Automation of calculations

Main article: Billing

Why the automated billing is necessary for business growth

Any business interested in growth needs automation. In the modern connected world digital workflows and machine learning optimize business and transaction processes, do them by more effective and bring people out of the equation, allowing them to focus on more productive tasks. We have automated sales, supply chains, factory assembly lines and even delivery. However many companies insufficiently flexibly automated financial processes, such as drawing of accounts. Without automatic drawing of accounts you often cannot optimize steady growth of business.

Maintenance of timely and exact drawing of accounts is important for management of a cash flow, but automatic drawing of accounts is more, than just creation of accounts. Everything begins with the fact that your billing system has all input data connected with billing is frequent from separate sources. This often passed, crucial activity is called normalization of data or "mediation" and is crucial for prevention of leakage of income. After mediation this process extends to payments, recognition of income, charges, management of agreements, the reporting and many other things. To create a basis for the billing systems promoting growth, the companies should create other integrated business processes. Automation provides necessary business flexibility therefore you can configure new models of income, but not write more code.

Why billing matters for automation

The combination of one-time purchases, subscriptions and consumer prices on the basis of use is crucial for stimulation of digital growth. You cannot support this combination of pricing models and support positive experience with clients without the exact and timely automated drawing of accounts by a timely and consecutive method which does a cash inflow to more predictable.

Automation of financial transactions also simplifies experiments with new models of business and pricing. The researches conducted by Manifesto Growth Architects show that 70% of the enterprises consider models of membership and a subscription as the future for further commercial growth. In the presence of the correct automated systems it is rather easy to change models of service and the price precisely to configure and test the new business ideas stimulating growth.

As showed us COVID-19 placed in a cloud services also simplify automation and scaling of transactions during crisis. Cloud platforms can process the growing volumes of transactions and it is easy to adapt to the changing workloads caused by different models of drawing of accounts. They also simplify aggregation of data for analytics. When you select the payments repeating and based on use, some problems can be solved only with the automation help. For example, automation of recognition of revenue is the only way of effective processing of several models of drawing of accounts, such as subscriptions, drawing of accounts upon service use. Automation allows to create rules for standardization of revenue recognition and also to create easily traced control register for simplification of payments, charges for service and observance of regulatory requirements.

Manual processes just are not scaled, especially when you deal with difficult pricing models. Creating intellectual financial center, you can integrate business processes to monitor receipt and outflow of money and to define new opportunities and also failure points.

Automation of payments is necessary for achievement of good results in business

How to automate the repeating accounts

Before you are able to automate drawing of accounts, you should lay some foundation, since modeling of your tariff plans. As there are so many new models of periodic income, let's consider three most widespread pricing models of SaaS as an example:

1. The prices of a subscription on a fixed rate: it is the most naive approach setting uniform price for services, often collectable monthly, but paid annually. This simple pricing model is approach "everything that you can eat" therefore you do not need to monitor use.

2. Pricing on the basis of use. It is approach with payment after delivery which is levied depending on the volume or use "according to the menu". Advantage of this approach consists in decrease in barriers to an input and does not allow active users to take advantages of the fixed price.

3. Multilevel pricing on the basis of use: this strategy sets a payment at the different levels depending on use. Its advantage consists in that, "that you leave less potential income on a table" and provides a way to sales growth.

These models of drawing of accounts have nuances, such as quotations, discounts, cost-plus pricing, etc. During creation of new models try to expect market trends which will influence pricing and to define the best solution corresponding to market trends. You can even consider strategy which combines different pricing models to give to clients more opportunities and to give you more opportunities of income acquisition. Creation of models will help you to specify in advance your pricing models that you could remain ahead of competitors.

After you define the pricing models, you will be able to use other elements necessary for automatic drawing of accounts:

• Make the plan of your workflow, including data exchange between departments and business applications, email notifications and calls to external services. Within workflow you need to build in autonomous systems of registration and trial registration of service.

• Create payment options, such as mobile, bank transfer, credit cards, etc., Including regional options of payment. If you sell worldwide, consider the possibility of internationalization, including local currency, currency rates and taxation.

• Develop means for generation of accounts and automatic payment acceptance. It also includes automatic repeated payments, reminders and charges.

Such description of automation of billing is simplified, but these are basic elements which are necessary for you for change of your billing transactions. In process of adding of new variables, such as scalable prices, third-party services, packets of products, etc. the Model of drawing of accounts becomes harder and harder. That is why you want to have an opportunity to customize the automated billing system, but not to try to create it independently.

With the correct automated billing infrastructure you can experiment with new business models and methodologies, including new growth strategies. You do not want that something like drawing of accounts disturbed success in business.