 and Xero scales badly, and the whole public review base is 12 reviews. ## What we weighted, and why sequence depth came first Depth leads the order because it is the one property a buyer cannot add afterwards. A shallow ladder stays shallow whatever else the vendor ships, while a thin review base can still sit behind the right ladder. 1. **How many rungs, and how finely timed.** Step count, the day offsets you are allowed to set, and whether the wording and the cadence move as the account ages rather than repeating one message. 2. **Where the ladder ends.** Whether the last rung is a charge the tool computes and raises on the ledger itself, and whether that rule can differ between one customer group and another. 3. **What the middle rungs can use.** Email as the floor, then SMS, letters and calls, sent from a sender identity the customer already recognises as yours. 4. **A price you can find without a sales call**, published or verified, in the vendor's own currency and stamped with the month it was read. 5. **A rating, printed with its platform and its base.** A score with nothing behind it settles nothing, so two ratings inside 0.1 of each other are separated by whichever carries more verified reviews. That tiebreak is why Upflow sits above Kolleno: 4.8 and 4.9 are 0.1 apart, and Upflow's base is 233 verified reviews against 99. Where a rung cannot be scored across all six, it is printed inside the entry that has it rather than used to order the list. Satago's rating and its fee handling could not be confirmed from public materials, so neither moved it up or down. ## Where each ladder stops All six run rungs 1 to 4 unattended. The separation happens at rung 5 and never later than rung 6, and for four of them the account is handed to a person before any charge exists. - **Chaser reaches rung 7.** Email, SMS, posted letters and a one-way automated call all sit in one schedule, and collections run on through a partner. The call announces itself, cannot understand a reply, and is unavailable in New Zealand. - **Paidnice reaches rung 6.** Email and SMS carry the middle, then the charge posts to the ledger as a Draft or Approved document. There is no letter rung and no call rung, so rung 7 is yours. - **Upflow stops at rung 5.** Email, SMS and letters send on their own; calls and tasks land in a queue for a person, and its own documentation sends the charge back to the ERP. - **Kolleno stops at rung 5.** Email and SMS are workflow actions with conditional branches behind them; letters and calls exist as capabilities but not as steps, and no fee or interest mechanic is documented anywhere in its materials. - **Satago is verified to rung 4.** Email throughout, SMS from Premium, and no late-fee or statutory-interest mechanic could be confirmed, so rungs 5 and 6 cannot be scored for it at all. - **Credit Hound stops at rung 5, then hands you a worklist.** Email and letters run the sequence, and after that a task dashboard says who to call, a promise to pay is recorded into a promised-cash report, and an overdue account can be frozen. It chases; it does not charge. At rung 6 the two tools that get there differ by rule count rather than by capability, and both document a Bank of England base rate calculation. Chaser's ladder has one terminal rung for the whole ledger: a single global rule that cannot vary by schedule or customer group, raising no fee on a payment-plan or partially paid invoice. Paidnice has one terminal rung per customer group, so a wholesale group, a retail group and a disputed-accounts group can each arrive at a different charge on the same morning. ### Which ladders your ledger will let you run The accounting system rules more tools out than the budget does. - **Xero.** All six connect to a Xero organisation. Credit Hound costs £51 for the first user and £35 for each one after on Xero, more than double its Sage 50 price. - **QuickBooks Online.** Five of the six. Credit Hound has no connector, which ends the shortlist there for a QuickBooks business. - **Sage 50 and Sage 200.** Credit Hound and Satago are the natives, Chaser connects, and Paidnice does not serve Sage at all. - **NetSuite, Sage Intacct and SAP.