Customer agents let you automate payment reminders and credit control, personalised to how each of your customers pays. You can use them with On Demand payments (pay by bank, card, Apple Pay, Google Pay) and Auto Collect payments (direct debit).
How it all fits together
Getting paid through Adfin has four key steps:
Adding your invoices into Adfin - there are three ways to start collecting payments with Adfin: connect your accounting software (Xero or QuickBooks), upload invoice PDFs, or create invoices or payment requests directly in Adfin.
Assigning customers to agents - new customers start on your default agent, and you can move customers to a different agent one at a time or in bulk. You can use different agents for different customer groups (e.g. a lighter-touch agent for high trust or VIP customers). Rules-based routing, which will match customers to agents automatically, is coming soon.
Configuring an agent - define how it communicates, which skills it uses, how payments are collected and whether it's the default agent.
Setting invoice override rules - control payment collection at the invoice level, not just the customer level.
This guide covers steps 2 to 4.
Best practices for agents
It works best to run a few agents in parallel, each tuned to a different type of customer. We've pre-created the most common agent personas so you can start using them straight away. You can rename them, update the settings, and assign customers as needed.
Light-touch agent for VIP and trusted customers
For customers who pay reliably, a gentle approach protects the relationship. The agent uses longer breaks between reminders, a warmer tone, and skips overdue notices entirely. Optimised chasing works well here because it picks up on consistent payment patterns and dials back automatically.
Firm agent for slow or problematic payers
For customers who consistently pay late, tighter timings and clearer language tend to get better results. Shorten the gap between reminders, lean on email and WhatsApp together, and consider turning on late fees so there's a real cost to delay. If a customer has failed or delayed collections without fair reason before, this is the agent to route them to.
Direct debit agent for recurring work
For customers on rolling invoices or subscriptions, Auto Collect is the smoothest route. This agent's preferred payment is Auto Collect. Mandate requests go out as soon as a payment has been raised, and it can fall back to On Demand if a collection fails repeatedly. Pair it with payment receipts so customers always get a confirmation.
You don't need to get this perfect on day one. Start with the pre-created agents, watch how your customers respond over the first couple of weeks, and adjust the timings, channels, and tone from there.
Assigning customers to an agent
Assignment is manual today: new customers start on the default agent, and you can move a single customer, or several at once, to a different agent. Rules-based routing, which will match customers to agents automatically using rules you define, is coming soon. To update the default agent, see the 'Configuring an agent' section further down.
Changing a single customer's agent
To change an individual customer's agent, open their record from the Customers tab and use the Agent dropdown in the Customer agent panel. When you pick a new agent, you'll be asked how to handle anything already in progress:
Use agent for existing and new payments: applies the new agent's setup to invoices already going out for this customer as well as future ones, so behaviour stays consistent across old and new requests
Use agent only for new payments: leaves anything already in progress alone, and only applies the new agent to future invoices
Changing agents in bulk
To reassign several customers at once, tick them in the Customers tab and select Change agent. You'll be asked which agent to apply, and how to handle existing payment requests:
Use agent for existing and new payments: applies the new agent's setup to invoices already in progress as well as future ones, so behaviour stays consistent across old and new requests
Use agent only for new payments: leaves anything already in progress alone, and only applies the new agent to future invoices
Configuring an agent
1. Payment collection
Give your agent a name that describes its purpose. Here you can define your Preferred payment method for this agent.
If you select On Demand as your preferred payment method, by default the agent can still encourage Auto Collect (direct debit) in the future, when it judges this appropriate.
You can choose what should happen when a customer signs a direct debit mandate: whether only future payments should be collected by Auto Collect, or whether the agent should re-route existing payments to Auto Collect too.
If you want to rule out any possibility of collection by direct debit for this agent, you can toggle on Prevent this agent from using Auto Collect.
2. Communication
On Demand steps
Agents can run with manual reminders or optimised chasing for On Demand payments.
Optimised chasing automatically selects the most effective reminder sequence for each customer based on channel and timing. It's trained on your customers' payment history. New customers start on a standard sequence that adapts as payments come in. Works best paired with email and adaptive templates. When turned on, you can configure boundaries you are comfortable with. These include:
Minimum time between reminders
Preferred communication channels
Custom instructions & guidance for the agent (e.g. 'Use a friendlier tone for a first-time late payer')
You can learn more about how optimised chasing works in this guide - How to use optimised chasing to get paid faster.
