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CobrApp

Compared by category

Collection app comparison: what suits the way you collect

You will not find a table here where we win at everything. We compare the five real ways of running a portfolio and we also say when CobrApp is not what you need.

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We do not name third-party brands. We have no way to verify what each app on the market does today, and publishing an unverified table is exactly what makes people choose badly.

The categories

The five ways of running a collections portfolio

Before comparing features it helps to know which category you are in. Almost every bad decision comes from picking the wrong category, not the wrong product.

  • The notebook

    Whoever is starting out, and whoever has collected the same way for 20 years.

    What it does well. It opens in a second, it never runs out of battery and nobody has to learn how to use it.Where it breaks. You carry the balance in your head. There is no copy if it gets wet, gets lost, or leaves with the collector who quit. And if a customer disputes what they paid, your word against theirs is all the evidence there is.

  • Excel or Google Sheets

    The natural step after the notebook.

    What it does well. It adds, calculates, filters and exports. If you already have a computer, it costs nothing more.Where it breaks. The sheet has an owner: somebody built the formulas and somebody maintains them. On the street you still write on paper and type it up at night. That double entry is where the discrepancies are born, and nobody sees them until the monthly close.

  • Generic finance app

    Whoever searches for “app to track my money” and downloads the first result.

    What it does well. It records income and expenses, it is free and it explains itself.Where it breaks. They are built for your money, not for your portfolio. They have no concept of a customer with a loan, installments and arrears; they do not know who is due today; they do not print proof of payment; and they generally need a connection.

  • ERP or corporate collections software

    Companies collecting invoices from other companies.

    What it does well. Accounts receivable, e-invoicing, bank reconciliation, accounting and management reporting. For a B2B portfolio it is the right answer, and there is no shortcut.Where it breaks. It is billed per user, implemented over weeks, and somebody has to administer it. For a neighborhood route collecting cash it is like buying a truck to deliver empanadas.

  • App specialized in daily collection

    Field collectors, independent lenders and shops that sell on credit.

    What it does well. It assumes you collect cash, on the street, and often with no signal. Every decision follows from that: offline, receipt in hand, route by area and cash close.Where it breaks. It is not an accounting system and it does not issue invoices. If your collection starts from an e-invoice, this whole category falls short.

If you are in the second group and do not want to install anything yet, at least build a proper collections Excel template with the formulas in place: it beats an improvised sheet. And if you have decided to make the jump, the collections platform is the category that centralizes customers, payments and reports in one place.

Point by point

What each category solves, point by point

The table describes how the typical category behaves, not a specific product. “Halfway” means it can be done, but it depends on somebody maintaining it by hand.

Comparison of nine collection criteria across notebook, spreadsheet, generic finance app, collections ERP and app specialized in daily collection.
What you need to do Notebook Spreadsheet Generic app Collections ERP Daily collection app
Record the payment standing at the door Yes No Yes Halfway Yes
Work out installment, balance and arrears without you doing the arithmetic No Halfway No Yes Yes
Hand over a printed receipt on the spot Halfway No No Halfway Yes
See who is missing today without reviewing the whole portfolio No Halfway No Yes Yes
Several collectors, each with their own route and permissions No No No Yes Yes
Keep working with no signal Yes Halfway No No Yes
Backup outside the phone or the notebook No Halfway Yes Yes Yes
E-invoicing and B2B receivables No No No Yes No
Start today without paying anything Yes Halfway Yes No Yes

Look at the second-to-last row. The only category that covers e-invoicing and business-to-business receivables is the ERP, and there the specialized app — CobrApp included — says no.

The scene

The same arithmetic in all five tools

Take a one-month loan: $900 at 20% over 30 daily installments. Redo the arithmetic yourself: 900 × 1.20 = 1,080 total to repay, and 1,080 ÷ 30 = 36 per daily installment. Now the customer pays $22 on Tuesday and on Wednesday nobody is home.

Daily collection app

COBRAPP

Tuesday · partial payment

Total lent $ 900
Installment today $ 36
Paid Tuesday $ 22
Still owed on it $ 14
Overdue installments 1

In arrears

Wednesday: nobody home

  1. In the notebook. You write 22 and work out the next day’s balance in your head. The day you did not go is written down nowhere.
  2. In the spreadsheet. It adds up, provided that night you type both days in and the arrears formula is still alive after three months of copying and pasting rows.
  3. In the generic app. An income of 22 goes in. The app does not know 14 was still owed, that a Wednesday fell overdue, or which customer we are talking about.
  4. In the ERP. It adds up perfectly, but first the customer had to be created, the collection document issued, and a connection available to record it.
  5. In the daily collection app. You record the payment standing at the door, with no signal. The installment stays partial with its $14 balance, the customer leaves with the printed receipt, and on Wednesday they appear in the arrears list on their own without you reviewing anything.

Honestly

When CobrApp is not your best option

A comparison without this section is advertising. These are the four cases where we will get in your way more than we help.

  • B2B collections with e-invoicing

    If your collection starts from an invoice that has to be filed with the tax authority, matched against the bank statement and taken into the accounts, you need an accounts-receivable ERP. CobrApp manages loans and installments, not tax invoices.

  • Full business accounting

    We control the portfolio: capital on the street, interest, arrears and takings. We do not produce financial statements or tax filings. What you can do is export everything to Excel or CSV and hand it to your accountant every month.

  • A call center operation

    If your collections are done by phone, with a dialer, shifts and per-agent scripts, your tool is a different one. Ours is the street. For that part of the trade we have the guide to phone collection scripts, which you can use with whatever tool you already have.

