SaaS Billing Software: 7 Tools in 3 Categories & What to Consider -

SaaS billing software is a software that automates some or all aspects of the recurring billing process such as payment processing dunning, fulfillment, and many more.

In this post we'll compare 7 SaaS billing solutions that we separate into three categories:

1. Subscription administration: This type of software allows you to automate free trials, recurring payment schedules, and also the dunning procedure. It's still necessary to have a separate solution for payment processing, taxes, chargebacks, and more.
2. Processing of payments: These solutions gather data about payments and enable the transfer between two people. With many payment processors, you'll need 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 a MoR is to handle the entire payment process through SaaS for you, including the collection and paying international and local taxes (such as VAT and local sales tax), staying compliant with local laws and regulations, chargebacks, and much more. Without a MoR, your business will need to be aware of and in compliance with all local regulations and taxes within any region or country in which your customers are.

 Table of Contents

•   : Your MoR for all-in-one 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 it looks like for acting as your MoR:

Customers visit your site to choose their subscription plan. When they get to check out, the system takes over the process and concludes the transaction. It operates the same as other SaaS payment processors with an important aspect: acting as the merchant in your account.

 The benefit from this is twofold.

1. takes away the burden of paying local consumption tax keeping up-to-date with local transaction laws and managing subscriptions, payments processing, and more. If something goes wrong in the area of local taxes, compliance with local laws or chargebacks, rates for authorization and so on. will take the initiative in resolving the issue on your behalf.
2. The entire SaaS billing solution can be managed in one location -- Your Dashboard. Plus, you're only charged one fixed rate for all services (more about this in the future).

The next step is to take an in-depth look at how helps you with each step of the bill procedure. Specifically:

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

Checkout: Customization of the Checkout for greater conversion

Many companies lose potential customers due to the excessive friction in their checkout process. For example, if the checkout screen does not visually align with the brand that is displayed on the website, the potential client is less likely feel confident that the transaction is safe. Also, the customer might opt not to purchase due to the payment method that they can use (a problem especially common with international buyers).

The majority of payment processors provide the checkout template and allow for a few basic modifications, such as adding your logo. These templates do not offer the flexibility to customize you need to truly improve your checkout to achieve high rate of conversion.

  however, on its own, comes with branding tools, CSS overrides as well as a JavaScript library of popular e-commerce options, allowing you to have complete control of every aspect of your purchase.

Below are some additional features that offers to aid you with your checkout:

• Preferred payment methods: While Visa or PayPal might be popular across 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 into buyers. But it can be very long and consumes resources to create new payment methods. makes it possible for you to add tons of popular payment methods across the world in a matter of minutes (more about this in a later section).

• Text translations: If your checkout doesn't use the same languages as other pages on your website and you're not sure if it's a good idea to lose customers. By letting the customers pick the language they prefer at checkout or let them choose the right local language according to their place of residence.
• Conversions to local currencies: A few customers might hesitate to buy when they aren't sure (or need to determine by themselves) what the software is going to cost in their local currency. This is solved by automatically changing cost to local currency upon checkout. You can also create a customized price in the currencies of each.
• Flexibility in integration choices: Part of choosing the most appropriate checkout method is choosing whether to integrate it in your website or redirect customers to a separate web page. It offers three options that include: 1)) embed the checkout directly onto your webpage, 2) place a pop-up onto your webpage, and 3) redirect users to a separate webpage that's entirely branded for your business. These two options require just a couple lines of HTML as well as Javascript while the third is managed by . We will host your entire online storefront, including checkout and your brand.

• Personalized assistance: If you need additional support, our team of software engineers will help you design and develop the right checkout for your business (regardless of how large or small your business).

Note: We also provide the checkout templates that have been optimized for conversions, however, many businesses find that it's simple to set up the solution of your choice .

