Automating Your Workflow with Billing Software for Recurring Payments
Do you want to increase your productivity but feel stuck in a time-consuming loop of sending the same manual invoices to your clients every month? If this sounds like you, then you’re in the right place.
Businesses these days are looking to integrate solutions that are easier and simpler not just for the customers but for their employees as well. One of these solutions is recurring payments. Recurring payments, also known as subscription payments, or recurring billing, help your business grow, increase profit and scale. Having said that, the success can only be guaranteed if you pair a robust billing software for recurring payments like SubscriptionFlow.
In this article, we’ll go over the basics of recurring payments: what are they, why are they even necessary, and the best billing software for recurring payments. Without further ado, let’s start.
What are Recurring Payments?
Recurring payments are automatic transactions that are made at regular intervals, whether weekly, monthly or annually. A business is given the authorization from the customer to deduct a specific amount from their chosen payment method and automatically bill them on a pre-determined schedule.
Recurring payments came to rise with subscription-based businesses like Netflix and Spotify that charge their customers for services. After this breakthrough, their scope broadened to multiple industries like health and wellness, education, and SaaS companies. The consistent revenue collection is one of the most prominent features that recurring payments offer. To provide more depth into this solution, let’s have a look at the two types of recurring payments.
1. Fixed Recurring Payments: they are fixed payments made at predetermined intervals throughout the duration of the subscription. (e.g Netflix)
2. Variable Recurring Payments: payments that depend on usage, consumption, and other variables. For example, SaaS businesses charge customers by tracking their service usage.
A company may offer both types of recurring payment options, but it depends on the kind of service they’re offering and who their target audience is.
Why are Billing Software Necessary for Recurring Payments?
Billing software increases the efficiency of your business. Manual recurring payments can fall short in terms of failed or missed payments, inaccurate invoicing, incompliance with tax regulations, and most importantly are extremely time taking. Investing in a billing software ensures that your operations are automated and streamlined. You can provide convenience to your customers which is the most crucial business component for success in today’s world.
A billing software becomes a strategic weapon in your business workflow helping you scale big by managing cash flow.
Choosing the Right Billing Software for Your Business
In order to choose the right billing software for recurring payments, there are a few things you need to keep in mind. First of all, you need to know your target audience, your business size, and the services/products you want to sell. But, there some common functionalities of a billing software that persist regardless of these factors.
- Enhanced Recurring Billing Cycle: helps cut down costs, administers payment schedule and billing information, there are no manual inefficiencies.
- Multi-Currency Payment Options: broadens your market reach, helps you cross international borders, ensures that you can make your payments from anywhere.
- Security and Compliance: essential for reliability as it ensures that your customer’s payment information isn’t misused, easy electronic processing of payments, builds trust with your customers.
- Multi-schedule Recurring Billing: make your own timeframes for recurring payment invoicing, can extend your subscription services for multiple years.
- Analytics and Reports: obtain regular reports and implement changes to help your business flourish, get insights on customer preferences, churn rates, and financial transactions.
These features not only help you be completely transparent with your customers, but also lessen the logistical nightmare for accountants. So, you can kill two birds with one stone.
A comprehensive subscription management system that checks all of these boxes and more, is SubscriptionFlow.
Why Choose SubscriptionFlow?
In the sea of available billing software for recurring payments, SubscriptionFlow trailblazes through the competition to quietly sit at the top. SubscriptionFlow has targeted multiple industries, including SaaS, ecommerce, and B2B businesses, and helps them soar indefinitely.
How is SubscriptionFlow different?
- High overall customization including billing cycles, customer portal etc.
- Get reports and analytics in real-time.
- Increased automation so that your billing solution acts as a strategic asset, helping reduce manual labor.
- Simple integration with multiple payment gateways, CRMs, and accounting software.
SubscriptionFlow as a billing software for recurring payments optimizes payment collection, maintains a steady cash flow, reduces billing errors, and improves customer satisfaction.
Details of How SubscriptionFlow Manages Recurring Payments
1. Automated Payment Processing
SubscriptionFlow handles recurring billing by purpose-built subscription payment processor flexibly. Automated recurring payments are secure and frictionless so that customers can easily navigate through the platform and checkout pages.
2. Take The Edge off of Manual Labor
SubscriptionFlow is powered by automated subscription operations, which lowers the risk of human errors like missed payments, failed payment recovery, inefficient invoicing process, and other administrative burdens. You can easily carry out your business tasks hassle-free.
