As your business scales and subscription increases, certain functions become difficult to handle manually. For example, Invoicing; may require toggling between spreadsheets and business software that falls short of meeting your recurring billing requirements.
This isn’t just human resources; manual billing is also time-consuming and prone to human error. Your Business needs to automate the process to save time, reduce mistakes, and create revenue-supporting efficiency. After all, a stable and continuous revenue of the recurring billing model isn’t much of a benefit when your team cannot collect those payments.
If you’re questioning where to start, we’ve got you covered. Here’s our 4-step guide to starting your automated recurring billing
1. Identify the issue with your current recurring payment process.
Understanding where your payment team is struggling can help you select the right recurring payment system for your Business.
Is your Business experiencing any of the following Issues?
Manual invoicing: Does your invoice take time to get done, and are your team members continuously working overtime to get it done.
Frequent errors: Whether in customer data, payment details, or invoice billing, mistakes are adding up to your billing processes and affecting the cash flow or revenue.
Failed payments: Manually retrying payments and managing your collection process takes too much time, or worse, left undone due to work pressure. It can lead to revenue leakage.
Compliance: When Updating your accounting system with GAAP, Recognising Revenue, taxation and PCI feels impossible, and you are afraid that your data is not secure enough.
Reporting: Your business data doesn’t give you a clear snapshot of your Business’s finances, leading to inadequate reporting for decision-making.
If you’ve identified any issues, you need to consider recurring billing software that meets your unique needs.
2. Do research for your software options.
When you realize your business needs a solution to support your desired billing cycle and frequency to manage recurring billing, you will also need software that fixes your issue related to recurring payments.
Here are some of the most common problems recurring billing automation solutions must address.
- Accounts team working overtime
Instead of switching between excel sheets and data, look for a billing platform that allows you to integrate with other accounting tools your team uses to facilitate billing. Your payment gateways and accounting software should integrate well together. This enhances your business experience by ensuring every invoice and communication is accurate and creates cleaner data for financial audits.
- Unpaid bills and error-filled invoices
Automated billing reduces manual errors. However, some customers will still be missing recurring billing, and for that, you can go for the collection process. Automated payment collection can recover 1%-5% of a business’s recurring revenue leakage by reducing involuntary churn.
- Are you struggling with software acceptance?
If you are looking for more accurate, ongoing, and compliant revenue recognition, you will require software that automates your business process. Search for a platform backed by a general accounting system to ensure you follow GAAP regulations and accurate report tax and audits.
3. Integrate with your other technology and software.
The key to maximizing efficiency from recurring billing is integrating it with as many systems as possible. Automate data exchange between your accounting software, CRM, and payment gateway.
Once your recurring billing software is available, you will be ready to magnify its effectiveness such as;
- Optimizing internal processes
- Reducing repetitive work
- Preparing the foundation for future analysis,
- Strengthening your financial audit simplifying taxes,
- Updating currency conversion for international transactions.
With automated recurring billing, you’ll be able to generate accurate invoices, reduce manual data entry, minimize errors, and synchronize data across platforms.
4. Set up importunating automation.
After implementing automatic billing, you’re ready to set up importuning automation. It is the process of handling failed payments and declined credit cards to recover lost revenue. Automated billing makes your cash flow consistent, but what happens if an invoice is still not paid?
Importunating automation features in your recurring billing platform can take care of these situations.
Automated email or SMS can support this effort if automated payment retries fail.
Conclusion
That’s it! Just four steps to better recurring payment management. Identify your Business’s unique scenario research solutions, and work with your implementation manager to migrate data, integrate software, and set up dunning.
Automation helps subscription businesses to scale more efficiently and quickly. Start analyzing recurring billing platforms that meet your needs before billing bottlenecks cut too deeply into your bottom line.
Talk to Us today.
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