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 billing cycle including payment processing, fulfillment, dunning, and many more.

In this piece in this article, we'll look at comparing seven SaaS billing solutions that we've divided into three categories:

1. Subscription administration: This kind of software allows you to automate trial periods and recurring payment plans, and also the dunning procedure. It's still necessary to have a separate solution for payment processing and tax refunds. and many more.
2. Payment processing: These solutions gather data about payments and enable the exchange of funds between two parties. With many payment processors, you'll need additional software to manage the complicated and recurring payment process, including charges, taxes, dunning, and more.
3. Merchants of Record (MoR): Having your billing software also function as the MoR implies that they take care of the entire SaaS billing process for you, including taking care of collecting and remitting local and international taxes (such as VAT or local sales taxes) and ensuring compliance to local regulations and laws as well as chargebacks and more. Without a MoR, your company must monitor and assure compliance with all local laws and taxes in every country and region in which there are customers.

 Table of Contents

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

: Your MoR for All-in-One SaaS Billing

Below is an overview of how is required to act as your MoR:

The customers who visit your website to choose their subscription. Then, when they go to pay, it takes over the process and concludes the transaction. It functions the same way as other common SaaS payment processors with an important aspect: acting as your merchant of record.

 The advantage from this is twofold.

1. relieves you of the obligation of paying local consumption taxes keeping up-to-date on local transactions laws, managing subscriptions, payment processing, and so on. If something goes wrong with taxes, local compliance, chargebacks, authorization rates, etc. will take the initiative to resolve the problem for you.
2. All of your SaaS billing process can be managed from one place -- Your account dashboard. Plus, you're only charged a flat fee for all services (more about this in the future).

In the next section, we'll look at a closer look at how helps you with each piece of the billing process. Specifically:

•   Checkout
•   Process Payment
•   Collection and Payment of Consumption Tax
•   Subscription and Recurring Billing Management
•   Retention Management
•   Analytics as well as Reporting

Checkout: Full Checkout Customization to allow for higher conversions

Some businesses lose customers due to the excessive hassle in the checkout process. For example when the checkout page doesn't visually match the branding that is displayed on the site, the prospective buyer is less likely to trust that the checkout is safe. Also, the customer might choose not to purchase because you don't accept the type of payment method they have available (a issue that is especially prevalent with international customers).

The majority of payment processors provide customers with templates for checkouts and allow for a few basic modifications, such as including your company logo. These templates don't always have the options for customization you need to truly optimize your checkout for high conversion rates.

 , on the other hand, provides branding tools, CSS overrides and also a JavaScript collection of most commonly used e-commerce tools, so that you can have total control over each aspect of your checkout.

Below are some additional options that can aid you with your checkout:

• preferred payment options: While Visa or PayPal might be popular across the U.S., other forms of payment are utilized across other nations. If you don't provide the preferred payment method which buyers use, you'll convert fewer of them into buyers. It can also be long and consumes resources to introduce new payment methods. It allows users to include a variety of popular payment methods across the globe right away (more on this in a later section).

• Text translations: If your checkout does not use the same languages as the rest of your site, you may lose some customers. With , you can let customers choose their preferred language at checkout or let choose the appropriate language based on their location.
• Conversions to local currencies: Some customers will not purchase the product because they do not know (or have to figure out on their own) what the software is going to cost in local currency. solves this by automatically converting prices to local currency at checkout. Alternatively, you can create a customized price for each 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. provides you with three options one of which is to) embed the checkout directly on your site,) add a pop-up on your webpage, and 3) redirect users to a different page that's completely branded with your company's logo. The first two options only require a few lines of HTML and Javascript while the third is hosted by . We'll host your whole shopfront as well as the checkout using your logo.

• Personalized support: If you need extra assistance, our team of engineers in software can assist you to create and implement the best check-out system for your business (regardless the size or small your business).

Note: We also provide the checkout templates that have been designed to be optimized for conversions however, many businesses find that it's simple to set up an individual solution using .

