Your Billing Is Too Complex for Standard Accounting Software

Yes. Complex billing is automated by building a billing application that holds the terms of each customer agreement and works out invoices from the underlying activity: hours, usage, deliveries, milestones or events. It applies the right rates, tiers, minimums and exceptions for each customer, produces the invoices, and passes them to your accounting system. The accounting package keeps the books. The billing application does the calculating it was never designed for.

Signs this is your problem

• Invoices are worked out in spreadsheets and typed into accounting.
• Billing takes several days at the end of every period.
• You suspect you are under-billing but cannot prove it.
• One person knows every customer’s special terms.
• Customers regularly query or dispute invoices.
• A new contract with unusual terms causes dread in the office.

What makes billing too complex for a standard package

• Every customer has different terms. Rates, discounts and conditions negotiated contract by contract.
• Tiers and thresholds. One rate up to a volume, another above it, with a monthly minimum.
• Usage and time. Charges based on hours, transactions, units, weight or distance, taken from operational records.
• Milestones and progress billing. Invoices triggered by stages of a project.
• Recurring charges with changes mid-period. Start dates, upgrades and cancellations that have to be prorated.
• Splits. One job billed to several parties, or one invoice covering several divisions.
• Commissions and pass-through costs that depend on what was billed and collected.

Accounting packages handle a price list and a quantity. Beyond that, the working out ends up in a spreadsheet.

What the spreadsheet is costing you

• Invoices go out late because billing takes days of manual work each cycle.
• Revenue is missed. Charges nobody remembered to add, and rate increases never applied.
• Customers dispute invoices they cannot follow, and payment slows.
• Billing depends on one person who knows every customer’s special terms.
• Nobody can easily check it. When a figure is questioned, the working is hard to reconstruct.

How an automated billing application works

• Contract terms are stored as data. Rates, tiers, minimums, effective dates and exceptions for each customer.
• Activity flows in automatically from the systems where the work is recorded.
• The system calculates each invoice and shows how every line was arrived at.
• Exceptions are flagged for review before anything is sent.
• Invoices are produced in each customer’s required layout and delivered by email or through a portal.
• Totals pass to your accounting system so nothing is keyed twice.

How Keene Systems handles it

1. We collect your agreements and a full billing cycle of real invoices. The exceptions tell us what the system must handle.
2. We define the rules with the people who bill today. And confirm them against past invoices.
3. We build the billing application and connect it. To where activity is recorded and to your accounting system.
4. We run it beside the current process for a cycle. And compare every invoice before you switch.

The next step is a short, no-pressure conversation. Book a call with Lance Keene or use the form on this page.