Bill Run

What is a bill run?

A bill run is an automated process that uses software to make and send customer payments. It is an integral part of the billing process for many businesses, especially those that use recurring income models.

Bill runs can make invoices immediately when needed or on a set schedule. They do their job by compiling information from one or more customer accounts into a single bill for each.

If your business is a subscription business (like SaaS), the subscription management software will charge the customer’s credit card or bank account at the start of each payment cycle and send an invoice. After that, a PDF copy of the bill will be emailed.

If your invoice and credit memo rules allow it, bill runs can make credit memos automatically for negative charges. The bill run page shows how many billing records, invoices, and credit notes were made during the process.

Synonyms

• Billing runs
• Invoice runs
• Invoicing

Advantages of Good Bill-Run Management

Even though the process is automated, something must be said for reasonable bill run control. Businesses can get a lot out of their bill-running process if they understand and use it correctly.

Improves billing and managing income

Many problems arise for modern SaaS companies when they try to bill, handle payments, recognize revenue, reconcile, report, and predict revenue. Auto-triggered billing mostly takes care of these steps, making audits much more accessible.

When it comes to billing and managing income that deals with customers, automated invoicing makes things more accessible and more accurate, which leads to:

• Fewer chargebacks
• Happier customers
• Faster payment times
• Faster debugging for possible billing mistakes

The payment process is sped up by automated bill runs, which eliminate mistakes caused by entering data by hand. Bill runs can handle many billing plans and segment lists, which would be hard to handle on a large scale without software automation.

All customer accounts should be the same.

Bill runs to ensure that all customer accounts are consistent so that all invoices are made with the same information and at the same time. They also support individual customers and billing section lists.

When someone signs up for your Service or product, they’ll be charged a certain way every quarter. You won’t have to worry about sending wrong or duplicate bills if your subscription management software makes statements for you.

Scalability so that the number of customers can grow

The payment load (and the amount of work that must be done by hand) increases as more people sign up for your product or Service. This process is too complex to handle correctly without automation. In short, it doesn’t work.

One great thing about automated payment is that you can set it to run at a particular time every month. This is sometimes done once daily, but many companies do it more often and at smaller volumes to cut down on billing run loads and time.

Cuts down Churn, both intentional and involuntary

Up to 40% of the average SaaS company’s churn rate is due to people leaving without permission. Most people forced to leave do so because they were billed incorrectly.

• Errors in getting payments
• Credit card information that has expired
• Changes to a customer’s bank account
• A customer’s bank account does not have enough money in it
• Outdated or wrong customer information
• Payments that have been forgotten

The list of problems that could happen and cause users to stop paying for a service they would have used otherwise is very long. Fewer mistakes happen, and there are fewer complaints, chargebacks, and other problems with customer service when software handles the whole process from beginning to end.

Businesses can also stop people from leaving alone by using bill runs. Since payment is essential to the customer experience, billing systems that aren’t regular, correct, or reliable drive customers away.

With automated bills, they can:

• Change their services without talking to a Sales or Customer Success rep;
• Get payment-related information when they need it
• Be sure that these processes are safe and secure
• Not have to deal with the hassle of making disputes and trying to get their money back after accidentally overpaying

All of these things improve the customer experience and make it less likely that the customer will leave alone.

Set up Service for yourself

Self-service in SaaS isn’t just automated payment but a big part of it. Customers won’t need your team to keep their service going if they can see their billing records, change their payment information, and do other account-related tasks independently.

Customers can also be more independent with self-service payments. People are more likely to look into other parts of your product if they can make changes and immediately see the effects.

This is good for both you and the customer. They can use your product more at a time that works for them instead of waiting for a team member to get back to them. This will lead to upsells.

Helps with cash flow

Companies lose a lot of money on overhead costs and possible compliance problems when they have to keep in touch with customers who don’t pay and fight disputes and chargebacks all the time.

The billing team works more efficiently, and your company’s cash flow is better when dunning and conflict management aren’t their primary focus.

Profit Margins Are Increased

A business with happy customers, good cash flow, correct billing, and automated processes will make more money. It will take less time for your team to fix billing problems, help upset customers, and handle disputes and chargebacks. They can instead focus on other parts of their business that help it grow, and they’ll save money on compliance costs.