** Kolleno and Upflow, with Chaser on NetSuite and Dynamics 365. Paidnice reaches those ledgers only on its Custom plan, as a build. Xero and QuickBooks Online each send a reminder of their own, which is rung 3 and nothing after it: one schedule for every customer, email only, no charge. The day a segment needs its own cadence is the day that stops being enough. ## Statutory interest as the last rung In the UK rung 6 has a legal floor. A supplier can charge 8% above the Bank of England base rate on an overdue B2B invoice, plus a fixed sum, whether or not the contract mentions it. The [Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998](https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/20/contents) sets that rate, and adds £40, £70 or £100 by size of debt on top. With the [Bank of England base rate](https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/the-interest-rate-bank-rate) at 3.75% in mid-2026 the interest rate is 11.75%. It moves, so read the current figure on [GOV.UK](https://www.gov.uk/late-commercial-payments-interest-debt-recovery/charging-interest-commercial-debt) before you invoice for it. A ladder that runs 90 days will normally cross a rate change, which is the part that catches people out: the rate at rung 6 is not the rate that applied at rung 1. The charge has to be prorated across each period the invoice spans, at the rate in force during that period. Paidnice's base rate toggle applies the correct rate per period, and Chaser recalculates daily against the current one. On the other four, that arithmetic is a spreadsheet on somebody's desk. ### The statutory position, and what may change Two charges a UK supplier can raise at rung 6 today, and one that is still only proposed. **Statutory interest:** 8% above the Bank of England base rate, which is 11.75% in total at mid-2026. It moves with the base rate, so confirm the current figure before you invoice for it. [GOV.UK](https://www.gov.uk/late-commercial-payments-interest-debt-recovery/charging-interest-commercial-debt) **Fixed compensation:** £40, £70 or £100 per invoice depending on the size of the debt, claimable on top of interest. [GOV.UK](https://www.gov.uk/late-commercial-payments-interest-debt-recovery/claim-debt-recovery-costs) **Mandatory interest:** Proposed, not law. The Commercial Payments Bill would make statutory interest mandatory in commercial contracts rather than a default that can be contracted out of. Check its current stage before relying on it. Worked example. On £5,000 overdue for 45 days at 11.75%, statutory interest is £72.43 and the fixed sum is £70, so £142.43 is claimable in total. Move the amount, the days or the rate to price rung 6 against your own invoice. Rung 6, priced. Interest is the amount times the rate, apportioned over the days late, and the fixed sum steps at £40 below £1,000, £70 to £9,999.99 and £100 from £10,000. The rate tracks the Bank of England base rate, so read the current figure on [GOV.UK](https://www.gov.uk/late-commercial-payments-interest-debt-recovery/charging-interest-commercial-debt) before you invoice for it. ## Chasing a plan is not the same as chasing an invoice Paidnice, Chaser and Kolleno all split an open invoice into instalments. On a dunning page the question is narrower than whether the feature exists: it is which date the ladder chases once the plan is running. A plan resets the promise, and not every tool resets the schedule behind it. Kolleno links its automations to the plan, so the follow-up tracks the instalment that was missed. Chaser's chasing stays keyed to the original invoice due date, which the [payment plan guide](/reviews/best-payment-plan-software/) covers in full. Upflow offers a promise to pay plus ad-hoc part payments rather than a schedule, and Credit Hound records a promise as a note and a report rather than an agreement it enforces. A plan is also not invoice finance. An instalment schedule leaves the receivable and the credit risk on your own ledger. A finance provider settles the invoice in full and carries the risk itself, which is the second thing Satago sells alongside its software. ## Ladder length against price: what a long sequence costs Published entry prices in August 2026: Credit Hound £20 per user a month, Satago £25 inside Sage 50, Paidnice £49, Chaser £199, Kolleno $650 per user. Upflow publishes nothing. None of those is the number that moves when the ladder gets longer. Count the messages first. Seven rungs across a book of 400 open invoices is thousands of sends a month, and three of these six bill for them: Chaser meters SMS, letters, calls and credit checks as credits above the subscription, Satago allows 100 email reminders a month on its standalone Basic tier, and Paidnice attaches an email allowance to each invoice-volume tier and charges SMS by the message. Then read the metric under the headline. Credit Hound and Kolleno charge per user, so a credit control desk of three multiplies the bill without adding a rung. Chaser charges against company turnover, so the price steps as the business grows rather than as the chasing gets harder. ### What that looks like at your size - **Under £1m.** Credit Hound at £20 per user on Sage 50, or Satago at £25 inside Sage 50, if rungs 1 to 5 are the whole job. Paidnice at £49 buys rung 6 as well. - **£1m to £4m.** Paidnice or Chaser. Chaser's Compact tier is priced for exactly this band at £199 a month and is the one that adds letters, calls and credit checks to the middle rungs. - **£4m to £20m.