Compare · Software
Software sends the reminder. It does not have the argument.
Every credit control tool on the market is good at the easy half of the job. It knows which invoices are overdue and it can email about them on a schedule. What none of them can do is the part that actually recovers money, which is deciding what to do when the email is ignored.
If you already employ somebody who does credit control, software is almost certainly the right purchase and we are the wrong shape. A tool makes a competent person faster. We replace a person you have not got.
The short answer
Software removes the typing. It leaves you the deciding, the approving, the phoning and the escalating, which is where the time and the discomfort actually live.
Side by side
What is left on your desk afterwards.
| Dimension | Credit control software | Hound |
|---|---|---|
| Who sends the chase | You do, on a schedule you built, after you wrote the templates. | We do, on a ladder you approved once, from your own accounts address. |
| Who decides what happens next | You. The tool escalates only as far as the next email in the sequence. | We do, within the rungs you signed off, and we bring you the decisions that are genuinely yours. |
| Who makes the phone call | You, or nobody, which in practice is usually nobody. | Us, in your name, at the point on the ladder where a call is what moves it. |
| Statutory interest | Some tools can add a line for it. Working out the correct figure and standing behind it is still yours. | Calculated per invoice under the 1998 Act and added from the start. It is yours to keep, not ours. |
| Escalation past email | There generally is none. The sequence ends and the invoice sits there. | A ladder that runs to a letter before action and a county court claim, through a regulated firm, on your instruction and at cost. |
| Setup | You connect it, write the sequences, set the timings, and maintain them. | About fifteen minutes once. Read-only access to your accounting software, a mandate, and your approval of the ladder. |
| Your weekly job | Log in, review, decide, send, follow up, repeat. | Read one message on a Friday, and answer anything we could not decide for you. |
| What it costs | Cheap per month. The real cost is the hours it does not remove. | £199 a month, plus 8% of a recovery more than 45 days overdue, capped at £1,000 an invoice. |
No ticks and crosses, because these are two different jobs rather than the same job done well and badly. Figures checked 6 August 2026.
01
The bit software cannot automate is the bit that works.
Reminders recover the invoices that were always going to be paid. Somebody forgot, the reminder arrived, they paid. That is genuinely worth having and it is why the cheap tools sell.
The invoices that ruin a trade's year are not those. They are the ones where a reminder was received, read, and ignored, because the person receiving it has worked out that nothing happens next. At that point the only thing that recovers the money is escalation, and escalation is a decision, not a template.
Deciding is where it stops. You know the invoice is ninety days late. You also know the contractor has three more jobs to give you, that you cannot prove the variation was agreed, and that the last person who pushed got taken off the framework. So the sequence ends, the tool marks it as chased, and the invoice sits there being an asset on paper.
02
Your accounting software already does most of what the cheap tools do.
Xero, QuickBooks, Sage and FreeAgent all send automated invoice reminders, and they are included rather than extra. If what you want is an email going out when an invoice passes its due date, you very probably already own that and have not switched it on.
That is worth saying plainly, because it is the first thing we would check before selling anybody anything. Turn the built-in reminders on, watch what happens for a month, and you will find out quickly whether reminders are your problem. For most trades they are not. The reminders go out, and the same four customers ignore them.
We connect to all four of those, read-only, which is how we know what is overdue without you retyping anything.
03
What done-for-you actually means here.
It means the ladder runs whether or not you feel like it this week. Day three is a polite nudge from your own accounts address. It climbs through firmer letters, a statement of the whole overdue account, statutory interest added under the 1998 Act, a phone call, and then a documented escalation to a regulated firm for anything reserved.
It means somebody else is the one being firm with your customer, which is the real product. Most trades are not missing a tool. They are missing the willingness to be unpopular with somebody who owes them money and might give them more work.
And it means the decisions still belong to you. You approve the ladder once. You can hold any customer instantly. Anything disputed leaves the sequence and a human picks it up. The whole ladder is on the homepage if you want to see every rung before you decide.
Where we are the wrong answer
When software is the better buy.
Plenty of businesses should buy a tool rather than a service, and telling you otherwise would be selling. If any of these is you, buy the software.
- You already employ somebody who does credit control. A tool makes them considerably faster. We would be paying for a job that is already done.
- Your problem is genuinely forgetfulness rather than avoidance. If reminders work on your customers, you need reminders, and your accounting software probably already sends them for free.
- You want to keep the chasing in-house because the relationships are yours and you are good at the conversation. Some people are. If you are, a tool is leverage and we are a replacement you do not need.
- You have a small number of large customers who all pay eventually. A monthly service is poor value against four invoices a quarter.
- You need multi-currency, multi-entity or non-UK debtors. We cover England and Wales, and the statutory machinery we lean on stops there.
We would rather you read that and go elsewhere than sign up and work it out in a month. If one of those lines is you, the honest answer is that we are not the thing to buy.
Straight answers
What people ask before they switch.
Is Hound software or a service?
Both, but the service is the product. There is software underneath, and you get a dashboard showing every invoice, every message sent and every reply received. What you are buying is that the chasing happens without you, in your name, on a rhythm that does not depend on how your week went.
Do I still need my accounting software?
Yes, and we do not replace any part of it. We connect read-only to Xero, QuickBooks, Sage or FreeAgent, so we can see what is overdue without you retyping it. You carry on invoicing exactly as you do now, and your customers carry on paying you directly.
Could I not just switch on the free reminders in Xero?
You could, and if you have not, that is the first thing to try before spending anything at all with anyone. They will recover the invoices that were simply forgotten. They will do nothing about the customer who has read three reminders and decided that ignoring you carries no consequence, which is the customer costing you real money.
What happens when a customer replies?
The sequence stops for that customer until a person has read it. Nothing automated goes out on top of a reply, because the fastest way to turn a solvable problem into a complaint is to send a firmer letter to somebody who answered the last one. Genuine disputes leave the sequence entirely.
How much of my time does this actually take?
About fifteen minutes once to set up, then roughly a minute a week reading a Friday summary, plus whatever time you choose to spend on decisions we bring you. If a week goes by where nothing needs you, nothing will ask for you.
Start
Hand us the worst one and see what happens.
Debt Rescue is a 60-day trial on a single stuck invoice. Nothing is charged up front, and if we have recovered nothing by day 60 we cancel it ourselves and you are charged nothing at all. That is the entire cost of finding out whether any of the above is true.