3. Multiple Payment Gateways
With SubscriptionFlow, you have the option to integrate multiple payment gateways in a single platform. The options include but aren’t limited to Stripe, Authorize.Net, PayPal, Adyen, and Braintree. This way, managing your global transactions is just a click away.
4. Smart Dunning Management
Revenue generation just became very simple. SubscriptionFlow’s smart dunning management capabilities help businesses retain customers with ease. With automated payment retry attempts and strategic communication, you can recover any payments upon subscription system failure. Furthermore, SubscriptionFlow also has the feature to send payment recovery emails with links to update information and other customer support details.
Not only that, but with dunning analytics, you can track all the insights in real-time, and identify the key issues in order to implement effective dunning strategies. This billing software also offers grace time to customers to resolve their payment issues and renew subscriptions, reducing churn.
5. Self-service Portals
It is the age of autonomy. Hence, empowering customers with self-serving subscription portals is essential. And SubscriptionFlow does just that. It gives customers the liberty to modify subscriptions, renew their plans, review invoices, update their contact details, and manage their account.
The platform enables customers to easily upgrade, downgrade or pause their subscriptions through the customer portal. When customers feel in control, they’re more likely to stay loyal. This, in turn, increases customer retention, and a stable revenue growth.
6. Security and Tax Compliance
SubscriptionFlow puts strong emphasis on tax compliance and security. It implements security measures such as PCI-DSS Level 1 Compliance in order to protect customer payment details. It ensures that only necessary data is collected in accordance to the data minimization principles, and that it is encrypted and secure. Moreover, it works promptly to erase data upon account deletion to mitigate risks.
Additionally, this billing software for recurring payments leverages Alavara for tax calculations. It also guides business to stay compliant with GAAP and FASB standards through automated reporting and income recognition. Tax adjustments are made according to the region, whether you’re in Europe, US, or Asia, VAT and GST rules are calculated accordingly.
SubscriptionFlow handles the entire subscription lifecycle, from onboarding to renewals.
Benefits of Recurring Payments
No that we’ve went over what recurring payments are, why they are necessary, and how SubscriptionFlow may be the best suited billing software for your business, let’s list down all the benefits you can reap by automating your recurring payments. These benefits are for both the business and the customers.
For Customers | For Businesses |
Easy & Convenient: both time and effort are saved as manual efforts reduce, being taken over by automated payments. | Consistent Revenue Generation: guarantee a predictable income. |
Finance Management: budgeting made simpler and predictable as payments are scheduled, and on pre-determined intervals. | Decreased Administrative Burden: using a billing software for recurring payments enhances automation, saving time and cutting costs. |
Manage Late Payments: reduce the risk of late payments and penalties as recurring payments are made on time | Higher Customer Retention: a frictionless platform encourages customers to continually renew their subscriptions. |
Cancel Anytime: through self-service portals, customers can conveniently upgrade, downgrade, pause, or cancel from anywhere, anytime. | Customer Acquisition: subscription models help attract new customers who are looking for convenience of a recurring payment method |
Multi-Currency and Payment Gateway Options: Customers have a multitude of payment options to choose from when purchasing. Pay in your own choice of currency. | Reporting and Analytics: improve strategic decision-making through insights related to customer behavior, payment recovery strategies, and other trends. |
Wrapping Up
Recurring payments have been a cornerstone for businesses driving their growth in an upward direction. In this blog, we walked you through the various aspects of recurring payments, including choosing SubscriptionFlow as the best billing software for recurring payments for your business. The aim was to guide you towards choosing an automated recurring payments solution that fits right in with your business needs.
A well-rounded billing software positions you on the path of success, so that you’re able to reach newer heights, and go head-to-head with your competitors. With features like automation, multiple payment gateways and currencies, dunning management, churn reduction, real time analytics, simple integration, self-serving portals, reduced manual labor, flexible payment plans, security compliance, adherence to tax laws, and a frictionless workflow, businesses can skyrocket their success.
If you’re ready to unlock the full potential of your business and level up your market presence, try SubscriptionFlow. We ensure that there are no hiccups in your recurring payments process and that you can achieve maximum growth and expansion. Our team of skilled and proficient experts look to address any pain points you have, and tailor their work according to your needs.
Interested to learn more? Book a demo with us now!