Leaving Gravy: Add Up What Percentage-of-Recovery Pricing Quietly Took

Percentage-of-recovery pricing may seem affordable at first, but it quietly increases as your business grows. This pricing model is based on a percentage of recovered revenue, and it's designed to appear painless at signup. However, its real cost is revealed when you compare it to the actual work required to recover those revenues.

To evaluate this pricing, start by auditing your recovered payments. Break down the recoveries into three categories: native platform retries, action-led recoveries (like retries, emails, and payment updates), and unresolved cases. The second category, action-led recoveries, is the only one that can be honestly attributed to the tool, and it's usually smaller than the headline recovery number.

For example, if a business recovered $9,600 in a month at a 30% fee, and $3,100 of that was recovered through native retries alone, the tool's contribution is actually $6,500. This means the fee is about 44% of the value added. If the business doubles its recovered revenue to $19,200 a month, the fee doubles as well, reaching $5,760 a month. This compounding effect makes the price grow quietly with your success.

When switching tools, remember that the cost isn't just the fee. The time and effort required to rebuild your dunning emails, retry cadence, and reporting definitions should also be factored in. After switching, verify that every failing account carried over, that no renewals fell through the cracks, and that dunning emails are still sending correctly.

Compare your total cost for the month, including the fee and your time, against the old percentage invoice for a similar month. A tool that survives this thorough comparison has earned your confidence.