CHAPTER 4
10 Questions for Assessing Billing Vendors
With a quick glance, most billing solutions look the same. They can usually calculate what is owed, create invoices, and bill customers. However, upon inspection, not every billing system can meet every customer need or company goal. There are significant differences between solutions, from how they handle complex pricing models to how they support customized invoicing.
Decision makers need to know how to evaluate billing solutions for their specific SaaS product or service needs. By asking the right questions, you can identify the major differences between billing systems and determine which one best aligns with your organization’s goals.
Below are 10 questions everyone should ask to assess potential billing management platforms:
1. Can the system easily adapt to market changes, new product and service launches and new pricing models?
If your business needs to adjust with market trends, be sure the system comes with a buildable architecture and flexible data model that allows you to extend your billing data to quickly and easily transform with no/low-code configuration.
2. Can business users create pricing, rating and bundling scenarios without custom code or IT assistance?
If you want to make product and pricing changes on the fly, be sure the system can support one-time, subscription, usage-based, tiered, freemium, volume, pay-as-you-go, overages, multi-part, formula-based, time-based, demand-based, event-based pricing or any combination of the above with easy point and click configuration.
3. Does the system separate product, rating method, and price in the product catalog?
If your company offers a large number of products and services with unlimited attributes or variations, be sure the system can effectively manage your product catalog without having to create a new SKU for every product and pricing iteration.
4. Does the system enable event- or user-driven invoice cycles?
If you manage customer contracts, account hierarchies or other intricate ways of invoicing customers, be sure the system can automate invoicing around specific triggers and customer behaviors, reference contract terms, initiate invoicing cycles for various lines of business and follow rule-based logic for complex event or consumption-based charging cycles.
5. Can the system produce customer-specific invoice templates?
If your company offers a large number of products and services with unlimited attributes or variations, be sure the system can effectively manage your product catalog without having to create a new SKU for every product and pricing iteration.
6. Does the system include configurable usage collection and data mediation capabilities?
If you manage large volumes of data and offer usage or consumption-based pricing models, be sure the system can collect data from multiple sources, as well as convert that data for billing from any industry with built-in mediation.
7. Can workflow and approval rules be built for any business process?
If your business demands the ability to choreograph multiple actions within workflows, be sure the system can execute highly granular workflows and approvals for complex pricing models that involve multiple steps, applications, objects and accounts.
8. Can the system support different access levels based on user roles?
If you are a larger organization with individual product lines, geographic P&Ls, subsidiaries and channel partners, be sure the system can define access controls for specific roles and set manage, read, create and update permissions by user type.
9. Does the system support multiple currencies and languages?
If you are planning to expand outside of your current geography, be sure the system can recognize revenues in different currencies, languages and time zones without complicating core billing operations and can comply with tax laws and private data regulations in every region.
10. Can business users directly modify the application without programmer support?
If your company is looking for a solution that can be supported directly by business users, be sure the system can support changes to your application through user-friendly interfaces, point and click configuration and an intuitive workflow engine.
Understanding Billing Needs
Answering these few questions provides a much clearer understanding of your potential billing vendor’s capabilities. Ultimately, your business needs to find the solution that will support organizational goals and ensure a positive billing experience for customers.