A prompt collecting tool (190) for an interactive voice response system (100) includes a voice enabled application server (150), a voice simulator coupled to the voice enabled application server, and a processor coupled to the voice simulator. The processor can be programmed to execute (202) a voice application having a plurality of audio prompts, play (206) audio if a pre-stored audio is available for a particular prompt, capture (208) text when no pre-stored audio is available and forward (210) the captured text to the prompt collecting tool. The voice simulator can include a VoiceXML browser (160), a text to speech text service (170), and a text based recognition service (180) for example.