How to Set Up Bill Runs in Billing Software:

Follow these steps to set up an automated bill run flow:

• Sign in and go to the Billing section. Find the part of the site where you can control your rules and automation settings.
• Make a fresh run of bills. Find the choice to make a new bill run and click on it.
• Set the conditions for the bill run. Pick out the people or groups of customers that you want to send invoices to. Pick how often you want to be billed (monthly, weekly, or yearly). List the dates of the payment cycles. Pick which goods or services you want to be paid for.
• Make rules for how invoices should be made. Figure out how the statement should be written. Set the rules for how the payment should be made, including how to handle taxes, discounts, and other fees.
• Set up payment handling (if needed). Payment processing is built into most CPQ and billing tools. If yours does, set it up so credit cards or bank accounts can be charged to customers. You can set up rules to try again if a payment fails after a certain number of days.
• Make conversation automatic. Set up the software so that it immediately emails invoices to customers. Set up other communication options, like sending reminders for payments due or following up on payments not made.
• Make rules for how to make credit memos. Set the rules for how credit notes should be made for refunds, returns, or negative charges.
• Make your new bill run work. Watch the first few loads to ensure they’re going through properly, and change the settings as needed.

Best Practices to Make Sure Bill Runs Go Smoothly

It can worsen things if you don’t set them up and run them well. Keeping up with all the help tickets, disputes, and unhappy customers will be hard.

To get the most out of your bill run, follow these best practices:

• Smartly divide customers into groups. Customer groups can be made based on billing history, product use, etc. Some segmentation will happen on its own, like regional taxes. Some, like discounts and tiered prices, must be entered by hand.
• Check your settings well before you start. Before you set bill runs to run automatically, make test invoices with different mixtures of goods and services to ensure the invoice data is correct.
• You shouldn’t skip the payment settlement step. Billing runs do most of the work automatically, but they can’t promise everything will always be correct. Still, balancing the books is necessary for correct financial reporting and stopping money from leaking out.
• Set up the approval processes that you need. Please set up a review and approval process to ensure that some bills follow company rules before being sent to customers. This should only be used for business users and deals based on quotes. This will only make things harder for most people.
• Don’t make your tracking and numbering method too hard to use. Tracking and balancing bills is easier when numbered in a way that makes sense. Do not use unclear or duplicate billing numbers.
• Remember that conversation works both ways. Your subscription management software can remind customers immediately when their bills are due, or their subscriptions are up for renewal.
• Set rules for customers who pay late. Set clear rules for late payments, including fees and interest for past due bills, and make sure everyone knows about them. Don’t make this strategy hard to understand.

Track progress with an AR age report. This makes it easy to track days of sales left (DSO). Change how often these reports are sent (some say monthly, others say quarterly), and monitor this measure over time to see what needs to be fixed.

How automated billing makes sure that bills are correct

Put, automated billing is the best thing that has ever happened to subscription companies. Without it, you can’t grow your billing business as a recurring income.

When it comes to bill runs, automation makes sure that pricing is correct by:

Putting together and checking the data

Your CRM, CPQ, and ERP systems can all talk to your automated billing system so you can get accurate data quickly. This process gets rid of mistakes made when entering data by hand.

Rules and Logic for Making Invoices

With bill-run automation, you can set rules for making invoices based on how your business works and how you like to bill. You must decide how to apply savings, taxes, fees, and other charges. Also, you can choose the billing time and the events that start it.

Easy billing and payment processing on your own

Giving customers self-service portals to handle their subscriptions and payments reduces mistakes and disputes. With automated billing, you don’t have to make changes by hand for things like prorated charges for upgrades or downgrades in the middle of a billing period.

Process payments and balance them

With automated billing, payments are processed, transactions are recorded immediately in your accounting system, and accounts are regularly balanced. This process makes sure that financial reports are correct.

Automation of Communication

Mistakes, delays, and missed invoices can happen when you send bills by hand. The billing software that works automatically sends correct bills on time and lets customers know when they are due to be charged.

Plus, talking to your customers will help them pay their bills faster and increase the number of times they extend their contracts. Customer Success and Billing don’t have to monitor every customer account, which is a big plus.

Stops mistakes made by hand

Automated billing lowers the chance of human error and eliminates the time-consuming jobs that need to be done by hand for bill runs, like entering data, keeping track of it, and balancing it. This lets you focus on other essential parts of your business while ensuring billing is done correctly and quickly.

Standardization of Invoices

Templates are used by automated billing software to make sure that all receipts are the same. This makes it easier for customers to understand and pay the bills. This also helps your internal teams keep track of things and ensure everything is correct. Adding branded features, for example, can make it look more professional if your software lets you.

Accuracy of the Calculation

Auto-billing is like using a calculator to do math instead of your head or by hand; it’s faster and more correct. Charges, discounts, taxes, and fees are all calculated accurately by automated billing software. Even price location is taken into account (automatically).