If you’re running a subscription-based SaaS company, it’s crucial to understand that billing is central to your customer experience, revenue strategy, and ability to scale. 

This is because the SaaS billing process handles everything from setting pricing to charging customers on a recurring basis, all while keeping your company’s cash flow predictable and revenue recognition compliant.

In this guide, we’ll break down how the SaaS billing process works, what makes it different from traditional invoicing, and why choosing the right billing system is critical. We’ll also cover the core components of modern SaaS billing, common pricing models, implementation best practices, and what to look for in billing software as your company grows.

Understanding the SaaS billing process

The SaaS billing process is the end-to-end workflow that SaaS companies use to set pricing, generate invoices, collect recurring payments, and recognize revenue accurately. It starts with choosing a pricing model and extends through subscription billing, invoicing, billing cycles, and payment processing (ideally all handled within a centralized billing platform like Maxio).

When done well, this process scales with your business, reduces friction for customers, and ensures that your finance team stays compliant with evolving revenue recognition standards. It also enables clear, predictable billing that helps build trust with customers and gives internal teams the data they need to make better decisions.

The importance of effective SaaS billing management

The SaaS billing process is a strategic function that directly impacts cash flow, customer retention, and long-term growth. And when you streamline it using a dedicated billing platform, you can effectively reduce your company’s churn rates by:

• Minimizing errors
• Offering clear payment terms
• Automating invoice and renewal reminders

Investing in these billing strategies also ensures that subscription billing aligns with your business needs and revenue goals. By tracking key metrics like MRR and churn, finance leaders can spot inefficiencies early and adjust course. 

Similarly, when your billing system supports quoting, accurate revenue recognition, and flexible payment processing, it frees your team to focus less on fire drills, and more on scaling the business.

Key components of a successful SaaS billing process

An effective SaaS billing system is a coordinated set of efforts that supports how your business collects revenue, serves customers, and scales. From how you define your pricing to how you process payments, each component of the billing platform plays a direct role in customer satisfaction, revenue recognition, and long-term growth.

A defined pricing model

Your pricing model is the foundation of the billing process. Whether it’s flat-rate, tiered, usage-based, or hybrid, a clear and consistent pricing model ensures customers know what they’re paying for, and when. 

This transparency not only improves the customer experience but also enables predictable invoicing and revenue recognition. Sticking to a well-designed structure helps finance and product teams align around business goals while avoiding billing confusion down the line.

Clear, Concise, and Professional Quotes and Sign-Up Forms

[this would be a good space to write a bit about AB’s customizable self-signup forms and quote/contract outputs from RevOps]

Subscription management within a unified billing platform

Managing customer subscriptions across upgrades, downgrades, renewals, and cancellations is at the heart of any SaaS billing system. A strong subscription billing software solution gives your team a single source of truth to handle all of these events, without resorting to manual work or disjointed tools.

And by consolidating subscription management into one billing platform, SaaS companies can reduce inefficiencies, avoid data sync issues with CRMs, and improve the overall customer experience. It also ensures that key billing cycles stay accurate, helping you maintain clean records and predictable cash flow as your customer base evolves.

(Source)

Automated invoicing and real-time billing triggers

Manual invoice generation doesn’t scale and it leaves room for costly errors. However, automating your invoice generation ensures that your billing stays timely, accurate, and aligned with real customer actions. 

Whether it’s a plan renewal, a usage threshold crossed, or an upgrade to a higher tier, real-time triggers can initiate billing events automatically. This level of automation also speeds up payment collection, supports cash flow, and reduces billing cycle delays.

Multiple secure payment options

Offering a range of payment options—like credit cards, ACH, wire transfers, and digital wallets—removes friction at checkout and gives customers more flexibility in how they pay. And for SaaS companies operating across markets, support for multi-currency accounting software is essential to handle international transactions without headaches or delays.

Security is also critical. A modern billing solution should be PCI-compliant, offer tokenized payment gateways, and include automatic retries for failed transactions. These features improve payment success rates, protect sensitive payment information, and create a smoother customer experience across the entire billing platform.

Dunning automation to reduce churn

Dunning is the process of recovering failed payments, and it’s one of the most underrated levers for improving SaaS retention. A strong SaaS dunning system automatically sends reminders, retries failed charges, and gives customers a chance to update their payment information before an account is canceled.

Without dunning automation, you risk losing revenue to avoidable churn and putting unnecessary strain on your team. With it, you can protect your cash flow, reduce churn rates, and improve the customer experience, without lifting a finger.

(Source)

Customer notifications and billing communications

Clear, timely billing communications are essential to a great customer experience. Notifications about upcoming renewals, failed payments, or plan changes can help reduce surprises and keep your customers informed every step of the way.

These messages, whether delivered via email, in-app, or SMS, support retention by giving users visibility into their billing cycles and payment status. This kind of proactive communication also reduces support tickets, builds trust, and helps you maintain stronger customer relationships over time.

