SaaS Billing Software: 7 Tools in 3 Categories & the Best Ways to Select -

SaaS billing software is a software that automates any elements of the recurring billing process including payment processing, dunning, fulfillment and many more.

In this post in this article, we'll look at comparing seven SaaS billing options which we categorize into three types:

1. Subscription management This type of software can automate free trial and recurring payment plans, and also the dunning process. It's still necessary to have a separate system for payment processing and tax refunds. and many more.
2. Processing of payments: These solutions gather data about payments and enable the transaction between two parties. With many payment processors they require additional software for managing complex recurring payments, tax, chargebacks Dunning, and many more.
3. Merchants of Record (MoR): Having your billing solution also act as the MoR implies that they handle the whole payment process through SaaS for you, which includes collecting and remitting local and international taxes (such as VAT and local sales tax) and ensuring compliance to local regulations and laws including chargebacks, tax refunds, and more. In the absence of a MoR company must monitor and assure the compliance of all local regulations and taxes within any country or region where there are customers.

 Table of Contents

•   Your MoR the All-in-1 SaaS Billing
•   3 Subscription Management Software
•     Chargebee
•     Chargify
•     Recurly
•   3 Payment Processors
• Verifone (formerly 2Checkout)
•     Stripe
•     Braintree

The MoR you receive for all-in-one SaaS Billing

This is a brief overview of what you'll need to do to act as your MoR:

The customers who visit your website to choose their subscription plans. When they get to pay, it handles the checkout and completes the transaction. It functions the same way as other common SaaS payment processors except for one important feature: acts as the merchant in your account.

 The advantage of this is twofold:

1. eliminates the burden of paying the local consumption tax keeping up-to-date in local laws governing transactions as well as managing subscriptions, payment processing, and so on. If something goes wrong in the area of local taxes, compliance with local laws, chargebacks, authorization rates, etc. takes over to solve the issue on your behalf.
2. Your entire SaaS billing system can be handled in one location -- Your Dashboard. Plus, you're only charged a flat fee for all your services (more on this later).

Next, we'll take closer at the ways we can assist you in each piece of the billing procedure. Specifically:

•   Checkout
•   Pay Processing
•   Receipt and Transfer of Consumption Tax
•   Subscription and Recurring Payment Management
•   Retention Management
•   Analytics, Reporting and Analysis

Checkout: Customization of the Checkout for greater conversion

A lot of companies fail to attract customers due to the excessive confusion in their checkout procedure. As an example when the checkout page isn't in a way that matches the branding of the of the site, the prospective customer is less likely to trust that the checkout is secure. A customer could opt not to purchase since you do not accept the kind of payment option you offer (a issue that is especially prevalent with international buyers).

Most payment processors will provide you with checkout templates with a couple of easy modifications like the addition of your logo. However, these checkout templates rarely provide the customization abilities necessary to fully optimize your checkout for high rate of conversion.

 , on contrary, offers branding tools, CSS overrides and also a JavaScript library of popular e-commerce tools, so that you can have total control over each aspect of your purchase.

There are other features that offers to assist you in optimizing your shopping experience:

• Preferred payment methods: While Visa or PayPal might be popular within the U.S., other forms of payment are popular in other countries. If you do not offer the preferred payment method which buyers use, you'll convert fewer of them to customers. It can also be long and consumes resources to introduce different payment options. This makes it easy for users to incorporate a wide range of popular payment methods across the globe right away (more about this in a later section).

• Text Translations: If your checkout does not use the same languages as the rest of your website, you may lose some customers. You can allow your customers select the language they prefer at checkout or let choose the appropriate language based on their location.
• Local currency conversions: Certain customers may hesitate to buy when they aren't sure (or have to figure out on their own) what the software will cost in their local currency. solves this by automatically converting the price to the local currency upon checkout. You can also make a personalized price in every currency.
• Flexible integration options: Part of choosing the most appropriate checkout method is choosing whether to integrate the checkout on your site or direct customers to a separate site. There are three choices available to you: 1) embed the checkout directly on your website, or) insert a pop-up over your website, and) redirect users to a separate webpage that's entirely branded for your business. The first two options only need a couple of lines of HTML and Javascript The third choice is provided by . We will host your entire online storefront, including checkout and your brand.

• Personalized support: If you need additional support, our team of software engineers can help in the design and development of the perfect check-out system for your business (regardless the size or small your business).

