The best practices for SaaS subscription billing

What are the best practices for SaaS subscription billing?

The best practices for SaaS subscription billing

The age of manual billing is becoming history, especially in a subscription -based economy.

According to Gartner, the number of IoT organizations adopting subscription automation will grow to 50%.

Why is automated subscription billing poised to be the future of subscription economy, what are the benefits and what are some of the best practices for SaaS?


Why Join the Subscription Billing Revolution (If you haven’t already)

In the age of the brick and mortar economy, many companies were using the pricing model of a one-time transaction.

In an example, you would visit a newsstand and purchase a magazine. As a magazine seller, your focus would be on calculating how many magazine units you sell each month. The downside of a onetime transaction pricing model is a lack of continuity — each month, you would start again from $0.

In the age of subscription revolution, an increasing number of companies are shifting towards a subscription based pricing model. Rather than selling a single unit, they sell a month to month service.

In an example of magazines, you would purchase a magazine subscription which would allow you to read your favorite magazine anytime as long as you pay a small monthly fee. As a magazine seller, you would focus on increasing your monthly recurring revenue by acquiring more readers rather than selling a single unit.

This pricing shift opened a big window of opportunity, especially for companies with a scalable business model. Moreover, the rapid growth of companies shifting towards a subscription pricing model created an inevitable demand for managing all of the subscription billing.

Today, there are solutions to automatically manage your subscription billing -a process that helps reduce billing errors, accurately track and predict revenue and more.


How does subscription billing automation help?

Subscription billing automation helps companies that are struggling to efficiently invoice customers, and manage the overall billing process.

As a result, many companies lose thousands of dollars in lost revenue or billing errors.

A flow chart showing the process of automating billing in a SaaS company

Time Consumption

Many people believe that time is the most valuable commodity.

Manual billing requires hours of work and the task is understandably prone to human error.

Not anymore. Billing automation offers a tremendous ROI on time saved and a reduction in mistakes.

Revenue Leakage

You’ll be surprised at how many companies experience revenue leakage. They provide a service but don’t get compensated for it. From a SaaS (software as a service) perspective, it is important to recognize that services offered by your company can include an ongoing technical support and continuous access to web interfaces, API integrations, 3rd party vendors and data reporting.

Fast Executive Insights

High-level reporting and quick insights are important necessities for every executive.

Being able to review a comparison of financial performance (month to month, year to date or year to year), access monthly recurring revenue analyses and cash-flow trends, monitor customer’s activity, or track lost payments or deferred revenue are valuable information for monitoring company growth and building financial forecasts.

Churn Rate Reduction

It is a well-known fact that it costs more to acquire a new customer than retain a customer.

The reality is that most billing clerks don’t take look for signs of attrition. Unlike manual billing methods, an automated billing platform has the ability to provide notifications to address dunning management and revenue recovery in a timely manner to avoid customer cancellation.

Pricing Changes

Companies that are at the stage of growth tend to frequently modify their pricing strategy.

The process of changing pricing can be long and frustrating, especially if your customers are paying in multiple currencies. Automated billing platforms enable companies to buid a new pricing catalog in 1–2 minutes.


Conclusion

The shift towards a subscription economy is inevitable.

The benefit of SaaS products allows businesses to operate more efficiently, with fewer errors and overall, with more confidence to focus on areas that are a priority.

Fusebill simplifies subscription and billing management by automating many manual accounting and financial processes and workflows.

Our cloud-based platform gives companies the freedom to grow their businesses, the flexibility to capitalize on new product opportunities, and the agility to maintain a competitive edge.

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