Revenue recognition and compliance features

As your company grows, so does the need for accurate, auditable revenue reporting. The right billing solution for your business should include built-in support for revenue recognition SaaS features, aligned with standards like ASC 606. Automating this process reduces the burden on finance teams and ensures clean, audit-ready records.

It also connects billing events (like invoice generation, renewals, or cancellations) directly to your financial reporting, giving you more visibility and fewer manual adjustments. With compliance built into your SaaS billing software, you can scale confidently while staying aligned with tax regulations and accounting best practices.

(Source)

Common SaaS billing models

There’s no one-size-fits-all when it comes to SaaS billing models. The right structure depends on how your product delivers value, how your customers prefer to pay, and how you want to scale revenue. 

In this section, we’ll break down the most common SaaS billing models, their pros and cons, and when to use each one.

Usage-based billing

Usage based billing software charges customers based on how much of the product they actually use, whether it’s API calls, storage, data volume, or active users. This usage-based pricing model aligns cost with value delivered, making it attractive for high-growth or variable-use customers.

However, without strong controls and forecasting, it can lead to unpredictable revenue. SaaS companies using this model often combine it with minimum commitments or tiered pricing to create more stable cash flow while still reflecting actual usage.

Flat-rate billing

Flat-rate billing is the simplest of all billing models: every customer pays the same fixed fee, regardless of how much they use the product. It’s easy to set up, simple to explain, and great for customers who value predictability in their subscription plans.

This model works best for products that deliver consistent value across users (think collaboration tools, time trackers, or basic CRM platforms). But while it streamlines operations, it may leave revenue on the table for customers who would happily pay more for advanced features or heavier usage.

Per-user billing

Per-user billing, sometimes called seat-based pricing, charges customers based on the number of individual users or seats on the account. It’s a familiar model in SaaS and works well for tools designed for teams, departments, or entire organizations.

This approach makes it easy to forecast revenue as accounts grow, and it naturally ties pricing to expansion. However, it assumes that value scales with user count—which isn’t always true. For products where one user can drive significant usage (or vice versa), per-user pricing can misalign costs with value and limit upsell opportunities.

Tiered billing

Tiered billing offers customers a set of predefined subscription plans, each with different pricing tiers, feature bundles, or usage limits. It’s one of the most flexible pricing models, allowing SaaS companies to serve a wide range of customer segments while creating natural upgrade paths.

A well-structured three-tier pricing strategy encourages customers to scale with your product, boosting revenue and improving retention. But if tiers are unclear or misaligned with actual customer needs, it can lead to friction and confusion, especially around upgrades, downgrades, or overages.

Freemium

Freemium is a billing model where the core product is offered for free, with paid subscription plans available for advanced features, increased usage, or enhanced support. It’s a powerful pricing strategy for driving adoption and growing a broad user base at low acquisition cost.

That said, freemium models only succeed when there’s a clear path to conversion. Without well-defined pricing tiers, compelling upgrade incentives, and strong onboarding, free users may never see enough value to become paying customers. Done right, though, it can serve as both a product-led growth engine and a low-friction entry point for new markets.

8 Best practices for SaaS Businesses implementing a recurring billing system

Even the best billing tools can fall short without the right processes behind them. Whether you’re launching a new system or optimizing an existing one, applying smart, repeatable workflows is what separates scalable SaaS businesses from reactive ones.

Below are eight best practices every finance and operations team should follow. Each one helps you automate tasks, reduce errors, and improve the overall billing experience for both your team and your customers.

1. Use automated billing software

Manually creating invoices or chasing payments is inefficient and error-prone. However, using automated recurring billing software helps you automate everything from invoice generation to payment collection.

It also supports long-term scalability. As you add new customers or pricing add-ons, your billing workflow adapts without introducing risk or overhead. That means fewer billing mistakes, less customer confusion, and more time spent on strategic finance work.

2. Offer flexible pricing plans

No single pricing model fits every customer, or every stage of growth for that matter. By offering flexible plans such as flat-rate, tiered pricing, usage-based, or hybrid models, you can serve a broader range of customer needs while optimizing revenue potential.

This flexibility allows SaaS businesses to experiment with pricing strategies that match different customer behaviors, product usage patterns, and market segments. It also makes it easier to introduce upsells, cross-sells, and custom add-ons as your product evolves.

3. Ensure clear and upfront billing terms

Transparent billing terms set the tone for a strong customer relationship. When customers know exactly what they’ll be charged, when payments are due, and what’s included, it builds trust and reduces disputes.

Setting clear billing terms also minimizes friction during renewals, upgrades, or downgrades, and helps ensure consistent payment collection across each billing period. Whether you’re charging monthly or annually, setting expectations around billing cadence, payment methods, and cancellation policies will help increase your customer retention and lower support volume.

(Source)

4. Provide multiple payment options

Offering a variety of payment methods—credit cards, ACH transfers, wire payments, or digital wallets—removes friction and increases the likelihood that customers will complete their payments on time. It also reflects an understanding of different customer behaviors and regional preferences.

