EOFY Collections Health Check: 8 Signs to Replace Your System

End of financial year is the natural moment to take stock. Budgets are being set. Renewals are being signed. Operations leaders are pulling together the year-in-review and starting to think about what next year needs to look like.

For collections teams, the past twelve months have been a particular kind of difficult. Volumes are up. The 2025 Banking Code of Practice has broadened the definitions of financial difficulty and vulnerability. AFCA received a record 111,373 complaints in calendar 2025, up 14% on the year before, with failure to respond to financial difficulty requests sitting in the top five most common banking complaints. Regulators are paying close attention to how hardship is handled, and recent court action has shown the cost of getting it wrong.

Most collections leaders we speak to are doing the work. The harder question is whether the systems underneath them are still up to it.

Here are eight signs your current collections system isn’t keeping pace with where the work has moved.

Key Takeaways

• EOFY is the right moment to ask hard questions about your collections system. Renewals and budgets are being set, and next year’s volume and regulatory expectations are only going one way
• Collections work has changed materially in the last two years. Higher volumes, broader hardship and vulnerability definitions, sustained regulator focus, and customers expecting service that’s hard to deliver manually at scale
• Most systems showing strain don’t fail loudly. They produce workarounds, manual reporting, and quiet inconsistency that compounds over time
• The right system reduces operational risk, not just operational cost. Audit trail depth, suppression logic, and reporting are now table stakes, not nice-to-haves
• Eight specific signs are worth looking for. If three or more apply, the conversation about replacing or upgrading the system is one to have this side of the new financial year

 

Why This Conversation Matters Right Now

Collections software was historically built for a different problem. Track who owes what. Send the letter. Log the call. Update the balance. The work was mostly about debt recovery, and the systems were built around that.

That’s not the job anymore. Modern collections operations are managing financial difficulty, vulnerability identification, hardship assessment, complaint handling, regulator-grade reporting and consistent customer treatment across multiple channels, all while keeping the recovery numbers where they need to be. The job has expanded. Many systems haven’t.

EOFY is the moment to be honest about whether the platform underneath your operation is helping or holding it back. Eight signs to test against.

 

Sign 1: You Rely on Workarounds for Things the System Should Do

Spreadsheets running alongside the platform. Manual checks before sending letters. Custom queries to pull basic reports. Side processes for hardship that should be in the core workflow.

Workarounds aren’t a sign your team is resourceful. They’re a sign the system isn’t doing what it should. Each one is a place where consistency breaks down, where the audit trail gets thin, and where a regulator-facing question becomes harder to answer.

 

Sign 2: You Can’t Easily Suppress Activity by Case Status

A customer is in hardship. The dunning letters keep going. A customer has lodged a complaint. The automated SMS reminders are still scheduled. The system kept doing what it was told, because it can’t be told otherwise.

This is one of the higher-risk gaps in older systems. The 2025 Banking Code, ASIC’s complaints handling guidance and basic conduct expectations all assume you can pause automated activity on a case when it needs to be paused. If your platform can’t do that without a workaround, that’s a problem.

 

Sign 3: Your Audit Trail Is Patchy

Someone asks what happened on a case six months ago. The reply is “give us a day or two and we’ll piece it together.” Or the audit shows what was done, but not by whom, or not when, or not why.

A good audit trail captures the full lifecycle of a case. Every communication sent and received. Every action taken and by whom. Every status change with a timestamp. Every decision with its rationale. When a customer complains, when AFCA asks, when an auditor reviews, the answer should be in the system.

 

Sign 4: Reporting Is a Manual Exercise

Board pack reports take a week of manual work. Compliance reports require pulling data from three places. The same numbers come out slightly differently depending on who runs the report.

Modern collections operations need reporting that’s available on demand, consistent across the team, and configurable for different audiences. Board reporting is different to operational reporting, which is different to regulator reporting. A platform that handles one of those well but fails the others is a half-platform.

 

Sign 5: The Platform Doesn’t Integrate Cleanly With the Rest of the Stack

Data gets re-keyed between the collections system and the core banking, lending or finance platform. Customer interactions in your contact centre aren’t visible in the collections case file. The payment system updates aren’t reflected in case status without a manual step.

Collections doesn’t operate in isolation. It needs a flow of data with origination, servicing, customer contact, payments and finance. A platform that can’t integrate cleanly with the rest of the operating environment forces manual reconciliation, and manual reconciliation is where errors and inconsistencies live.

 

Sign 6: Configuring a New Process Means a Project

Regulators change the rules. The Banking Code is updated. A new product type is launched. A new hardship category needs to be tracked. The response from your platform should be “we can configure that this week.” If the response is “that’s a development project, six months and a budget request,” the platform isn’t keeping pace with the speed of change.

Configurable workflows, business rules and case types are now table stakes. The pace of regulatory and operational change isn’t slowing down.

 

Sign 7: You Can’t Quickly Evidence What You Did and Why

A customer escalates a complaint. A regulator asks for the rationale on a decision. Internal audit wants to test a sample of hardship cases.

