Atlas FAQ
The questions finance teams ask before they start.
Collected from every Atlas page and grouped by the part of receivables they are about. Each answer links to the page that covers it in full.
01
About Atlas
What does Atlas do?
Atlas is accounts receivable software worked by agents. It onboards new customers and reads their credit applications, rates every account's credit from how it pays you, keeps invoices and payments in step with your ERP, follows up every open balance by email, text and phone, captures promises and payment plans, answers disputes with the evidence, applies cash, and closes out balances that will not resolve, on the record.
Which ERPs does Atlas work with?
Atlas works on SAP S/4HANA, Oracle NetSuite and Microsoft Dynamics 365, and lists Rillet. It reads customers, invoices, payments and credit memos down from the ERP, works on them, and writes changes back to the ERP first. The ERP stays your system of record. Connections are configured when your instance is deployed.
Does Atlas act on its own?
Yes. Atlas's agents send, call, apply and update on their own, inside rules no agent can change: calls and texts only between 8am and 9pm in the customer's time zone, consent on file for each channel, one touch per customer per day, and an AI disclosure on every call and text. You flag any step for review and flagged work waits in the Approval Queue. Charge-off and legal waits for a person on every step.
Where does Atlas run?
Atlas can be hosted by Ferrata, with your company's data in its own database behind its own login, or run in your VPC, on-prem or air-gapped in your private environment. It is the same Atlas in each: the same agents, the same Approval Queue, the same audit trail.
Is Atlas priced per user?
No. Atlas is never priced per seat: every plan includes unlimited users.
How do we start with Atlas?
Book a thirty-minute call and bring your aging report. Ferrata shows you how Atlas would work it, and tells you plainly if the sequencing is wrong and you should fix something else first. The private beta is also open to a small group of finance teams.
02
Credit
How does Atlas use AI in accounts receivable?
Atlas runs AI agents across the receivables lifecycle: it reads credit applications, rates every account from its payment history, applies payments, and follows up every open balance by email, text and phone on the sequence the company sets. Each step loads the account's whole record from the ERP, and code checks every invoice number and dollar figure an agent writes before anything is sent.
Can an accounts receivable AI agent work on our existing ERP?
Yes. Atlas connects to SAP S/4HANA, NetSuite and Dynamics 365, reads customers, invoices and payments down, and writes changes back to the ERP first. The ERP stays the system of record; Atlas works on top of it rather than replacing it.
How does Atlas score a business customer's credit?
Atlas rates every account from 1 to 100 using that customer's own payment history with your company: days to pay against terms, promises kept, disputes, short payments, returned payments and balance trend. Higher is better. The rating is rebuilt every night after 2am in your time zone, with the reasons shown and a recommended credit limit beside it.
Is the AI Credit Rating a bureau or agency credit score?
No. The Atlas AI Credit Rating is an internal rating built only from a customer's payment history with your company. It is not a credit bureau score or a rating agency grade, and Atlas never presents it as one. It answers a narrower, more useful question: how this customer actually pays you.
Can Atlas process credit applications automatically?
Yes. Atlas receives credit applications by email or a secure link, reads the W-9, trade references, financial statements and resale certificates, fills in the application and checks it against the company's credit policy. Anything missing goes back to the applicant in a single request. A person makes the decision.
Does Atlas make credit decisions on its own?
No. The Atlas Credit Decision agent recommends one decision, with a limit and the reasons, and every step waits for a person to review. It acts on nothing by itself. Once someone approves, Atlas writes the terms and credit limit to the ERP.
03
Collections and follow-up
How does Atlas run collections end to end?
Atlas puts every customer with an open balance with one agent: Standard follow-up before and just after the due date, Collections from 15 days past due, Promise to pay once a date is agreed, Dispute & deductions when an invoice is contested, and Charge-off & Legal at 90 days. Each agent emails, texts and calls on its own sequence, reads the replies, and moves the account on when a trigger fires, until the balance is paid or properly closed.
Is Atlas a debt collection agency?
No. Atlas is collections software that a company runs on its own receivables, in its own name, with its own customers. It works B2B balances owed to your business and follows contact hours, consent and AI-disclosure rules on every call and text. Balances that never resolve go to your attorney with a complete file.
How does Atlas decide when to send a payment reminder?
Atlas builds each account's sequence from the cadence you set per channel: how often email, text and voice may be used and from which day. Each step is due at 10am in the customer's own time zone, inside the agent's contact hours, with at most one touch per customer per day across every agent.
Can Atlas send payment reminders by text and phone, not just email?
Yes. Atlas sends reminders by email, text and voice. Texts and calls go only to numbers with consent on file and only between 8am and 9pm in the customer's time zone, and every one says it comes from an AI assistant. Replying STOP, or asking not to be called, ends that channel at once.
Can Atlas call customers about overdue invoices on its own?
Yes. Calls are steps in an agent's sequence, such as Collections calling the AP lead at 15 days past due. Atlas fills the call script from the account's live record, places the call inside contact hours, verifies the customer, and records the outcome. You choose which outcomes wait for review.
What does Atlas know when a customer calls in?
Atlas identifies the caller from the number and pulls in the account: open invoices, the oldest balance, promises on file, disputes, past conversations and your own rules for that agent. Nothing about an invoice is shared until the caller is verified.
04
Promises, disputes, cash and charge-off
How does Atlas capture a promise to pay?
Atlas reads replies and listens on calls for a commitment, then records the amount, the date and the payment method on the account. The account moves into the Promise to pay agent and the customer gets a written confirmation with a payment link.
What happens if the customer misses the promised date?
Atlas acts the same morning: a text with a retry link, then a call to set a new date within a week. If the customer misses a second time, the account returns to the Collections agent with the history attached.
