Recurring Billing, Recurring Payments, and Recurring Revenue

In every phase of the business, cash flow is the most essential element for a business. Cash inflow strengthens the confidence in the market, paves way for the investments, and ensures upward movement in the business growth spiral.

The flow of cash depends on sales, and sales to some extent are unpredictable. Various internal and external factors affect the sales and the acquisition of customers. Businesses can only tend to achieve the optimum targets set for sales, but they cannot sway the factors on which sales depend.

The external factors influencing sales are more difficult to deal with. The snowballing loss of power to influence customers for sales requires businesses to switch to the business model that best supports the sales process and sales cycle.

The Subscription Business Model is the best business model to help businesses to maintain and manage the revenue collection throughout the seasons in a more predictable way while cutting the overhead costs required to acquire customers.

What is Recurring Billing or Subscription Model?

The Subscription Business Model is based on Subscription Billing or Recurring Billing.

Recurring Billing is a prosperous way to grow revenue. It drives stability, predictability, and reliability in any business, regardless of their size, niche, market, and resources. In recent times, businesses in a variety of industries have started to adopt or switch to recurring billing to peddle more profit into their revenue stream.

Also Read: Learn Why You Need a SaaS Subscription Billing Solution To Boost Your Recurring Revenue in 2020

Understanding the Relationship Between Recurring Billing, Recurring Payments, and Recurring Revenue

The Recurring Billing Model depends on fulfilling the recurring needs of the customers.

It is evident from several studies that acquiring new customers cost more than retaining customers. This business model focuses on customer retention, instead of acquiring more customers, by providing customers the products or services of their regular needs on a subscription basis.

Recurring Billing is the process of billing a customer after every interval for a defined term to have an access to the subscribed products or services.

With the inception of the SaaS Subscription Management System, it is an automated way to bill a customer and receive the payments directly to the merchant’s accounts, called recurring payments.

Recurring Payments lead to the collection of Recurring Revenue.

Streaming the recurring revenue helps businesses to get in-depth knowledge of their customers and the needs in any market. It saves the resources spend to acquire more customers, instead, the time, money, and effort are driven, intelligently, to retain customers for upselling, cross-selling, and re-selling.

Also Read: Online Payment Processing for Recurring Payments—A Definitive Guide About The Payment Gateways for Subscription Management

Does Recurring Billing Suit Your Current Business Model?

In less than a decade only, the recurring billing has attracted businesses from across the industries. And, more and more businesses are looking to hop on the bandwagon. But, the question arises hers is whether this billing model is for your business?

Recurring Billing favours businesses to reduce their operational costs, manage their resources efficiently, and project data-based predictable demand and supply needs in the market to mitigate losses and churn.

Recurring Billing suits businesses that can offer their services on a monthly, quarterly, or annual basis. Instead of having one-time and upfront costs, the businesses can continue to mint more money over-the-term and brand loyalty with the recurring payments received into their accounts after every defined interval.

Recurring Billing is a great way for the eCommerce and SaaS startups and SMBs to take control of the market by extending customers’ access to their products and services on regular basis.

It also is appropriate for businesses that need to penetrate to the large market with a few products or services without spending a lot of resources on marketing. Customer retention would help them to upsell, resell, and cross-sell their subscription products or services.

Some of the most popular recurring billing businesses are:

SaaS Applications
Cloud Computing
ECommerce
Telecom Sector
Newspaper and Magazine Subscriptions
Gym Memberships
OTT Memberships
Gated-Content Memberships
Transportation and Lodging Memberships
Subscription Box Businesses
Telemedicine Subscriptions
Online Learning and Education Businesses
Schools and Tutoring Recurring Billing Businesses
Beauty Salon and Self-care Subscriptions
And More

How to Add Recurring Billing to Your Business?

Recurring Billing involves the automated mechanism of recurring invoicing, billing adjustments, payment processing, and recurring revenue collection. This automated and systematic workflow helps businesses to reduce their operational costs by automating the repetitive tasks, reducing the labor force, time, and effort, and increasing efficiency and, overall, productivity.

The Recurring Business Process is simple and highly favorable for a range of businesses. Let’s learn how recurring billing works:

recurring billing system process

Divert any business into a recurring revenue stream.

Here are a few ways that can drive you the recurring payments and loyal customers in no time and for a longer-term:

Subscription Products

In today’s fast world, customers need all the way easy, quick, and convenient solutions to fulfil their run-of-the-mill needs. Customers prefer to have delivered their everyday articles directly to their comfort space without being ordered, billed, or communicated every time. Availability of the subscription products like a razor, sanitary napkins, cooking or baking ingredients, and much more ease the regular struggles of an average person in their daily life. Newspaper and magazine subscriptions are the best examples of subscription-based products that drive recurring payments.

Subscription Boxes

Subscription Boxes are the intelligent assortment of different products available on subscription in a box. From bathing accessories to a new-born baby or pets accessories, what is it that can not be accommodated into a subscription box?

Subscription Box Business can be started and managed at any level. They are catering to a wide range of customer’s recurring needs from an array of products suitable, available, and affordable to access from the comfort of their sofas.

They can be tailored or can be personalized with the elements of surprise, themes, and interests.

Also Read: Subscription Box Business 102: Curate Your Subscription Box—Types, Niches, & Procurement Ideas

Subscription Services

Physical health check-ups, dental services, mental counseling, law, taxation, or investment consultancy, education, and learning services, or any other services can be offered on a subscription basis. Telemedicine, schools, colleges, tuition’s, and university fee models, and online short-courses, and language learning are a few of the examples of the subscription services.

Gated-Content Memberships

Netflix, Prime Video, and other OTT—Over-the-Top Media content sites are the best recurring billing businesses selling their gated-content over digital media. Likewise, multiple businesses offer their gated-content in the form of digital magazines, research journals, PowerPoint presentations, e-books, podcasts, photos, videos, games, and in dozens of other ways.

Rentals

Recurring Billing has been existing as Rentals for ages. Renting personal spaces, apartments, offices, businesses, automobiles, furniture, appliances, goods, personal services, and others are part of our economy for so long. The only difference is, today, it has brought more innovations by formulating multiple plans for collecting recurring revenue.

How SubscriptionFlow Helps In Growing Recurring Billing Business?

SubscriptionFlow is a comprehensive and automated recurring billing and payment management system. From automated invoicing to payment collection, it is a one-stop destination to manage your recurring billing business. It offers flexible integrations that allow your business to scale as well as helps organizations to streamline their stacks management on one platform. It can easily be integrated into your ERP or any other accounting, finance, sales, marketing, and support applications.

To learn more about the recurring billing system and recurring billing business opportunities, talk to our experts.