  • Five customers and a notebook that works

    If you lend to five people you know, collect on Sundays and have never lost a cent, installing an app is extra work with no reward. Come back when you have two areas, a collector helping you, or the first customer who disputes a payment.

The trial

How to test a collection app in three days

Comparing feature lists is useless: they all say the same thing. This trial is run with your real route and commits you to nothing, because the free plan allows up to 20 customers and 2 loans each.

  1. Day 1

    Load ten real customers

    With their names, addresses and current balances. Invented customers never reveal the problems your portfolio actually has: the one who pays in dribs and drabs, the one with two loans, the one who pays in another currency.

  2. Day 1

    Work the route in airplane mode

    This is the test that separates apps that say “works offline” from the ones that really do. Record the whole day’s payments with no connection and see whether it syncs on reconnection without losing anything or duplicating payments.

  3. Day 2

    Print a real receipt

    With the Bluetooth printer you are going to use, on the roll you buy. A badly cut receipt, with an unreadable balance or without the business name, is no use in front of a customer.

  4. Day 3

    Export before you commit

    Before uploading the whole portfolio, export to Excel or CSV and open it. If you cannot download the information you entered yourself, that information is not yours.

  5. Day 3

    Let your collector use it, not you

    You will be patient with it; they will not. If your collector cannot record a payment in under a minute without asking you anything, the app failed, however good the reporting dashboard looks.

The fine print

What no comparison ever shows

  1. The cash close is the acid test.

    It does not matter how good the app looks: at the end of the day what the collector hands over in cash has to match what they recorded on the route. If finding that out means adding up by hand, the tool did not remove work, it moved it.

  2. Ask about handover, not about backup.

    Every option says it keeps a copy. The question that separates them is what happens the day a collector leaves: how much work it takes to move their portfolio to someone else without losing the payment history or having to ask the customers how much they had paid. In the notebook the answer is “you rebuild it”; in a shared sheet it depends on who has the latest version; and in the specialized category it has to be reassigning the route and carrying on.

  3. The price is not the monthly fee.

    It is the monthly fee plus the time to load the portfolio plus what it costs to leave if you change your mind. That is why Excel/CSV export matters as much as the price. You can see what each tier includes on plans and pricing.

  4. The route beats the report.

    A dashboard with charts does not make you collect more; a visit order that respects the streets does. If you are going to compare on one feature, compare how each option builds the day’s collection routes.

Next

To finish deciding

CobrApp does not grant credit or lend money. It is a technology platform for collections management and portfolio control of loans issued by third parties.

Common questions

Frequently asked questions when comparing collection apps

What people evaluating alternatives ask when they want to decide well.

How do I compare collection apps without losing weeks to trials?
With a short, honest test: load ten real customers (not invented ones), work the route with the phone in airplane mode, record the day’s payments, print a real receipt and export everything to Excel when you get back. In three days you know whether the app understands how you collect. What does not work is looking at screenshots and feature lists: they nearly all say the same thing.

Is a generic finance app any use for daily collection?
For tracking your own spending, yes. For collecting, no. A finance app records income of $22, but it does not know which customer it came from, does not know the installment was $36, does not flag the overdue day, does not print proof and cannot assign the route to another collector. You end up using the app and the notebook at the same time, which is worse than using just the notebook.

When is a collections ERP better than a daily collection app?
When what you collect are invoices from other companies. If your operation needs e-invoicing with the tax authority, bank reconciliation, integrated accounting or a call-center team with a dialer, a collections ERP is the right tool and CobrApp does not replace it. The specialized app wins in the opposite scenario: cash, the street, short installments and weak signal.

Can I get my data out if the app turns out not to suit me?
In CobrApp, yes: you export customers, loans and payments to Excel or CSV whenever you want. It is the first test you should run on any app before uploading your whole portfolio, not the last. If you cannot download the information you entered yourself, that information is not really yours.

What is the difference between a free plan and a trial with an expiry date?
That CobrApp’s free plan does not expire. It includes up to 20 customers and 2 loans each, which covers a whole small route: recording payments, calculating interest, generating receipts and seeing the day’s close. A demo with an expiry date forces you to decide in a hurry; here you decide when your portfolio grows. The paid plans and what each includes are on the pricing page.

Why does this comparison not name the other collection apps?
Because we cannot verify them. Every product changes features without notice, and a table where we decide what the competitor can do will always favor us. That is why we compare categories — notebook, spreadsheet, generic finance app, collections ERP and app specialized in daily collection — which are stable and which you can check yourself against whatever app you are looking at. If a comparison hands you a table full of crosses for the competition and ticks for itself, it is an advertisement.

I already keep the portfolio in a spreadsheet. Is it worth changing?
It depends where you write on the street. If you collect with the sheet open on the phone and write nothing on paper, the sheet is working and changing only makes work. If on the route you write on paper and type it up at night, you have double entry, and that is where the discrepancies appear that nobody sees until the monthly close. That is the moment to change, not before. If you would rather push the sheet a while longer, first build a proper collections Excel template with the formulas in place.

If I switch, do I have to retype the whole portfolio?
You do have to load the customers with their current balance: no app can guess what is written in your notebook. The sensible thing is not to migrate everything at once. Start with one area, or with the customers who have an active loan; let the ones about to finish close out in the notebook or the sheet; and when that area has balanced for a week, move on to the next. That way, if something does not convince you, you stopped in time and without having moved the whole portfolio.

End of day

$ 3,470.00 Balanced

What a route of 37 visits with 4 collectors brings in on one day, with the portfolio balanced at close.

Try it with your own route

Ten real customers, one day on the street and the phone in airplane mode. That will tell you.

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CobrApp does not grant credit or lend money. It is a technology platform for collections management and portfolio control of loans issued by third parties.