The right system gives you the answer in minutes. The wrong one gives you a project. Evidence isn’t just the audit trail. It’s the ability to demonstrate, on demand, that the process you say happens is the one that actually happened. For each case. Across the portfolio.

 

Sign 8: Your Team Is Spending Time on Tasks the System Should Handle

Manually reading inbound emails to triage cases. Manually drafting standard letters. Manually checking which cases are due for follow-up. Manually building the next week’s contact list.

None of these tasks need human judgement. They’re the kind of work that a well-designed platform should make routine. If your team’s calendar is full of administrative work that doesn’t need their experience or empathy, the platform isn’t doing its share.

 

How Many of These Apply?

None of these signs on their own are a crisis. Most operations have one or two.

Three or more, and the conversation about whether the platform is still fit for purpose is one worth having before next year’s plan is locked in. Five or more, and the cost of standing still is almost certainly higher than the cost of changing.

EOFY is when these conversations happen most naturally. Budgets are open. Renewals are being signed or paused. The new financial year is a chance to plan something different rather than committing to another twelve months of the same.

 

Where 365 Collect Fits

365 Collect is a collections and receivables management platform built on the Microsoft ecosystem. It’s designed for collections operations in regulated environments, with the operational discipline the work now requires. And because it’s built on Microsoft, it has access to Microsoft’s enterprise AI capability that standalone collections platforms can’t match.

That includes configurable workflows that adapt to changing requirements without a development project. A complete audit trail covering communications, actions and decisions. Suppression logic that pauses automated activity on cases in hardship, complaint or dispute status. Reporting that supports both day-to-day operations and board-level visibility. And clean integration with the rest of the Microsoft stack, including finance, customer service and contact centre platforms.

Whether 365 Collect is the right fit for your environment depends on a lot of specifics, including the size of your portfolio, the complexity of your products, and the rest of your technology stack. If you’d like to talk through whether it could fit, get in touch.

 

Heading Into the New Financial Year

Collections is harder than it used to be. More volume, more nuance, more scrutiny, higher expectations on every dimension. The good news is that the work itself, well done, is still some of the most consequential a financial services business does. The teams that get it right keep customers in their products, protect the portfolio, and build trust with the regulator at the same time.

The platform underneath that work matters. EOFY is the moment to be honest about whether yours is still pulling its weight.

If any of the signs above resonated, . We work with collections operations across Australia and New Zealand to understand where the system is helping, where it’s holding the team back, and what a better setup could look like for the new financial year.

 

FAQs

Why is EOFY a good time to review collections software?

Three reasons. Budgets are being set for the new financial year. Many software contracts renew on a financial year cycle, which means renewal decisions are live. And the previous twelve months of operational and regulatory pressure are visible enough to be honest about what’s working and what isn’t.

How big does a collections operation need to be before specialised software is worth it?

It’s less about size and more about complexity. A small operation handling straightforward consumer credit may run fine on a basic system. A larger or more complex operation, especially in regulated industries or with multiple product types, generally benefits from a purpose-built platform. The trigger point is usually the moment workarounds and spreadsheets start carrying material risk.

What’s the difference between collections software and a debtor management module in our ERP or core banking system?

Most ERP and core banking systems include some form of debtor management or arrears tracking, but they’re typically built for accounting and recovery rather than the full collections lifecycle. Specialised collections platforms add workflow, customer communications, hardship handling, complaints management, compliance evidencing and configurable rules, all of which sit outside the scope of an ERP module.

How long does it take to replace a collections platform?

It depends on the complexity of the operation, the cleanliness of the existing data, and the integration requirements. A straightforward replacement in a less complex environment might take three to six months. A larger replacement with multiple product types and significant integration can take six to twelve months. The planning conversation is often longer than the build.

What should we prioritise when comparing platforms?

Configurability of workflows and business rules. Depth of audit trail. Suppression logic for hardship and complaint cases. Reporting flexibility. Integration with the rest of the stack. Vendor track record in your industry. Total cost of ownership across the contract term. And honestly, how the vendor talks about regulated industry requirements. If they don’t understand them at depth, that’s information.

How do we make the business case internally?

Quantify the workaround cost. The hours spent on manual reporting, manual triage, manual exception handling. Quantify the operational risk. The chance of a missed hardship request, a complaint mishandled, a regulator question that takes weeks to answer. Then quantify the opportunity. The improvements in cycle time, customer outcomes, and team retention that come with a platform that pulls its weight. The business case usually writes itself.

Does this apply to non-bank lenders, BNPL providers and other non-APRA-regulated entities?

Yes. The operational reality is the same regardless of which regulator you primarily answer to. Non-bank lenders sit under ASIC’s conduct framework via the National Consumer Credit Protection Act, and since 10 June 2025 BNPL providers are captured in the same framework. The eight signs apply equally.

How does 365 Collect help?

365 Collect provides the operational platform layer that supports the discipline modern collections work requires. Configurable workflows, complete audit trails, suppression logic for hardship and complaint cases, and reporting that supports both day-to-day operations and board-level visibility. Built on Microsoft Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform, it works alongside the broader governance and operating model decisions that always sit with the organisation. Get in touch if you’d like to talk through whether it could be a fit.