Are you tired of the increasing churn rate and frequent missing invoices? Can’t seem to wrap your head around the cause? Well, all of these things indicate that you are facing problems with recurring billing. No worries, you just need to identify and pinpoint the bottleneck and the solutions to your problem will start falling into place.
When managing a business with recurring revenue, one cannot afford to make any error because a single miss-calculation, missing an invoice or unfairly charge invoice can result in customer loss. To prevent all of these issues, it is recommended to implement open source subscriptions management software. And, among many Zoho Subscriptions hold a special place in the market. It is used by 13 million users. For Zoho Subscription Integrations and Zoho Subscriptions Support, you can consult Techloyce certified Zoho Consultants.
Read: Reasons Why Zoho Certified Software Support Is a Must in your Business
Here in this article, we have discussed the top 5 problems faced by the recurring billing business and ways how Zoho Subscription can help you overcome such issues.
1. Manual Invoice and Billing Management
Businesses often prefer to create invoices in-house because the process doesn’t hinder or put any information at risk. However, such practices lead to the potential problem due to the following reasons:
· Tax Compliance & Invoicing Error
For the accounts department, managing and keeping track of thousands of customers information is virtually impossible, especially, when you have to create thousands of invoices on a recurring basis “manually.” Among the plethora of invoices, the manual invoice generation leads to missing invoice, incorrect information or sending an invoice to the wrong address. Such a problem results in a payment backlog and causes confusion for both the company and the customer. Hence the solution is to go for automation and cloud-based invoice and billing management SaaS software.
The invoice generated by the system keeps track of tax collection and expenditure. Simultaneously, it allows filing accurate returns. Moreover, the data is backed up on regular basis and you can access the information virtually from anywhere.
· Proration & Invoice Branding
When you are creating invoice manually, there is no room for creativity. The monotonous and uniform appears often put off customers. From a marketing point of view, there is a need to incorporate business branding by branding your communication. Moreover, the invoice that fairly charges and present information in an interactive manner results in providing a quality customer experience. Besides, it helps the customer identify the source of the invoice and take action accordingly.
2. Increased Churn Rate
The second problem faced by recurring revenue businesses is an increase in churn rate. This is often caused by payment failure. There might be several reasons behind this such as:
- Credit card payment decline
- Expired credit card
- Insufficient balance in credit card
Moreover, for a business who charge subscriber on annual bases or don’t interact with customer result in churn rate. To keep customers in the loop and brand reinforcement it is important to send occasional contextual content either in the form of discounts, deals and special offers, to encourage the subscriber to modify the subscription plan. And, direct customer to pay.
Besides, sending an invoice and not following up also results in a churn rate. Because, expecting customers to pay before the deadline, only happens in an ideal world. Hence, Zoho Subscriptions comes in handy. It reduces the efforts required for sending manual follow-up email and reminder to the customers. The best part is, the system keeps track of all information and you can schedule series of reminder to create a state of urgency by frequently reminding the customer about the deadline. This encourage customers to pay the invoice in a timely manner.
3. Payment Gateway
For an online subscription-based business model, it is important to have multiple payment gateways integrated into one’s Subscriptions CRM. This gives liberty to the subscriber to pay invoice either in local currency or through the gateway that is supported by the customer credit card.
Moreover, the security and protection of information for online payment is essential. This build trust among customers and results in decreasing churn rate. Besides, providing PCI compliant gateway ensures that the business takes serious measure to protect the information of customers.
· Identify Revenue
Running a business on a recurring revenue model requires a lot of calculations and business plan modification. Selling the right plan to the right customer is key here. The main problem with outdated or manual recurring business management is the lack of metric and report usages. This often results in unbalance & inconsistency in expense and income. Hence, the solution is to go for a cloud-based business analytic application.
4. Customer reports & insights
The best thing is, it allows the business to customize reports by collaborating with other application such as Zoho CRM, Books, and Sales & Marketing. The custom report provides a holistic view of subscription packages that are selling well. Along with the stats of products that needs plan modifications. The custom matric is used to revive old strategy and helps business in adjusting product prices, creating coupons or discount offers to entice users to upgrade subscription plan, while charging clients on prorated bases.
Establishing a business is easier than maintaining revenue. With time the business grow and value of market share increases. In such a situation, charge the uniform price to the subscriber is not enough. No worries, the Zoho subscriptions is designed to automatically adjust the prices and charge subscriber fairly through proration.
Read more: Boost Sales with the Business Intelligence Powered by Zoho Analytics
5. Close Source Application
The worst part of outdated and manual subscription management software is, they are closed sourced. This means you cannot modify or integrate any third-party application, no matter how much you need it.
For instance, you want to automate the email notification and set up an automatic reminder. For this, you have to integrate multiple third party applications into your subscription software. But, not in the case of Zoho Subscriptions. It is an open-source application that can integrate with any application, ranging from multiple gateways to accounts management. Moreover, you can automate recurring tasks such as email notification for invoice payment, successful billing notification with customize email, and managing subscription life cycle.
Learn more about how you can Enhance Functionalities of Zoho Subscriptions with Zoho Integrations Parting words…
Managing a subscription-based business model is often not easy, especially when you planning to run a business manually. Hence, it is important to reassess your decision because you’ll be failing to acknowledge the needs of the customer who need secure payment and quality experience every time they interact with your business. For this very reason, it is important to incorporate SaaS software such as Zoho Subscriptions. It is capable of automating your mailing, notification, invoice and billing process. This will help you in saving time and charge fairly. You can consult Zoho Subscription Integration consultants at Techloyce.