Pay Processing: Increase Authorization Rates with Localized Payment Gateways

In many cases, people are tempted to purchase, but their payment method gets declined or is too slow to complete so they don't complete the purchase.

Improves authorization rates, so you will earn more through a variety of ways:

• Rerouting of payments by the payment gateway: If a payment fails in the initial attempt, it automatically retries the payment by using a second gatewaywith no need for any member of your support team having intervene. This often solves payment failures caused by connectivity or system issues.
• managing preferred payment processors: As we mentioned earlier, supporting new payment methods can be an enormous burden on resources. Each card company and bank have different tolerance levels for fraud and chargebacks and different guidelines for when transactions are conducted. If you're not complying with these requirements, the card network will likely stop authorizing payments. We are responsible for maintaining compliance with different payment providers which means we handle fraud, chargebacks, and more for you.
• Localizing payment processing: Card networks are more likely to authorize transactions made through a local payment processor. For example, if the customer is located from Italy and the processor should have a legal company with a legal entity in Italy for higher authorization rates. Works with various payment processors across the globe to ensure most payments are localized.

Recognizing and remitting consumption tax Increase Globally without Hefty Fines

Certain SaaS billing software will help you collect tax but, ultimately, you'll be responsible to collect and pay an appropriate amount at the right time. This is an enormous responsibility for every business.

 Because acts as your MOR. We handle all elements of collecting and remitting taxes on consumption for you.

automatically calculates the right quantity and type of tax and adds it to the price for customers at checkout (we also support tax-exempt transactions as well as other unique cases). After each tax period, we file taxes with each jurisdiction. In addition, we'll take on the leadership when it comes to audits.

Control of Recurring and Subscription Billing: Create Custom Subscriptions and Trials, All the While Staying Compliant With Local Jurisdictions

There are a variety of subscription management programs which offer a variety of options for creating trials and ongoing subscriptions. By using the correct plan for recurring billing and trial, you can gain more customers as well as increase the amount of revenue.

However it is true that your subscription plans can only succeed if they adhere to local regulations and laws. For example, several states, provinces and nations don't permit auto-pay on transactions that exceed an amount.

Most subscription management solutions will notify you when they are aware of changes to laws and regulations, but you are ultimately accountable. If you don't adhere to these ever-changing laws and regulations You could be subject to heavy penalties or even be barred from doing business in the region.

 relieves you of this burden by taking full obligation to adhere to local laws and regulations for transactions.

Our legal team keep up-to-date on every legal aspect and make sure that all processes are in place to collecting payments. Start selling your products across 200+ regions almost instantly as we've already set up the required processes for every single region.

Additionally, has various pre-configured trial and subscription plans so that you can create custom solutions with no writing code. Or, you can use the API and webhooks library to create complex subscription logic and integrations.

 Here are some examples of the types of billing logic and trials you can create with :

• Free or paid trials
• Tests without or with no the payment information
• Trials which automatically renew until a paid plan automatically.
• The duration of subscriptions can be any length
• Mid-cycle adjustments to the cycle
• One-time purchase added to a regular payment
• Cross-sells and upsells and much more

Retention Management: Minimize Involuntary Churn With Proactive Dunning

Because involuntary churn is among of the main ways subscription-based companies lose customers, most SaaS billing programs offer simple retention-related features, such as retrying failed payments or email notifications sent to customers after an unsuccessful payment. But, these options will only help when an attempt to pay has failed.

lets you turn on proactive notifications that remind the customer to update data on the payment before the transaction can take place. In our experience this type of reminder can drastically reduce the amount of failed payments at all.

After a failed payment it is possible to send reminders automatically to your customers for two seven, five, 14, and 21 days after a payment failure. During the 21 days you can ensure that your customers' service will not be affected. By sending out frequent reminders and continuing the service, customers will more likely refresh their personal information, which can reduce uninvoluntary churn.

provides a self-serve portal where customers can change their details and modify or upgrade their subscriptions. With customers able to control their accounts on their own, you'll have less hassle in your user experience, which results in more profits. The self-serve platform is customizable to fit the brand's identity, but the management is handled by our staff so your team doesn't have to worry about it.

