Software Review: Easy debt collection with Debtor Daddy

Does debt collection give you a headache? Tired of chasing up bills that have been left unpaid? Losing track of who has paid you and who hasn’t? It’s a problem that all businesses experience on a daily basis and it is the most hated task on the to-do list. But help is at hand in the form of Debtor Daddy, a New Zealand-based software firm with a presence in Australia.

Debtor Daddy is an online software package that connects seamlessly with award-winning accounting software Xero, QuickBooks and MYOB AccountRightLive. Debtor Daddy chases debtors so you don’t have to and gets money to flow straight into your bank account while giving you reports of who has and has not paid you. You can choose to send out reminders or escalate to a phone call. No more playing the bad guy and no more hard calls and most importantly, no more time wasted on chasing people up to pay you your hard-earned cash. It also eliminates the need to engage the service of a debt collection agency.

Does Debtor Daddy make debt collection easy?

Yes, it does. The most convenient thing about Debtor Daddy is that it immediately connects to Xero or an equivalent and trawls through your records to recover all your overdue invoices. Debtor Daddy reads data from your accounting software file, but it does not make any changes to it or send any information back. All the said invoices are added to a Hit List which is then assigned to a Collector – the approved person within your organisation who is responsible for giving the green light to the debt chasing process. The Collector then sets the frequency of reminders. You can choose which ones are sent out automatically and which ones require manual approval. In the case of automatic reminders, you can set the frequency at which they are sent to different debtors. This is a handy feature if a debtor usually pays on time and may have just got sidetracked, or if a debtor is habitually late. You can also customise the wording of the reminders that are sent out, so the tone could be a ‘friendly reminder’ or a ‘final reminder to pay’. Once automatic reminders are enabled, you will receive a Daily Reminder Schedule at 8 am your local time, the following morning.  This email lets you know how many reminders are scheduled to go out and provide you with a link to the Scheduled Screen to view the reminders to go. If the invoices remain unheeded, Debtor Daddy’s trained staff will call your debtor on your behalf to secure payment. Debtor Daddy will also soon launch a new service that can escalate the issue to a debt collector with just one mouse click.

Reporting on debt collection

The reporting feature is simple and shows you who owes you money, how much and if they are set to be automatically remaindered or not. Debtor Daddy only begins to display invoices in the system from two days prior to the due date. Invoices will not display anywhere in the system until they are two days before being due. You can see totals of debtors for the organisation in graph form with key indicators like debtor days and overdue ratio.

What does Debtor Daddy look and feel like

Debtor Daddy has a very user-friendly dashboard and user interface. It is both simple yet functional. It is easy to use and all the information that you need is available at the click of a button. It is an intuitive piece of software that you can get the feel of very quickly. The interface has three main areas: Hit List – Listing all your customers with overdue invoices and the totals Scheduled – Showing all your scheduled reminders you have set to chase from the Hit List screen Collectors – The “intensity” of the reminders being sent ranging from friendly to no-nonsense.

Support centre

Debtor Daddy has a comprehensive help centre.  Online help is the only help available to those on the Solo plan. Email, chat and in-app support is available to Business plan users with Enterprise levels users can also use phone support.

Pricing

Debtor Daddy is competitively priced with plans of $119 per month for the starter package and $319 for the professional package. You can read the full price list here. You can also try the software for free for 14 days.