A letter from our founder

When I sold my last company to an £8 billion private equity firm, we tightened the finance operation — and found an extra £1m sitting in the debtors ledger. Cash we had already earned. Already invoiced. Just never collected.

We brought in two people to fix it. Six months and about £90,000 later, we had collected that extra £1m for shareholders.

Behind it were 83 different problems and the actions that solve them — from missing purchase orders and billing errors to broken promises, approval delays and disputes left for weeks. When I looked at the market, I found reminder software. I did not find a single platform that treated accounts receivable as what it is: essential financial infrastructure.

Something that should be resolved, not just reminded about.

So we asked 40+ UK businesses and their CFOs where cash collection breaks.* Six in ten had late payment and purchase-order problems. Half had no clear view of payment status once an invoice was sent. The biggest problems start before anyone sends a reminder.

Most businesses still run AR as labour. We built it to run as a financial system.

This is collects.io. It resolves most of the work automatically, with your team in control of the rest. Every decision is logged, auditable and yours to override.

Why now

The Late Payments Bill is coming: a 60-day cap on B2B payment terms, mandatory interest and a formal dispute timeline. Doing that by hand, from a spreadsheet, will not hold. collects.io keeps the audit trail it expects.

What broken AR really costs

It costs people. Finance teams spend their days on invoices, approvals, promises and replies — work a system should handle. collects.io takes on that operational layer, so your team can focus on relationships, decisions and the work that moves the business forward.

It costs clarity. Without real-time visibility, forecasting becomes guesswork and credit risk stays hidden until it is bad debt.

And it costs value. A business with a clean debtors book is a different business: better borrowing headroom, lower write-off risk, stronger conversations with lenders, investors and buyers. I have seen what a clean debtors book does in a sale. It changes the number.

Our research models around 16 days off debtor days on average.*

We are building collects.io to:

• bring cash forward,
• give your people their time back,
• improve governance, visibility and risk management,
• and make your business worth more.

Sasha Williamson CEO and founder, collects.io

* From collects.io research with 40+ UK businesses and CFOs, 2026. Modelled, not yet measured on customer results.