Analytical and reporting Simplify Business Making

The analytics and reporting function allows you to understand what each product does to your bottom line, what coupons or promotions are effective, what subscription plans bring in the highest revenue and much more.

 The dashboard for revenue provides a comprehensive review of cash flow which includes:

• Where your customers are located
• What payment options and currencies do clients prefer?
• Net sales of the product
• Total transactions by country
• Plus

 The dashboard of your subscription will allow you to explore your monthly recurring revenues (MRR) as well as SaaS parameters, including:

• Cross-sells, upsells, as well as additional products
• The long-term value each customer can bring to the company
• Churn of the entire customer
• When in the billing cycle churn happens most often
• Plus

With 's reporting feature it is possible to create and save your own custom reports that allows you to have the necessary information whenever you require it. Our support team will help with these reports and help you discover the information you require to expand and improve your SaaS company. You can also share any report with key 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 software it is necessary to either add additional software or change to the more expensive plan to access the capabilities you want.

However, it is a complete payment solution that means you'll not require other billing software. Additionally, all features are offered at a flat-rate price (without the cost of migration).

Our team works together with you to come up with an affordable price that is based on the number of transactions you move through , and you'll only be charged when transactions take place.

3. Subscription Management Platforms

Chargebee: Built for Complex Subscription Logic

Chargebee is one of the most popular options for billing subscriptions as well as revenue management. Chargebee has a variety of payment options as well as payment gateways. However, you'll be responsible for connecting to and configuring every one.

The features of Chargebee's are:

• Self-serve and automated subscription models
• Automated billing and invoicing
• Flexible pricing plans
• Quote management tool
• Smart dunning
• PCI-compliant checkout

Chargify: Subscription Management for B2B SaaS

Chargify is subscription billing software specially designed for B2B SaaS. As of the date of this writing, Chargify is in the process of joining forces with SaaSOptics to become a new software company, Maxio. As a result of this collaboration users of Chargify will be able to gain access to payment processors, however, you'll still need a separate solution for taxes and legal compliance.

Other important Chargify features include:

• Dozens of pricing and trial models.
• Sign up experience that is customized to your preferences
• Automatic dunning
• Self-service Analytics Suite
• Recognizing revenue

Recurly is a payment gateway that supports multiple Payment Gateways

Recurly is a subscription and billing platform for optimizing your growth plan. Recurly claims to be able to integrate easily with various merchant and payment processors However, you will need to cover these additional services on top of your Recurly plan.

The services offered by Recurly comprise:

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

3 Payment Processors

Verifone is a Payment Platform designed for Enterprises

Verifone (formerly 2Checkout) offers the MoR model as well as the payment processing models. Though startups might benefit from these services Verifone tends to be more toward large enterprises.

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: Well-Known Payment Processor

Stripe is a payment processor that allows transactions online as well as in person. Though Stripe offers a few subscription management features and features, they usually recommend that you integrate with Chargebee to offer more extensive feature for billing recurring that means you'll need to manage and pay for two platforms.

Other features offered by Stripe comprise:

• Checkout
• Management of risk and fraud
• Online payment
• In-person payments
• Controlling subscriptions
• Card issuing both physical and virtual
• Subscription business spend management

Braintree: PayPal's Solutions for SaaS

Braintree by PayPal is a processing company that supports Venmo (in the US), Apple Pay, and Google Pay. Additionally, they offer SaaS services for managing subscriptions.

Some other notable offerings from Braintree are:

• Merchant accounts
• Improved checkout flow
• Options for risk reduction that are flexible
• Analytical insights on the lifecycle of subscriptions
• Integrations from third-party companies for recurring billing, accounting, and more