Adfin | How BM Technologies cut payment delays 10x with Adfin

‍Since joining Adfin, BM Technologies has grown payment volume through the platform 8x, and reduced the average days late on payments from 69 to 7 - compared to the 23.4-day average for UK MSPs.

BM Technologies is a Rochdale-based managed service provider (MSP) supporting customers across the UK, from small businesses with one to ten users through to larger corporate clients with more complex billing needs. The company provides IT, cybersecurity, web, and telecoms services. James Bannon is BM's Operations Director, responsible for the operational side of the business, including projects and onboarding.

BM is a family-run business (James’ daughter was working next to him as BM’s chief colourer during the interview) and that comes through in how James talks about the company's approach to customers. The company aims to always be patient and personal, even when someone pays late.

"We're family run. So it's not like you've got paid on the day, so we're going to cut them off."

That same instinct, to look after the relationship rather than force the issue, is exactly what shaped how James approached fixing BM's payment and credit control problems.

The challenge: an inflexible system that couldn't keep up

Before Adfin, BM collected direct debit payments through another provider. Something wasn't quite working, so James started looking at other options.

"We'd been looking for an alternative solution provider for a while. We found the system wasn't intuitive. It didn't give us information or insights as quickly as we needed."

Signing up to direct debit meant manually sending a mandate and hoping the customer completed it. Many never did, and this behaviour wasn’t driven by reluctance to pay, but because the request got missed or buried in an inbox.

"Everything with the previous provider was very manual. We’d have to manually send a direct debit mandate and own all of the chasing ourselves."

The result: many customers stayed off direct debit altogether and consistently paid late, not through any bad intent, but because chasing them required constant manual admin the team didn't always have time for.

Switching to Adfin

Rather than migrate their whole customer base straight away, BM started small — moving a handful of customers across first to test the platform's data, speed of settlement, and ease of use — before deciding to move everyone over.

"We started small — a couple of customers, just to test and see if that worked. We were happy with it: the data, the intuitiveness, the speed for payments and fees. So we agreed to move everyone over, which was a really good decision." ‍

One thing made the switch easy: Adfin managed the entire migration, including carrying over existing direct debit mandates, without any of BM's customers needing to do anything themselves.

"It was a very hands-off approach for us, which was really smooth. Everything went over as it was."

The impact: before and after

Credit control, before: chasing customers to sign a mandate or pay an overdue invoice was a manual, one-off effort — send the request, and if it wasn't actioned, there was no automatic follow-up.

Credit control, after: Adfin's automatic reminders and continuous direct debit sign-up prompts have pushed far more customers onto direct debit, without BM's team lifting a finger.

"The automatic reminders and the continuous prompts for signing your direct debit have increased sign-ups massively. A lot of the time people don't want to sign a direct debit — not because they don't want to, it's that the email landed at the wrong time. What we noticed was that a lot of our customers went onto direct debit because they were continuously reminded, and that wasn't a manual process we needed to do."

That shift has had a knock-on effect on cash flow, too. With more customers collected by direct debit and everything running on the same schedule, money reaches BM faster.

"That's increased our time to pay, because everything's going out at the same time — the money's collected and returned quicker. It's improved our cash flow, being able to access that money quicker."

Payments, before: limited payment options and slower settlement through their previous provider.

Payments, after: customers can pay by card or direct debit, settlement is faster, and BM can manually speed up a payment when needed.

"Having the payment-by-link option is really useful, and the speed at which money returns to us is much quicker than it was with our previous provider."

A customer story: late payer to fully automated

James points to one recruitment client in particular as an example of Adfin's impact. The client wasn't paying late out of any bad faith — he ran several businesses under different names and found the admin of manually reviewing and paying each invoice easy to put off.

"It probably took about 16 or 17 emails, continuously prompting him. But eventually he said, 'yeah, I'm just going to do it.'"

Now, each of his businesses runs on its own separate direct debit, cutting out the manual admin of matching invoices to the right business and reference — while he still has full visibility to check and query invoices if something looks wrong.

"It's taken admin time away from him. He still gets all the invoices, he can still check if there's an issue, but because it's automated, billing is very rarely wrong, which helps." ‍

That reliability is helped by an unusual setup: BM built its own PSA (professional services automation) platform in-house, rather than relying on an off-the-shelf tool.‍

"We've used every PSA that's on the market... none of them did what we wanted them to do. So we designed our own suite — it manages our invoicing, quotes, agreements, CRM, and ticketing, all in one system, on a two-way API sync straight through to Xero. Everything is instantaneous, and Adfin then syncs into Xero that way too."

What's changed day-to-day

The combined effect for BM has been fewer customers paying late, faster access to cash, and far less manual chasing for James's team — all without disrupting customers, who never had to re-sign a direct debit mandate or change how they interact with BM.

Since joining Adfin, BM has grown payment volume through the platform 8x, and its average days late on payments has dropped from 69 days to just 7 — well below the 23.4-day average across UK MSPs.

Advice to other MSPs

For MSPs sitting with the same niggles BM had — late payments, high fees, low direct debit take-up — James's advice is not to let inertia be the reason to stay put.‍

"Change can be uncomfortable, but sometimes you just have to look for something different and expect more from the solutions you implement. If you've got those niggles about late payments and fees, and the ability to get people onto direct debit, I wouldn't hesitate to switch."

And, he adds, the switch itself doesn't have to be disruptive:

"You don't actually have to worry about the switch, because it's entirely hands-off. No one had to re-sign their direct debits. We weren't going through an admin process that was disturbing our current customers or creating more admin for them."

How BM Technologies cut payment delays 10x with Adfin

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