Pay Processing: Improve Authorization Rates With Localized Payment Gateways

Frequently, customers try to buy but the payment method fails or takes too long to finish, and they fail to complete the purchase.

helps improve authorization rates so you earn more money through a variety of ways:

• Payment gateway rerouting: If a payment fails in the initial attempt, it automatically retries the payment by using a second gatewayand all this without you or anyone on your support team being required to intervene. This often solves payment failures because of problems with connectivity or the system.
• managing preferred payment processors: As we mentioned earlier, supporting new payment methods can be an immense resource drain. Each card network and issuing bank has different tolerance levels for chargingbacks and fraud as well as distinct guidelines for when the transaction is conducted. If you're not in compliance with these requirements then the network of your card will likely stop authorizing payments. We are responsible for keeping up with the various requirements of payment service providers, and we take care of chargebacks, fraud, and more to your benefit.
• Localizing payments processing: Card networks are more likely to authorize the payment via a local processor. If, for instance, the purchaser is located situated in Italy, the payment processor must be a legal organization in Italy to get higher rates of authorization. collaborates with processors across all over the world, to ensure that most payments are localized.

Collection and Remitting of Consumption Tax: Expand Globally Without Hefty Fines

A few SaaS billing programs can help you collect tax but, ultimately, you'll be responsible to collect and pay an appropriate amount in the correct time. It's a major job for any company.

 Because acts as your MoR. We take care of all the details of collecting, and remitting consumption tax on your behalf.

Automatically calculates the correct quantity and type of tax. We then add it to the price for customers when you check out (we additionally support tax-exempt transactions and other special situations). When we finish every tax year, we file taxes with the appropriate authorities. We'll also take the lead when it comes to audits.

Control of Recurring and Subscription Billing Make custom trials and subscriptions while Being Compliant with Local Jurisdictions

There are a variety of software for managing subscriptions with flexible plans to create trials as well as regular subscription plans. With the right subscription model, including recurring and trial billing will help you gain more customers as well as increase the amount of revenue.

However, your subscription plans are only successful in the event that they conform to local laws and regulations. For example, many states, provinces, and nations don't permit auto-pay on transactions that exceed a certain amount.

Most subscription management solutions provide you with a notification when they are aware of changes to laws and regulations, but it is you who are the ultimate responsible. If you fail to adhere to these ever-changing rules and laws You could be subject to heavy penalties or even be barred from conducting business in that area.

 relieves you of this responsibility by taking complete accountability for observing local transaction laws and regulations.

Our legal team remain up-to-date with every legal aspect and make certain that the proper processes are in place to paying customers. Start selling your products across over 200 regions in just a few hours as we've already set up the processes required in every single region.

In addition, it offers a variety of pre-configured trial and subscription options , so that you can design your own solutions with no programming. Or, you are able to use the API and webhooks library to build complicated subscription logic as well as integrations.

 Here are some examples of the kinds of trials and billing logic you can design using

• Free or for a nominal cost
• Trials with or without collecting the payment information
• Trials that automatically upgrade to a paid plan
• The duration of subscriptions can be any length
• Mid-cycle adjustments to the cycle
• One-time purchase is added to recurring payment
• Cross-sells and upsells and much more

Retention Management: Limit Involuntary Churn With Proactive Dunning

Since involuntary churn is one major reasons why subscription-based companies lose customers, the majority of SaaS billing software offers the basics of retention management, for example, retrying unsuccessful payments or email notifications sent to clients following a failed payment. But, these options can only be useful following the payment fails.

can be turned on to send alerts that prompt customers to change their information about their payment prior to when the transaction takes place. In our experience the proactive reminders could drastically reduce the amount of transactions that don't work initially.

If a payment fails it is possible to automatically send out reminders to your customers for two five, seven, 14 21 days following an unsuccessful payment. In the 21-day period you can ensure that your customers' service will not be interrupted. With frequent reminders and continuing your service, clients will be more likely to change their details, which will reduce the rate of involuntary customer churn.

provides a self-serve portal where customers can change their information and modify or upgrade their subscriptions. By letting customers control their accounts on their own, there's less friction in the customer experience which means more profits. The self-serve portal is customizable to fit your brand identity but the management is handled by our staff to ensure that your staff doesn't need to worry about it.