NOTE: We also provide an online checkout template that's been optimized for conversions, However, many businesses discover that it's easy to implement an individual solution using .

Payment Processing: Increase Authorization Rates With Localized Payment Gateways

In many cases, people try to buy but the payment method is rejected or is too slow to finish, and they fail to make the purchase.

Improves authorization rates, so you can earn more revenue in several ways:

• Payment gateway rerouting: If a payment fails at the first try, the system instantly retries it using a secondary gateway -and all this without you or anyone on the support team needing to intervene. The process is usually able to resolve payment issues due to problems with connectivity or the system.
• Manage preferred payment service providers: As we mentioned in the past, support for the new methods of payment can result in an immense resource drain. Each card company and bank has different tolerance levels for fraud and chargebacks and different regulations for the way a transaction takes place. If you're not complying with these requirements then the network of your card is likely to stop approving payments. The responsibility is ours to keeping up with the various requirements of payment providers which means we take care of chargebacks, fraud and other problems for you.
• localizing processing of payments: Card networks are more likely to authorize transactions made via a local processor. In the case of example, if the buyer is situated in Italy, the payment processor must be a legal company with a legal entity in Italy to get higher rates of authorization. collaborates with processors across all over the world, to ensure that all payments are localized.

Recognizing and remitting consumption tax Expande Globally, Without Heavy Fines

A few SaaS billing programs can help you collect tax but, in the end, you'll be accountable in settling and paying an appropriate amount when it's due. This is a huge job for any company.

 Since it acts as your MoR, we take care of all the elements of collecting and remitting consumption tax for you.

automatically calculates the right quantity and type of tax, and then adds the tax to the cost for the customers at checkout (we additionally support tax-exempt transactions as well as other unique circumstances). At the end of each tax season we submit taxes to every jurisdiction. In addition, we'll take on the leadership when it comes to audits.

Subscription and Recurring Billing Management Design Custom Subscriptions and Trials, All the While Being Compliant with Local Jurisdictions

There are numerous subscription management programs with flexible plans for creating trials and ongoing subscriptions. With the right subscription model, including recurring and trial billing will help you attract more customers and boost revenue.

But it is true that your subscription plans will only be successful when they comply with local regulations and laws. For example, several states, provinces and countries don't allow auto-pay for transactions over the amount of.

Many subscription management tools will notify you when they learn about changes to rules and laws, but it is you who are the ultimate responsible. If you do not adhere to these ever-changing law and regulations You could be subject to heavy penalties or even be barred from doing business in the region.

 takes away the burden of obligation to adhere to local regulations and laws governing transactions.

Our legal team keep up-to-date on the latest legal issues and makes sure all the necessary processes are in place to making payments. It is possible to begin selling products in over 200 regions in just a few hours because we've already established the processes required in every region.

Additionally, has a variety of pre-configured trial and subscription options , so that you can design your own solutions without programming. Or, you can use the API and webhooks library to create complicated subscription logic as well as integrations.

 Here are a few examples of the kinds of billing logic and trials that you could create using

• Trials for free or with a fee
• Trials that do not require the payment information
• Trials which automatically renew until an active plan automatically.
• Subscription intervals of any length
• Mid-cycle adjustments to the cycle
• One-time purchases are added to regular installment
• Upsells, cross-sells, discounts and many more

Retention Management: Reduce Involuntary Churn With Proactive Dunning

Since involuntary churn is one of the primary reasons companies that are subscription-based lose customers. the majority of SaaS billing applications offer basic retention management features such as retrying failed payments or email notifications sent to customers following an unsuccessful payment. But, these options will only help following a payment has failed.

can be turned on to send alerts that prompt the client to correct their information about their payment prior to when the transaction occurs. In our experience, these proactive reminders can dramatically reduce the number of failed payments at all.

After a failed payment, you can choose to schedule reminders to your customers for two, seven, five, 14 21 days in the wake of an unsuccessful payment. In the 21-day period the customer's services won't be affected. With periodic reminders and also maintaining your service, clients will be more likely to change their details, which will reduce involuntary churn.

provides a self-serve portal where customers can change their personal information, and also modify or upgrade their subscriptions. With customers able to manage their own accounts there's less friction in the user experience, which results in more profits. The self-serve portal can be customized to match the brand's identity, but the management is handled by our staff to ensure that your staff doesn't need to think about it.