Manually defined steps. If you have optimised chasing toggled off, you can set a fixed schedule - specific steps at set intervals. You can configure the channel, timing, sender & message for the following steps:
Initial delivery
Reminders (you can add multiple)
Overdue notices
Click on the pencil icon to open up the configuration for a specific step.
Auto Collect steps
You can configure your customer agent preferences for direct debit payments.
You can specify the timing, channel & frequency of:
Mandate request & reminders
Invoice issue emails (combined with the mandate request if the customer does not hold a mandate)
Direct debit collection retries
You can add flexibility for customers who are not keen to pay by direct debit:
Offer On Demand if mandate is not signed for customers who have not signed the mandate
Use On Demand if retries fail for customers where the direct debit has failed multiple times. Read more here
Finally, you can optionally add payment receipts, which email customers a confirmation when their payment has been successfully received.
3. Skills
You can turn on various skills to meet your customers' expectations and to encourage faster payments.
Enhanced skills
Where you see the enhanced badge, the feature carries an additional charge when you get paid using that feature.
Late fees automatically apply interest and a fixed charge to overdue invoices. The interest is calculated daily. The interest goes to you, the fixed fee goes to Adfin. Late fee rates are governed by UK law and cannot be increased or decreased. When paid, the reconciliation back into your accounting software is automated.
Standard skills
These skills do not incur additional cost and are included in Adfin standard pricing.
4. Assignment
Finally, you can define if this agent is the default agent for new customers.
Invoice overrides
Invoice overrides let you override how a specific invoice is collected, regardless of which agent that customer is assigned to. This is useful when invoices from a particular source should be treated differently from the rest of a customer's billing.
Today, invoice overrides are driven by your accounting software:
Xero: match invoices by branding theme
QuickBooks: match invoices by invoice terms
To set one up, go to Customer agents > Invoice overrides and click Add rule. You'll define two things:
Rule: the condition that picks out the invoices. For example, "Branding theme is 'Subscriptions'" or "Invoice terms is 'Net 30'". You can select more than one theme or term in a single rule.
Agent override: what the agent should do for invoices that match. Right now you can override the preferred payment method (On Demand or Auto Collect).
You can have one rule routing matching invoices to On Demand and one rule routing matching invoices to Auto Collect. Any invoice that doesn't match a rule falls back to whatever the customer's agent is set to do.
Customer overrides
You can also override agent behaviour for a single customer, without changing the agent itself. From the Customers tab, select a customer and open the Customer agent panel. From here you can:
Pause collection: pause On Demand (Pause OD) or Auto Collect (Pause AC) for this customer, without affecting anyone else on the same agent
Change agent: route this customer to a different agent
Preferred payment method: (On Demand or Auto Collect)
Skills: switch individual skills on or off (Statements, Late fees, Business card surcharging, and others)
Common questions
My customer wants to pay by card or bank transfer instead of direct debit. How do I set that up? Open their record from the Customers tab and set their preferred payment method to On Demand in the Customer agent panel. They'll receive payment links and can pay by bank, card, Apple Pay or Google Pay. If a customer feels like a poor fit for the agent they're on, you can also move them to a more suitable agent using Change agent.
How do I stop asking a customer for a direct debit mandate, but keep chasing payment? Cancel their pending mandate request, then set their preferred payment method to On Demand so future invoices go out as payment links with normal reminders. If you never want a group of customers asked for direct debit, assign them to an agent with Prevent this agent from using Auto Collect turned on.
I send my invoices from Xero (or QuickBooks) myself and don't want Adfin to email them as well. How do I stop the duplicate email? Adfin emails the invoice as the Initial delivery step of the customer agent. If you'd rather send the invoice yourself and only use Adfin for the payment link, open the agent and, in its manually defined delivery steps under Communication, remove the Initial delivery step. The invoice is still imported and still carries its Adfin payment link (for example on the Xero invoice PDF), so your customers can still pay. Adfin just won't send its own email. Any reminders you keep will still go out as normal. One thing to know: changes to an agent apply to every customer assigned to it. If you only want this for some customers, create a separate agent with Initial delivery removed and assign just those customers to it.