Many businesses are jumping on the subscription bandwagon, but they aren’t aware of the finer details associated with billing their recurring products and services. Ben Parkin sheds light on the top 3 billing misconceptions and presents the case for a good recurring billing system.
Billing is a core component for any subscription business. While it represents the end of the sales lifecycle for traditional product-based sales models, it assumes a strategic importance for subscription businesses. Companies can forecast revenue accurately, manage inventory better and transform their customer experience, among other business benefits, with good billing processes.
However, many businesses take a DIY approach to billing and end up stuck with various misconceptions holding them back. Efficient recurring billing is a critical capability for subscription businesses and they need to ensure that they fully understand the process in order to maximise the opportunities available within the industry. Thankfully, a good recurring billing solution like Cerillion Skyline is an easy way to tackle these problems smoothly.
The top 3 billing misconceptions among subscription businesses are:
1. Auto renew subscriptions run themselves
If you aren't automating your subscription/contract renewals, you will be spending many days on manual processing each month and most likely missing out on easy revenue too. Imagine hundreds of customers all with different renewal dates/prices and billing contacts; It’s the stuff of nightmares! If your only solution to this is
Excel, perhaps it’s time to step up your subscription game.
Cerillion Skyline stores the auto-renewal dates for every product and customer. It sends emails to your subscribers reminding them of the renewal date, and when the time comes it sends out new bills and takes payments automatically. Not only does this make sure every customer is renewed, but the entire process is automated as well.
2. Bill cycles take a long time
Most businesses we engage with spend over 48 hours every month creating, checking and sending invoices to their customers. Sound familiar? Imagine what else you could do with an extra 24 days every year!
Skyline customers typically spend just 15 minutes on their bill runs each month. They simply log in, check the bill report against their accounting systems and then authorise the bill run. It gives you time for the more important stuff, like growing your business!
3. Billing systems are massive projects
The majority of business owners still believe that implementation of a new billing system is a painful and cumbersome task that requires months of planning and even more time to deliver.
While it may be true for some systems, this is not the case with a flexible subscription billing solution like Cerillion Skyline. Our platform is as simple as setting up a customer, creating your product and making the sale. This is all down to the fact that Skyline is a cloud-based platform which means that we host everything, you just log in and build your business. We have out-of-the-box integration with hundreds of payment gateways, and through REST APIs it can easily connect with your existing systems and help you solve your largest problems in as little as 3 weeks.
Why not
sign up for a free trial and test it out for yourself today?