Analytics and Reporting: Consolidate Business Choices

's analytics and reporting feature will help you determine the way each product affects the bottom line of your business, which discounts or coupons are successful, which subscription model generate the most revenue, and so on.

 The dashboard for revenue gives you a complete overview of cash flow, which includes:

• Where your customers are located
• What payment options and currencies do customers prefer
• Net sales per product
• Transactions totals by the country
• and more

 The dashboard of your subscription allows you to dig into your monthly recurring revenues (MRR) and includes SaaS parameters, including:

• Cross-sells, upsells, as well as add-ons
• The long-term value each customer can bring to the company
• Churn of the entire customer
• When in the billing cycle the churn is most likely
• Plus

With 's reporting feature it is possible to create and save customized reports, which allows you to have all the information you require, when you need it. Our experts can assist you use these reports to find the answers you need to improve and grow your SaaS business. Finally, you can send any report to important stakeholders via the dashboard or by way of CSV, PNG or XLSX spreadsheet.

Make a Plan for the Future with Flat-Rate Pricing

For the majority of SaaS billing programs, you'll need to add to other solutions, or switch to the least costly plan in order to gain the functionalities you need.

However, it is a complete payment solution so you won't need any other billing software. Additionally, all services are included in one cost (without the cost of migration).

Our team works in partnership with you to determine an affordable price that is based upon the amount of transactions , and you'll only be charged for transactions that occur.

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 as well as payment gateways. However, you'll be responsible for partnering with and configuring each one.

A few of the features offered by Chargebee comprise:

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

Chargify: Subscription Management for B2B SaaS

Chargify is a software for subscription billing specially designed for B2B SaaS. As of the date of this writing, Chargify is in the process of joining forces with SaaSOptics and forming a new software company, Maxio. Through this partnership users of Chargify will be able to gain access to payment gateways, however, you'll still require a different solution to deal with tax compliance and legal requirements.

Other important Chargify attributes include:

• Dozens upon dozens of trial and pricing models
• Sign up experience that is customized to your preferences
• Automatic dunning
• Self-service Analytics Suite
• Revenue recognition

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 payments gateways and merchant accounts However, you will need to be responsible for these services on top of your Recurly plan.

Recurly's offerings include:

• Customizable subscription models
• Automated, recurring invoices
• Revenue recovery tools
• Intelligent retention
• Analytics on subscriptions

3 Payment Processors

Verifone is a Payment Platform designed for Enterprises

Verifone (formerly 2Checkout) lets you choose between the MoR model as well as the payment processing model. Although startup companies may benefit from the services of Verifone, Verifone has been designed more to large-scale businesses.

Its primary features are:

• Analytics and reporting
• Global tax and financial and banking services
• Risk management and compliance
• B2B quote builder
• Channel partner management

Stripe: Well-Known Payment Processor

Stripe is a payment processor for online and in-person transactions. Although Stripe offers a few options for managing subscriptions however, they generally recommend connecting with Chargebee to offer more extensive feature for billing recurring that means you'll be managing and pay for two different platforms.

The other features of Stripe comprise:

• Checkout
• Risk management and fraud
• Payments online
• Payments in person
• Subscription management
• Card issuing both physical and virtual
• Business spend management for subscriptions

Braintree: PayPal's Answer for SaaS

Braintree from PayPal is a processor for payments that supports Venmo (in the US), Apple Pay and Google Pay. They also offer some SaaS tools for managing subscriptions.

Other notable offerings by Braintree include:

• Merchant accounts
• Improved checkout flow
• Options for risk reduction that are flexible
• Analytical insights on the lifecycle of subscriptions
• Third-party integrations for recurring billing as well as accounting and accounting.