Analysis and reporting: Simplify Business Making

Analytics and Reporting lets you understand what each product does to the bottom line of your business, which coupon or promotion is effective, what subscription plans generate the most revenue, and much more.

 The dashboard of revenue provides a comprehensive view of your cash flow including:

• Which areas are your clients located
• Which currencies and methods of payment do clients prefer?
• Net sales by product
• The total transactions per the country
• And more

 The dashboard for subscriptions lets you dig deeper into your monthly recurring revenues (MRR) and also includes SaaS parameters, including:

• Upsells, cross-sells, and additional products
• Long-term value of each customer
• Churn of the entire customer
• In the cycle of billing, it is commonplace for churn to occur
• And more

With 's reporting feature allows you to build and save custom reports which lets you access all the information you require, at the time you require it. Our experts can assist users use these reports to get the answers you're looking for to expand and improve your SaaS business. Finally, you can communicate any report to key users via the dashboard, or in the form of a PNG, CSV or XLSX spreadsheet.

Plan for the Future With Flat-Rate Pricing

In the case of most SaaS billing programs will require you to install additional software or upgrade to the most costly plan in order to gain the functionalities you need.

On the other hand, is a full payment system so you won't need any other billing software. Plus, all of 's offerings are provided at one cost (without any fees for migration).

Our staff works with you to find an affordable price that is based on the number of transactions . You'll be charged when transactions are completed.

3 Subscription Management Platforms

Chargebee: Built for Complex Subscription Logic

Chargebee is an extremely popular option for subscription billing and revenue management. Chargebee has a variety of payment options and payment gateways, however it is your responsibility to partnering with and configuring each one.

The features of Chargebee's include:

• Auto-serve models and self-service
• Invoicing and billing can be automated.
• Flexible pricing plans
• Tool for managing quotes
• Smart dunning
• PCI-compliant checkout

Chargify: Subscription Management B2B SaaS

Chargify is subscription billing software specially designed for B2B SaaS. As of the date of this writing, Chargify is in the phase of partnering with SaaSOptics to become an entirely new company in software, Maxio. Through this partnership users of Chargify will be able to gain access to payment processing services, however, you'll still need a separate solution for taxes and compliance with the law.

Other noteworthy Chargify attributes are:

• Dozens upon dozens of trial and pricing models
• Custom sign up experiences
• Automated dunning
• Analytics suite for self-service
• Recognition of revenue

Recurly: Supports Multiple Payment Gateways

Recurly is a subscription and billing platform that helps you to optimize your growth strategies. Recurly boasts of the capability to seamlessly integrate with a variety of merchant and payment processors but you'll have to manage and pay for these third-party services on top of your Recurly plan.

The services offered by Recurly include:

• Customizable subscription models
• Automated recurring invoicing
• Tools for revenue recovery
• Intelligent retention
• Subscription analytics

3 Payment Processors

Verifone is a Payment Platform designed for Enterprises

Verifone (formerly 2Checkout) allows you to choose between a MoR model and payment processing model. Though startups might benefit from their services, Verifone has been designed more to large-scale businesses.

The main functions of Verifone are:

• Reporting and analytics
• Global Tax and Financial Services, as well as financial
• Risk management and compliance
• B2B quote builder
• Channel partner management

Stripe, a well-known and trusted payment processor

Stripe is a processor for payments that allows transactions online as well as in person. Though Stripe has a couple of services for managing your subscription however, they generally recommend connecting with Chargebee to offer more extensive recurring billing features and this means that you'll be managing and manage two payment platforms.

Some of Stripe's other features comprise:

• Checkout
• Management of risk and fraud
• Online payment
• Pay in-person
• Management of subscriptions
• Physical and virtual cards are issued
• Business spend management for subscriptions

Braintree: PayPal's Solutions for SaaS

Braintree created by PayPal is a processor for payments that supports Venmo (in the US), Apple Pay as well as Google Pay. The company also offers SaaS tools for managing subscriptions.

Braintree also has other noteworthy offerings. Braintree includes:

• Merchant accounts
• Optimized checkout flow
• Flexible risk mitigation solutions for risk
• Analytics on the subscription lifecycle
• Integrations with third party integrations to help you manage recurring bills accounting, recurring billing, and much more