Are there any other SaaS companies doing subscription based or recurring billing in NetSuite using something other than SuiteBilling? We are starting to compare options and wanted to know specifically how well various solution may work for our type of industry. We already know about Zone Advanced Billing, which seems like a top contender, and 360 Subscription Billing also sounds interesting. Are other offerings like Recurly or Fusebill with considering? Any advice is appreciated. We made a bad choice with our billing system years ago, and don't want to repeat that mistake again. We are wary of SuiteBilling for that reason.

Hi Scott, can you tell me what exactly you are wary of regarding the previous tool and SuiteBilling? FYI - I just implemented SuiteBilling for SaaS + HW + PS publicly traded client, I do not work for a partner nor NS PS. My biggest take away is that SuiteBilling's approach to leveraging native ARM feature is incredibly flexible and makes Rev Rec easy. On the front end functionality, it does basic SaaS booking and billing operations fairly straight forward, even considering multi-year pricing, ramps, etc. It is clunky when it comes to renewals and overall uplifts but it can be automated/standardized. The biggest challenge I see for the client is how to translate their existing data to conform to SuiteBilling. It isn't necessarily forcing you to change how you do business but does force you to review the integrity of contract data (i.e. what is a change order). Happy to share my experiences with you.

@suitetastic To be honest, our company does not yet use or need ARM. Because of the nature of our billing and revenue, it's not a need for us. The vast majority of our billing is perpetual / evergreen, so we want to avoid a system that requires end dates on contracts, as we don't have any. Customers can come and go at will, and often do, and that is an area where the current recurring billing fails to meet our needs. It will not let us make multiple changes per subscription item per monthly billing cycle, nor will it let us cancel changes that have been submitted but not yet processed. We need more flexibility with being able to modify subscriptions, sometimes half a dozen times per month.

@scottvonduhn Thanks, I understand you concerns. SuiteBilling addresses perpetual / evergreen contracts and while it does not "force" and end date for evergreen (as most SaaS modeled companies are aiming to become, including my client which has annual subscription with evergreen clauses), estimated end dates are needed when evaluating multi-element arrangements based on fair values. And estimated end dates are simply estimates - you do not need to contractually perform this obligation until the end dates, enhance not on the contract, but management needs to make assumptions and forecast based on prevailing average customer life. For example - You sold Evergreen SaaS, perp license, and PS, with PS heavily discounted - How do you treat the carve-in and out of rev to PS lines from your SaaS lines, per your fair values? If you are a company with homogenous products/fair values and more retail consumer focus, I understand there may not be a definitive need. But for my enterprise facing clients doing larger dollar deals and/or acquisition heavy companies that acquire multiple product lines (enhance additional FVs by product groups/lines), then subsequently upsell/combine with existing product lines, using ARM is a serious consideration. As far as customers terminating at will, SuiteBilling addresses modifications via Change orders of varying kinds. Multiple changes (pricing, qty, new items), suspensions, terminations, per subscription item per monthly billing cycle are accomplished through change orders, if you date them accurately, and will reflect proper entitlements when renewals are generated (low touch or high touch renewals). Currently en mass change order updates are not yet available via the user interface but it is available for mass updates via csv imports. Automation can be introduced here until NS prod dev rolls out this feature.

I should probably have added that professional services does their own billing, and all one time fees are billed by our customer onboarding team. We therefore have a 100% pure subscription-based billing setup in NetSuite. The PS and one time fee revenue recognition and forecasting are handled by those teams separately. Mass updates are actually a big need for us. We frequently need to change rates for a large groups of customers, or put large groups on hold (in both cases, thousands at a time) because they are seasonal businesses and don't use our service for part of the year.

I gotcha Scott, good luck and let me know if you have additional questions. Feel free to connect with me via LK: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fucharlie/

Thanks. Yes, our needs are a bit outside the ordinary, though not too unusual, and precisely why the uses cases that recurring billing was built for have not been a great fit for us. We worry that SuiteBilling might make similar assumptions given that the same team at NetSuite support both products. We want a billing system that is much more open and flexible. We are willing to put in our own controls and validations to ensure accuracy and correctness, and want a subscription billing system that does not restrict us too much.

Hey Scott, sounds like you’re interested in exploring a solution that sits outside NetSuite in which case I would recommend Chargify or Chargebee over Recurly. One of my clients looked at both after a bad experience with SuiteBilling and chose to go with a solution that sits in NetSuite called BillFinity that a partner of mine built and is on SuiteApp. Happy to connect you or lend advice where I can.

We are considering BillFinity as an option, so it would be good to get more information about that. Ideally, we'd like to use a billing solution in NetSuite, but we wouldn't rule out an external billing engine. The main goal is what is easiest for us to manage and gives us the best experience.