---
title: "What is the Collections Agent and how does it work?"
slug: "collections-agent-overview"
description: "Collections Agent recovers unpaid invoices by emailing customers, answering replies with verified data, and handing complex cases to your team."
updated: 2026-10-23T14:03:11Z
published: 2026-10-23T14:03:11Z
canonical: "help.frisbii.com/collections-agent-overview"
---

> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://help.frisbii.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# What is the Collections Agent and how does it work?

> [!TIP]
> **BETA**
> 
> The collections agent is currently in BETA. Find more information about the BETA phase and how to sign up for it here: [Collections Agent](https://go.frisbii.com/collections-agent/)

## Overview

The Collections Agent is an AI agent that helps you recover unpaid invoices. When a payment fails, the agent opens a collection case, contacts your customer by email and answers their replies based on verified invoice and payment data. It follows your policy and guidance, and hands cases that need a person to your team.

**Limitations**

- The agent communicates by email only.
- The agent never cancels invoices or subscriptions, issues refunds or credit notes, offers discounts or payment plans, writes off debt or hands cases to a debt collection agency.
- The agent does not retry payments on its own. Payment retries remain a decision for your team.

---

## How the Collections Agent works

1. **A case is created.** When an invoice payment fails, a collection case is created for the invoice. If you have enabled **Create new cases as pending**, the case waits until someone on your team hands it to the agent.
2. **The agent reviews the case.** It checks the customer, invoice, payment history and any previous conversation, and verifies the current invoice state before every action.
3. **The agent contacts your customer.** It writes an email in your customer's language. Each agent email contains your AI disclosure text and, if configured, your payment instructions with a payment link.
4. **The agent handles replies.** Depending on the reply, it answers invoice questions, sends an invoice copy or payment instructions, records a promise to pay, waits, or hands the case to your team.
5. **The case closes.** When the invoice is settled or cancelled, the case closes automatically and the agent stops contacting the customer.

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## What the agent does with common replies

| Customer says… | The agent… |
| --- | --- |
| "I'll pay on Friday." | Records a promise to pay if it is within your policy limits, and pauses reminders until then. |
| "I've already paid." | Checks the payment status and only confirms the payment if Frisbii shows it. |
| "Can you send the invoice again?" | Sends an invoice copy. |
| "How can I pay?" | Sends your payment instructions and payment link. |
| "I dispute this invoice.", "I need a payment plan." or "I want to talk to a person." | Hands the case to your team. |

---

## What you control

The agent always follows this order of rules: Frisbii safety rules (cannot be changed), then your policy, then your guidance. It considers customer requests only within these rules.

- **Policy**: Hard limits, such as the minimum time between contacts, the amount above which a human must review the case, the maximum number of days for a promise to pay, the maximum number of promises per case and whether new cases start as pending.
- **Guidance**: Free text describing tone of voice, reminder rhythm and how to treat your customers. Guidance can steer the agent but never overrides your policy.
- **Template setup**: Your email branding, footer and the required AI disclosure text.
- **Payment instructions**: A default text containing the `{payment_link}` placeholder. Frisbii replaces the placeholder with a checkout payment link for each invoice.

---

## Work with collection cases

On a case, you see the invoice, the payment history, the full email conversation and the reason for each step the agent took. You can do the following:

- **Take over**: Stop the agent and handle the case yourself.
- **Release**: Return the case to the unassigned queue.
- **Hand back** **to agent**: Return the case to the agent with a note, optionally from a specific date and time.
- **Re-evaluate now**: Ask the agent to review the case immediately.
- **Write to customer**: Write to the customer yourself. Emails you write manually don't contain the AI disclosure text.

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