Self-hosted & data ownership
Settl is not a shared multi-tenant SaaS that pools your ledger with everyone else's. It deploys for your firm as its own private instance — your data, your subdomain, your backup — and the reminders go out from your own mailbox. If a practice can't hand a client's receivables to a third-party platform, that is exactly the case Settl is built for.
For most software, "where does the data live?" is an afterthought. For a bookkeeping or accounting practice it is a professional obligation. A firm holds its clients' ledgers, and those clients did not agree to have their invoices batched into somebody else's shared platform.
Moving a client's receivables into a pooled tool can breach the confidentiality a firm is expected to keep. Keeping the data inside infrastructure the firm controls is the clean answer — not a lawyer's workaround.
If chasing runs on someone else's platform under someone else's brand, clients may wonder whose tool it is. Running Settl under the firm's own name and domain removes the question entirely.
Firms are wary of tools that make the data easy to hand over and hard to get back. An instance the firm controls keeps the ledger and the exit route in the firm's own hands.
The word "cloud" hides two very different things. Settl is the second one.
Your firm gets its own isolated instance — its own copy of the app and its own data store. It is not a shared tenant carved out of a pooled database that holds every other firm's invoices too.
The instance answers on a hostname that belongs to your firm, so the tool looks and lives under your identity rather than a stranger's brand.
Because the instance is yours, the backup is yours. Who can reach the data, and where the copy is kept, are decisions your firm makes — agreed up front, before any client data is loaded.
Emails go out as your firm, from your own Gmail, Outlook or business address. Replies land in your inbox and your domain's sending reputation stays with you.
A practice can run Settl on its own receivables, or offer it to clients under its own brand. Either way the emails a client receives carry the firm's name — not a third-party platform's. For a practice that wants to sell a "we chase your invoices for you" service, the reminder ladder is the engine and the brand is, correctly, the firm's own. See how that works for practices in Settl for accounting firms.
Honesty is worth more than a longer feature list, so here is the boundary.
Settl does not replace your accounting system. Xero or QuickBooks stays the ledger of record; Settl reads the open invoices and handles the chasing. Where a direct connection exists it is named on the Xero integration page; anything else can be chased from a CSV export.
You do not need to rack a server. The point is isolation and control — an instance of your own, with a backup you hold — not necessarily a machine in your office.
Settl deploys as a private, single-tenant instance for your firm rather than a shared multi-tenant SaaS. Your reminder data lives in your own instance, on infrastructure you control — your subdomain, your backup. It is not pooled with other firms' data in a shared database.
In your own Settl instance, on infrastructure you control. Each firm gets its own deployment — its own subdomain and its own backup — so client receivables data is never mixed with another firm's.
From you. Settl sends reminders from your own Gmail, Outlook or business mailbox, so replies land in your inbox and your domain's sending reputation belongs to your firm, not to a third-party platform.
Yes. Settl is white-labelled per firm, so an accounting or bookkeeping practice can run it on its own receivables or offer it to clients under its own brand, with its own name and domain on the emails that go out.
You do not need to run a data centre. Settl deploys per customer as an isolated instance; the practical question is where that isolated instance lives and who holds the backup. We will set the instance up with you and agree where it runs and where the backup is kept before any client data is loaded.
Tell us where you'd want it to run and we'll set up a private instance on your own data — usually within one working day. Want to size the problem first? Run the free AR cash-lockup calculator, or copy the overdue-invoice reminder templates.
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