Uncomplicate The Recurring Billing Process With A SaaS Billing Software

The foundation of the subscription business model is laid on the complex process of recurring billing. Customers come recurrently to the same retailer and the process involves the following steps:

• Invoice generation
• Billing management
• The onset of the payment cycle
• Customer information management

In a recurring billing business, when the one cycle of billing completes, it starts once again when retailers ask customers to ‘pay your bill’ at the time of the renewal of the subscription. Also, the customers are given the liberty to change the subscription plan, opt for coupons and discounts. And all such things are ultimately part of the recurring billing process.

Today, there is no concept of borders in the subscription business market and retailers try to hunt new customers in far-flung regions of the world. That’s how there are various opportunities to diversify the revenue stream. However, this pursuit of diversifying the revenue stream can complicate the billing process. And SaaS billing software is the panacea to cater to billing process complexities.

Also Read: Scaling Subscription Business With Easier, Faster, and Smarter Recurring Payments Processing

Improvising the Pricing Plans

Directly or indirectly, pricing is interlined with the billing process. Especially, if you run your subscription business for SaaS products, pricing needs to be improvised with time. Not only that but multiple pricing plans are offered and even these pricing plans are improvised with time. Customers also migrate plans.

Subscription management systems allow users to create pricing plans and manage them effectively. These cloud-based platforms are also flexible that they allow you to change pricing plans. This flexibility is need of the SaaS subscription businesses. Why?

It is a challenge to meter the SaaS services and divide them into subscription plans. Pricing plans and pricing needs to be changed because of various factors. When a subscription billing system is flexible, it allows you to improvise your pricing plans and bill your customers accordingly. For these pricing plans, customers migrate from one pricing plan to the other depending on the features in every plan and the affordability of the customer.

Handling Discounts, Coupons, & Promotions

Discounts, coupons, and promotions are considered the best thing to attract more customers. However, on the same page, they are not easy to manage. And complexity becomes twofold when you are offering discounts for subscription-based services or products. Consider the scenario, you offered different discounts on Christmas on different subscription plans. Now, if a customer changes his customer plan, the billing process not only needs to manage the change of the plan but also the discount offered with the subscription plans—complexity. Can you think of managing proration for millions of subscribers e.g. of Netflix and their discounts without an automated SaaS billing software? It is not possible without a robust SaaS subscription billing management software.

Also Read: How SubscriptionFlow And Avalara Offers You The Best Solution To Manage Recurring Billing

Accuracy of Invoices

What is the purpose of an invoice for a subscription business?

• To notify customers about the amount they owe to pay you
• To make the customer aware of the deadline to pay recurring charges
• To maintain customer relations with timely invoices

Is that it? A big NO!

An invoice is a document that your system generates, and it depicts your brand. There needs a proper placement of the logo on the invoice. The contact details of the company should also be clearly printed on the top so that if the customer needs to contact, he can do it promptly. The detail of the purchase of the customer should also be accurately written because customer retention depends on it. Any mistake in this part of the invoice can affect your customer relations. A certain portion of the invoice is also dedicated to the marketing content. At the bottom, SaaS businesses should paste the link to the payment pages so that customers would pay you timely.

All these details cannot be manually taken care of. Automated recurring billing software maintains the format of the invoice. They have customizable templates to generate accurate invoices timely.

Also Read: Recurring Billing Amid COVID-19 Is Changing the Ways We Earn and We Pay…

Fighting Friendly Frauds

As has been mentioned, the payment cycle is the next step to billing. Sometimes, payments fail because of technical reasons. And customers who try to pay for the recurrent bill by using credit cards have the option to file for chargebacks in case of payment failure. And when it comes to fighting the chargebacks and friendly frauds, you will need to maintain continuous communication with recurring customers.

And subscription handling software integrated with chatbots and allowing you to implement your email campaigns can help you a lot in avoiding friendly frauds. You should make your chargeback policy clear to your customer base. Invoicing is the best thing that can be used to update customers about your policy regarding chargebacks and payment failures. Dedicate a certain space to write your policy on the invoice that update the customer on the terms and conditions about chargeback-related frauds.

Uncomplicated Billing Guarantees Smooth Payment Processing

Invoicing, billing, and transactions are interlinked and interdependent processes. A subscription management system generates invoices so that they can be delivered to the customers and they can pay their bills on time. However, on the customer side, this invoice will be called a bill. And once the customer makes a payment against this invoice that your system generated, it is called a transaction.

Now, you can better understand that how invoicing, billing and transaction makes a chain of processes and completion of one affects the onset of the next process. If an invoice is generated accurately and at the right time, then you can expect the timely completion of the next process as well.

A subscription management system streamlines the recurring billing process and further play role in collecting recurring payments on time. Automated billing software not only smoothly process the billing, invoicing, and payments but also perform many other related tasks. For example, automated software will notify the customer about his due recurring charges. You can also send follow up emails or dunning emails through this system.

Also Read: IoT-led Subscription Monetization—Smart Recurring Billing Can Create Connected Smarter Future

Now, we have all started a new journey because a New Year has started. If you want to transition your system and opt for a better subscription billing software, then SubscriptionFlow is the right choice. Call the SubscriptionFlow team now and onboard one of the best subscription management software.