Smart SaaS subscription management, billing and accounting software

Accounting and billing software for subscription and SaaS businesses is designed to handle the unique financial management needs of companies that offer services on a subscription basis. This type of software typically includes features for :

• Automated billing to manage recurring invoices and payments, often with various pricing tiers and billing cycles.
• Revenue recognition to comply with accounting standards by recognizing revenue as it is earned over the subscription period.
• Subscription management to oversee subscriber accounts, including sign-ups, renewals, upgrades, downgrades, and cancellations.
• Financial reporting to generate detailed reports on financial metrics such as Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR), Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC), and Customer Lifetime Value (CLV).
• Integration capabilities to connect with other business systems like CRM, payment gateways, and e-commerce platforms.

SaaS subscription management software is a tool specifically designed to help businesses that offer subscription-based services. It tackles various tasks throughout the customer lifecycle,  automating and streamlining processes to save time and resources. Here's a breakdown of its key functions:

• Billing and Payments: It automates recurring billing for subscriptions, handles different pricing models (usage-based, fixed, tiered), and integrates with various payment gateways for smooth transactions.
• Subscription Management: It allows you to manage customer subscriptions easily, including offering free trials, enabling upgrades/downgrades, and automating renewals or cancellations.
• Customer Self-Service: It provides a self-service portal for customers to manage their subscriptions, update payment information, or access invoices.
• Reporting and Analytics: It offers insightful reports on subscription metrics like churn rate, MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue), and customer lifetime value, helping you optimize your subscription strategy.
• Overall, SaaS subscription management software helps businesses manage the complexities of subscription billing, improve customer experience, and boost recurring revenue.

Subscription and SaaS accounting, billing, and business management software can help streamline processes, save time, and provide detailed, drilled-down reporting that ultimately can help your SaaS company raise funding to scale your business. With the right software, you will find:

• Automated efficiency: It automates the billing cycle, reducing manual errors and saving time.
• Financial compliance: Ensures revenue is recognized per accounting standards.
• Strategic insights: Provides valuable financial insights and analytics to inform business decisions.
• Scalability: Supports business growth with flexible features that adapt to increasing customer volumes and complex billing models.

By leveraging such software, your business can focus on growth and innovation while the system handles the complexities of financial transactions and customer management.

SaaS subscription management software takes the complexity out of handling recurring revenue for your subscription-based business. It empowers you to offer a variety of billing models that cater to different customer needs and your business goals. Here's a breakdown of the common billing models this software can handle:

Evergreen subscriptions: This is the bread and butter of subscription services. Customers are automatically charged at the end of their billing period (usually monthly or annually) unless they cancel. SaaS subscription management software automates recurring billing for evergreen subscriptions, ensuring a steady stream of predictable income.

Usage-based billing: Perfect for services where usage varies, like cloud storage or telecommunications. Customers are billed based on their actual usage of the service. The software tracks usage metrics (storage space used, minutes used) and generates bills accordingly. This allows for a more flexible and fair pricing structure.

Tiered subscriptions: Offer different feature sets at different price points. This caters to customers with varying needs and budgets. The software simplifies managing multiple tiers, allowing customers to easily upgrade or downgrade their plans.

Fixed-fee subscriptions: This is a straightforward model where customers pay a set price (monthly or annually) for access to all features. SaaS subscription management software makes it easy to set up and manage fixed-fee subscriptions.

Hybrid models: You can combine elements of different models to create a customized billing structure. For example, you could offer an evergreen base plan with additional features available on a usage-based pricing model. The software provides the flexibility to manage these hybrid configurations seamlessly.

Here's an example: Imagine you offer a design software subscription. You could have:

• An evergreen monthly plan for basic features.
• A tiered structure with higher tiers unlocking advanced design tools.
• Usage-based add-ons for features like extra storage or stock photo access.
• SaaS subscription management software lets you manage all these options efficiently, ensuring a smooth billing experience for your customers.

Yes, subscription and SaaS accounting can be automated. Automation in this context typically involves using specialized software that can handle recurring billing, payment processing, revenue recognition, and financial reporting. 

Sage Intacct is the only complete Subscription + Financial Management solution—we uniquely offer SaaS finance teams one subscription system of record across billings, revenue, and cash, covering the entire customer lifecycle. This allows revenue operations to maximize CMRR and CLTV through innovative subscription pricing for new sales, upsells, and renewals. In turn, Controllers automate AP, AR, billing, rev rec, and consolidations, with controls, to accelerate the close and increase cash flow. Plus, CFOs have reporting and forecasting visibility on the billings, revenue, and cash of the company to guide strategic investments and decisions.

Most finance teams spend 80% of their time doing manual transaction support, and only 20% of their time on strategic planning. The best SaaS operational finance teams chose Sage Intacct to shift that to 80% strategic and 20% transactional. We have engineered our platform to eliminate manual, tedious processes that burn through weeks of work each month, such as manual entry of orders out of Salesforce.com and exceptions to contract revenue recognition and billing. We then provide access to the necessary real-time SaaS metrics, financial dashboards and tools to enable strategic analysis, forecasting, and scenario planning that allow CFOs to recommend new initiatives that grow revenue, reduce churn, improve efficiency of customer acquisition, direct product development that delights customers, adjusts pricing to maximize customer acquisition and profitability, and deliver the churn, cash flow, CMRR, and other metrics with confidence to impress investors and secure new funding.

Order-entry-only suites don't allow you to manage SaaS revenue recognition, billing, or SaaS metrics. And subscription-billing-only solutions don't allow you to track expenses, see cash-flow, or forecast scenario planning for the company.

• Automation and streamlining of core financial management functions such as Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, and the financial close.
• Complete SaaS contract management, efficient operational processing, timely reporting, and a comprehensive audit trail on initial sales, upsells, renewals, and downsells.
• Robust, contract-based subscription billing that handles multiple pricing methods (fixed, quantity-based, usage-based, discount tiers, overages, included units, and time & materials.
• Automated quote to cash with bi-directional native integration with Salesforce.com and Salesforce CPQ or integration with Hubspot.
• Native, single, primary general ledger chart of accounts, with AI for a continuous close.
• Easy to use multiple entity management and consolidation.
• Multiple operating dimensions for all transactions, with statistical accounts.
• Cloud-based architecture that dramatically reduces your total cost of ownership by lowering IT costs, reducing technology risks, and improving productivity, with top security.
• ASC 606 and IFRS 15 revenue recognition compliance, with dual book.