How VAT IT Compliance Reduced Overdue Balances by 44%

For over two decades, VAT Compliance has helped multinational corporations and foreign businesses navigate the complexities of VAT recovery and tax compliance. With a global footprint across nearly 50 countries, VAT Compliance has built a reputation as a trusted partner for corporations operating across the world.

However, as the company scaled, its finance team struggled to keep up with the increasing volume of transactions and collections. It lacked automation, real-time financial tracking, and structured follow-ups. This meant that overdue invoices accumulated, reporting remained fragmented, and the team spent excessive time chasing payments manually. 

VAT Compliance needed an AI-powered solution that could transform its financial operations and integrate seamlessly with Sage. That’s where Kolleno came in.

Volume outpaced the process. VAT Compliance was handling invoices from nearly 50 countries, but its collections process was not built for that scale. Sage held the accounting data, but nothing talked to it: payments were entered by hand, tracked in spreadsheets, and reconciled one at a time. Every new payment meant updating two systems separately, and the records rarely agreed. “Something needed to change,” says Jonathan Long, Head of Finance. “We knew there must be a better way to manage our accounts receivables process, but we just weren’t sure how.”

Without a system to prioritize accounts, the team worked off instinct. Follow-ups went out by email, with no structured way to decide who to chase first, so high-risk accounts sometimes waited as long as everyone else. Reporting was just as scattered: pulling a single picture of collections performance meant compiling data from multiple spreadsheets by hand, a process that was slow and easy to get wrong. The team wasn’t short on effort. It was short on one place to see the whole picture and act on it.

Kolleno stood out for two reasons: it plugged straight into Sage, and it brought the automation and analytics the team had been missing. “Kolleno stood out because it not only integrated perfectly with Sage but also offered the automation and analytics we desperately needed,” says Jonathan. Once connected, customer data, invoices, and payments started flowing between the two systems on their own. A payment recorded in Kolleno now shows up in Sage instantly, and custom field mappings meant the platform adapted to VAT Compliance’s own setup instead of forcing a generic one on it.

Kolleno also took over deciding who to contact and when. The platform automatically creates and assigns tasks based on aging balances, invoice amounts, and customer history, so nobody starts the day guessing. “Task management was huge for us,” says Simphiwe Thabethe, an Accounts Receivable Specialist. “Instead of spending the first hour of each day figuring out which customers to contact, Kolleno automatically prioritizes our workload.” The system also flags disputes automatically and adjusts task priorities over time as it learns which outreach works best for which customers.

Reporting moved from spreadsheets to a single dashboard covering aging receivables, collection rates, and payment trends across every market VAT Compliance operates in. “Kolleno provides a bird’s eye view of our financial position at any point in time,” says Jonathan. Reports that once took hours to compile now generate and distribute themselves, and each team member can set up their own view.

Within five months, 90% of payments were being collected on time. Overdue balances were down 44% in the first three months, and the team was saving 12 hours a week by the end of the first month.

The daily work changed as much as the numbers did. Manual reconciliation gave way to systems that update each other automatically, and routine follow-ups now run on their own, freeing the team to actually talk to customers instead of chasing them. Reports that used to take hours now take seconds, and managers can spot a problem account before it becomes a bigger one instead of after.