How does Atlas handle a customer dispute from start to finish?
Atlas acknowledges the dispute the same day, gathers the purchase order, invoice, proof of delivery and the customer's emails, then sends a rebuttal with the evidence or drafts a credit memo when the customer is right. The resolution is recorded on the account and normal follow-up resumes.
Can Atlas use our email history as evidence?
Yes. When a customer disputes an order or a price, Atlas looks through the email history on the account for the customer's own confirmation and quotes it in the reply, with the related documents attached.
How does Atlas apply a payment end to end?
Atlas reads the payment from the bank feed, the portal or a payment link, reads any remittance advice from the AR inbox, matches each line to open invoices, applies the payment and writes the application back to your ERP. Short amounts open a deduction, and uncertain matches wait for a person.
Can Atlas read remittance emails and attachments?
Yes. Remittance advice that arrives in the AR inbox, in the body or as an attachment, is read line by line and matched to open invoices by number, amount and customer.
When does Atlas move an account to charge-off?
When an account reaches 90 days unresolved, Atlas moves it from Collections or Promise to pay into Charge-off & Legal. Paying in full takes it out of any agent at any point.
Does Atlas write off bad debt on its own?
No. Charge-off & Legal waits for a person on every step, and that review cannot be turned off. Atlas marks the balance for charge-off with the full history attached; the write-off itself is your accounting team's decision under your own policy.
05
Your ERP, deployment and data
Does Atlas replace our ERP?
No. Atlas layers on top of SAP, NetSuite or Dynamics, which stays the system of record. Atlas reads your customers, invoices, payments and credit memos, works on them with agents, and writes any change back to the ERP first.
How does Atlas keep its data in step with the ERP?
Atlas keeps every record the ERP sends in a raw layer, verbatim and append-only, storing a new version only when the content changes. It maps those records into one canonical model that every agent reads, so balances and history match what the ERP holds.
Which ERPs does Atlas work with?
Atlas works with SAP S/4HANA, Oracle NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Rillet, along with bank feeds and AR mailboxes. Each connection is configured when your Atlas instance is deployed.
Can Atlas write to our ERP, and can we stop it?
Atlas writes back only when write-back is switched on, which happens at deployment and can be set one kind of change at a time. Until then Atlas reads only. Every write goes through an outbox that reads the record first, writes once and confirms the result.
Can Atlas run inside our own cloud account?
Yes. Atlas can run inside your VPC, next to your ERP and under your network rules, with the same agents, screens and controls as the hosted service. Private deployments are part of the Enterprise plan.
Can Atlas run on-prem or air-gapped?
Yes. Atlas can be installed on infrastructure you own, or run air-gapped in a private environment with no route to the internet. In those deployments, open-weight models can run inside your environment so the work stays where your data is.
Is our data mixed with other companies' data in Atlas?
No. Atlas keeps each company's data in its own database, behind a login that can open no other company's database. Learnings, AI Credit Ratings and rating models are built from your history and serve your company only.
Who can see our data inside Atlas?
People see what their role allows: Owner, Admin, Approver or Viewer, set per company. Tokens for MCP and API access are scoped to what they may read and can be rotated or revoked. Ferrata's admin tools do not read your tenant database.
How does Atlas decide which agent works an account?
Each Atlas agent has triggers and a priority. When an event fires, such as a promise or 15 days past due, the highest-priority matching agent takes the account. An account sits with exactly one agent at a time, and paying in full takes it out.
Can we build our own agents in Atlas?
Yes. Atlas agents are built by picking options, never by chat: triggers, channels, tone, cadence, contact hours, hand-offs, review and priority. A test drive previews every channel before the agent can be activated.
Does Atlas work with SAP S/4HANA for accounts receivable?
Yes. Atlas reads customers, open items, invoices, payments and credit memos from SAP S/4HANA, works them with agents for credit, collections, disputes and cash application, and with write-back on, sends changes to SAP first and confirms them.
Can Atlas run dunning for NetSuite?
Yes. Atlas follows up every open NetSuite invoice by email, text and voice on the sequence you set, per account rather than per invoice, with at most one touch per customer per day and calls and texts only between 8am and 9pm local time.
06
Agents
How does Atlas decide which agent works an account?
Atlas places every open account with exactly one agent. Triggers move it: 15 days past due moves it from Standard follow-up to Collections, a promise moves it to Promise to pay, a dispute to Dispute & deductions, 90 days unresolved to Charge-off & Legal. When two triggers fire at once, the agent with the higher priority wins. Paying in full takes the account out of every agent.
Do Atlas's agents act on their own?
Yes. Atlas's agents send, call and update accounts on their own inside rules no agent can change: calls and texts only between 8am and 9pm in the customer's time zone, consent on file for each channel, at most one touch per customer per day, and an AI disclosure on every call and text. You flag any step for review, and flagged work waits in the Approval Queue. Charge-off & Legal and Credit Decision wait for a person on every step.
Can we change how an Atlas agent works?
Yes. Every agent's sequence, channels, tone, cadence, contact hours, hand-offs and review flags are yours to edit in place. Atlas previews every changed field and every account that would join, leave or be replanned before you save, and each save is a new version with a field-level history. Accounts already in the agent follow the new settings from their next touch and never repeat a step.
See Atlas work on your own receivables.
Thirty minutes on your own aging report. You leave with a view of how Atlas would work it, and an honest answer if the sequencing is wrong and you should fix something else first.
Your credit policy, terms, tone and escalation rules are your advantage, and they stay yours. Atlas is configured to the way you run receivables. You are not handing over a playbook or fitting into a template.