Automation, automation, automation. Finance departments and back-office functions are obsessed with automation and investing in an ERP is a major step towards process automation. Billing is always on the more difficult side to automate as it is often complicated by bending to customer requirements or inventive new revenue streams dreamed up by business development.
If you are using NetSuite as your ERP the out of the box billing module comes with some limitations to billing automate. To streamline billing processes, our customers find that they need to customise the standard NetSuite build or else invest in 3rd party billing solutions such as Zone Advanced Billing, Zuora or Suite Billing which is the focus of this blog post.
How does Suite Billing work?
Similar to other billing modules Suite Billing introduces the concept of subscriptions or as they call them Subscription Plans. The idea is that the subscription plan will mirror your relationship with the customer.
You will add items to subscription plan lines, and these will form the basis for your billing schedules. You can set price books at subscription level which will determine the price you charge customers for items. These prices will override the prices attached to the items themselves. You are able to group items together and bill the customer for item groups.
You have not setup your subscription plan which can be added to a sales order or setup directly. Once activated you can start charging customers and raising bills to send for payment.
What are the advantages of SuiteBilling?
- Flexile Billing – SuiteBilling will give you flexibility when it comes charging and invoicing customers. Whether you want to invoice customers on different frequencies or apply pricing models to a customer’s bill, SuiteBilling makes this easy to do. You are able different pricing models onto a subscription and to charge customers based on usage.
- Subscription Management
- Consolidated Invoicing – Whilst standard NetSuite has limitations about billing across sales orders, SuiteBilling allows you to put all charges onto one invoice, making billing and cash allocation easier.
- Automated Renewals – SuiteBilling takes information directly from your CRM and allows you to automate renewals. It also allows for uplifts at the start of a renewal cycle.
- Complex Entity Structures – SuiteBilling allows for complex customer entity structures. Say for example you need to split a sales order between entities in a group, you’re able to do this with Suite Billing.
- Suite Billing is a native NetSuite solution which means you will access it through your NetSuite account meaning you won’t need to log into another application.
Billing Solutions like Suite Billing are especially useful for SaaS businesses that use subscription models to charge customers. That said it can still be used by other businesses who want to streamline billing processes.