** The genuine head-to-head. Paidnice for a terminal rung per customer group on flat pricing, Chaser for the channel set and credit monitoring at £599 on Core. - **Above £20m.** Kolleno where the ladder has to fire on ERP events, Upflow where nobody can currently say which rung moves cash, and Chaser's Complete tier if staying on one system matters more. Two of the six publish nothing usable. Upflow took its prices off the site and quotes by ARR band, so the $440 and $880 figures still circulating are 2024 third-party captures. Satago prints its tier prices but not which Sage 50 subscriptions carry Plus for nothing. ## Dunning questions finance teams ask What comes up between the shortlist and the sign-off: which meaning of the word applies, how far the ladder reaches, what a long sequence costs, and what happens at the last rung. ### What is dunning software? Software that runs an escalating sequence of messages against an unpaid invoice, sends each rung on a schedule, hardens the tone and the action as the invoice ages, records what was sent, and stops the moment the money lands. The tools worth paying for end the sequence with a fee or interest charge raised on the ledger rather than a sixth email. ### Is this the same dunning as in Stripe or Chargebee? No. Subscription billing platforms use dunning to mean card-retry logic: a charge declines, the platform re-presents it on a retry schedule and asks the cardholder to update the card. That fixes involuntary churn on a stored card. The tools on this page chase invoices raised on terms, where there is no card to retry and the balance sits on your ledger until somebody pays it. ### What is the best dunning software in 2026? On Xero or QuickBooks Online, Paidnice, because it runs a separate ladder per customer group and closes each one with a charge posted to the ledger, from £49 a month. For email, SMS, letters and calls in a single schedule with credit checks alongside, Chaser, from £199 a month. Both figures were verified in August 2026. ### How many rungs should a dunning sequence have? Enough to cover pre-due, due and at least two past-due rungs, with the charge and the handoff behind them. The count matters less than what changes between rungs: the tone, the channel, the named sender, and whether the account starts to cost the customer money. ### Can dunning software raise the late fee itself? Two of these six can. Paidnice computes an invoice late fee and a statement interest charge per customer group and posts them to the ledger. Chaser has four calculation types recalculated daily under a single global rule, and raises nothing on a payment-plan or partially paid invoice. Upflow points the calculation back at your ERP, and Kolleno, Satago and Credit Hound document no mechanic at all. ### What does a long dunning sequence cost to run? The subscription is the smaller half once the ladder is long. Credit Hound publishes £20 per user a month on Sage 50 and £51 plus £35 per extra user on Xero; Satago is £25 inside Sage 50 and £45 standalone; Paidnice is £49; Chaser is £199 to £4m turnover with SMS, letters and calls metered on top; Kolleno is $650 per user; Upflow publishes no price. All verified August 2026. ### Does dunning software work with Xero? All six read a Xero organisation and stop the sequence when the invoice is paid. What separates them is what they write back: Paidnice and Chaser post a fee or interest charge onto the ledger, and the other four write notes, statuses or nothing. ## Who publishes this, and how the ranking was built Accounting.Events publishes this page. Nobody pays to appear on it, and nobody pays for a position on it. Rung counts, channels, sender identity and prices are read off the vendors' own product pages and help centres, in the currency each vendor prints, with no conversion applied on top. Ratings are quoted with the platform and the review count attached, from the Xero App Store, G2, Capterra and the Sage UK Marketplace, so a 5.0 from 11 reviews reads as exactly that. A vendor that documents nothing gets a cell saying so. Nothing here is inferred to fill a gap, which is why Satago carries two unscored criteria instead of a guess. The whole page was re-read in August 2026, and it is re-read every time it changes. ## Next: credit control, debtor management and Xero Buyer's guide ### Best credit control software UK Six credit control systems compared on statutory interest, chasing and reviews. Debtor management ### Best debtor management software UK The debtor workspace, statutory interest and credit risk, compared. Buyer's guide ### Credit control software for Xero Where it fits, what it costs, and how to choose for a Xero account. Alternatives ### Best Chaser alternatives Where Chaser's ladder stops, and which tools reach further.