This is How Subscription Billing Automation is a Game Changer for Subscription Businesses

For small- to medium-sized subscription businesses, recurring billing management is the most difficult part. Even, the most tedious and orchestrated processes of sending out the invoices and offering the online payment processing convenience cannot ensure on-time payments.

Payment delays mean financial constrains in managing other standard business operations such as production, employee management, sales, marketing, research, order fulfillment, or others.

With the growing competition in the market, subscription businesses of any size cannot rely on manual billing processing. To hold systematic control over recurring revenue management growth, accurate revenue recognition is inevitable. And, the revenue recognition can only be achieved when the recurring revenue stream can systematically flow with automatic billing automation.

Before diving into the different aspects of automated customer billing, let’s see what we meant by the terms, “Subscription Billing” and “Automation”.

Subscription Billing, also known as recurring billing, is the process of charging a customer, repetitively, for a set period after every defined interval for using the subscription product or services.

And, automation is the digitalization of several functions to be operated without assistance or human guidance. Using machine language, it is the use of technology to simplify the complex processes of business by automating the repetitive tasks in a system. Automation with artificial intelligence technology enables businesses to understand natural languages, process unstructured data to form patterns, and based on structured data, identifies different commands, and then performs triggered-based actions.

The Science of Automated Sales and Billing

In any business, sales are directly related to the billing, and billing is related to the payments, and payments contribute towards revenue. However, the foundation of the subscription business is the recurrence of the needs of the customer. This consistency and recurrence creates the same pattern in ordering, invoicing, billing, payment processing, revenue monitoring, and reporting. It, eventually, results in revenue recognition.

So, the idea behind the introduction of the automation in subscription management is to automate the billing of the recurring sales of the products or services that would generate stable and predictable recurring revenue without any delay in the payment charging and payment processing to the merchant’s account.

What is Automated Billing System?

To auto-manage the billing on a recurring basis, Subscription Businesses can take the assistance of the automated billing system. In other words, it is also called a subscription management system, subscription system, subscription billing management system, or recurring billing system.

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The automated billing system is, basically, a suite of the stacks or applications that are integrated together to build a coordinated system or platform that can manage the subscription billing.

Understanding the Relations between Subscription Management, Recurring Billing and Automation Systems

Subscription software in today’s market is no longer serving the recurring billing management only. They are full-fledged SaaS platforms, now, that can also auto-manage contacts, subscribers’ data, inventory, supply chain, quotes, orders, invoicing, payment processing, fulfillment, sales deals management, marketing campaigns, service centers, and all the other business operations in one place.

So, the question is how do they do it?

The automated recurring billing or subscription management software with their open-source APIs makes it possible to integrate different applications and in real-time, flow the information and sync the data across the apps. This cross-platform data synchronization allows the platform to establish trigger-based automated actions within the system, or, with the permission of the other third-party application, across the stacks.

This is how in a comprehensive subscription management system, billing and automation go hands-in-hands. It works as automated recurring billing, payments, and revenue operations management system.

Automated Billing System Advantages in Subscription Management

Manual billing management is the phenomenon of the bygone era. Due to the dozens of automated billing conveniences and assistance, the automated subscription management platforms have already replaced the traditional billing management practices.

From startups to SMBs to enterprises, businesses all over are devising their strategies to take advantage of the innovation of automation and artificial intelligence assistance.

SubscriptionFlow is the futuristic, flexible, and faster recurring billing, payment, and revenue management system that accelerates the growth of your subscription business and recurring revenue by providing the personalized subscription management solution as per the size, niche, and resources of the subscription business.

Some of the main benefits of changing to the automated system of SubscriptionFlow from the manual billing processing are;

Easy, Instant, and automated invoicing—the invoice automation benefits such as accuracy, transparency, and on-time calculations and charging trigger for the payment modules. This ensures the timely and strictly regulated subscription billing cycle without annoying the customers with refunds and re-calculations due to invoice errors.
Automatic mid of the subscription billing cycle calculations and adjustments such as subscription plan upgrades, downgrades, pause, reactivation, or cancellation. It is called prorated subscription billing.
Automated sending out the invoices, payment status notification, and due-payments reminders to the subscriber’s email or Phone
Automated Order placement, order receiving, and order processing
Automated Scheduled Payment Charging on Subscribers credit card
Automated deductions and payment processing to the merchant’s account
In case of payment failures due to credit card expiry, bank system’s technical glitches, or any error, scheduled auto-retries for the payment for ensured collection and reduced involuntary churn. It is called automated dunning management.
Multiple integrations with or within the standard business applications such as CRM and ERP
Automated streamlining of the production, procurement, billing, fulfillment, sales, marketing, development, and support operations through integrations
Automated sync of data across the integrations and operations in real-time
Automated information update in client portal from the self-service customer portal
Automated and AI-fueled online payments and customer risks monitoring, identification, reporting, as well as mitigation
Automated and optimal support for all pricing and billing models—from flat-rate subscription billing to usage- or consumption-based to hybrid billing

The web-based SubscriptionFlow as a SaaS billing software automates the recurring billing cycle and payment processing. It is a solution to industrialize operations and increase productivity without focusing on regular financial and accounting operations.

With SubscriptionFlow automated platform, you can help your subscription business to auto-manage the hassle-free recurring billing operations with ease, simplicity, and convenience without being tech-astute or configuring the huge technical stacks.