The more options you offer, the easier it is to serve diverse markets. Built-in support for retries on failed payments and self-service payment updates can further improve payment collection and reduce involuntary churn.

5. Track metrics like MRR and churn

Your billing system shouldn’t help you collect payments. For example, at Maxio, we built our platform to also be a source of powerful insights. Tracking metrics like monthly recurring revenue (MRR), churn rate, and customer lifetime value gives you a clearer picture of how your business is performing and where it’s headed.

And with the right SaaS reporting tools, you can identify trends in customer behavior, evaluate the effectiveness of your pricing strategies, and spot issues, like rising churn, before they become major problems. These insights help finance teams make smarter decisions and continuously optimize their billing workflows.

6. Send timely invoices and reminders

Delays in invoice generation lead to delays in revenue. Full stop. To keep cash flow predictable and reduce the risk of late or missed payments, it’s critical to send invoices as soon as they’re due, and to automate reminders throughout the billing cycle.

Using tools like Maxio’s invoicing feature, you can schedule notifications that nudge customers before and after due dates so you never miss an invoice. These proactive touchpoints reduce confusion, lower DSO (days sales outstanding), and improve the overall customer experience.

7. Make upgrades and downgrades easy

When customers want to change their plan, whether it’s an upgrade for more features or a downgrade to reduce costs, the process should be fast, intuitive, and friction-free. If it’s difficult or confusing, you risk frustration and potential churn.

Enabling self-service plan changes within your billing system not only improves the customer experience, it also supports retention by giving users control over how they engage with your product. Flexibility here shows that you’re focused on long-term customer relationships, not just short-term revenue.

8. Test billing workflows before going live

Rolling out billing changes without testing is a recipe for errors, failed payments, and support tickets. Before launching a new workflow, simulate real-world scenarios, like signups, invoice generation, plan upgrades, and payment retries, to catch bugs or logic gaps.

This kind of testing ensures your system behaves as expected across edge cases, multiple payment methods, and international customers. It also gives your team confidence that every api call, email notification, and billing event will land exactly where it should (meaning no unwelcome billing surprises for you or your users).

Choosing the right SaaS billing software

Finding the right billing solution is about more than just finding the right mix features—it’s about finding the right fit. The ideal SaaS billing software should align with your business model, scale with your growth, and integrate easily with the tools your team already uses.

Here’s a quick framework to guide your selection process:

• Clarify your billing needs: Start by identifying how complex your pricing is. Do you offer flat-rate or usage-based pricing plans? Do customers pay monthly, annually, or via custom terms? Your answer should shape the functionality you look for.
  
• Look for essential features: At a minimum, your platform should handle invoicing, dunning, flexible payment options, and automated revenue recognition. The more you can centralize, the more efficiently your team can work.
  
• Check integration compatibility: Your billing tool should plug into your CRM, customer portals, and financial stack without heavy custom dev work. See which tools are supported via integrations.
  
• Evaluate scalability and pricing: Choose a system that can support your future customer base, not just your current set of users. Make sure the pricing structure is clear, predictable, and works for your stage and growth rate.
  
• Test usability and support: Even the best software can fall short if it’s hard to use. Evaluate the provider’s onboarding, support documentation, and customer service before making a commitment.

Automate your SaaS billing process with Maxio

A well-run billing process is the key to supporting long-term profitability, driving customer satisfaction, and giving your team the tools to scale. From choosing the right pricing model to handling revenue recognition, every part of your billing system should play a role in making your business more efficient and customer-friendly.

That’s exactly why we built Maxio: our platform is purpose-built to help SaaS companies automate complex workflows across the entire SaaS billing lifecycle. Whether you need real-time invoice generation, self-service plan management, or built-in SaaS payments, our unified billing platform has you covered. Maxio also supports ASC 606 compliance, global currencies, and integrations with leading CRMs, so your SaaS product stays aligned with finance and ops from day one.

Ready to simplify and scale your billing? Get a demo or explore Maxio’s SaaS payments solution today.

Breaking Through the “Insight Plateau”

AI has delivered real wins for finance teams. Large language models (LLMs) and related tools can summarize contracts, generate charts, and surface key metrics in seconds—work that once took hours of manual effort. However, many of these capabilities stop at what might be called the insight plateau: they show what’s happening, but they don’t move the work forward.

For SaaS finance leaders, that’s not enough. Knowing churn is rising or ARR is flat is only the beginning. The true value comes when those insights trigger automated, domain-aware actions that can perform updates to revenue schedules, targeted customer outreach, or clean reporting packages that flow directly into board decks. Closing that gap is where a Model Context Protocol (MCP) comes into play.

What is an MCP?

A Model Context Protocol (MCP) is a framework that allows AI to interact directly with structured workflows. Just as an API defines how systems exchange data, an MCP provides structured interfaces between LLMs and domain-specific tools/data. It bridges intent (“Generate a churn analysis”) with execution (“Update renewal forecasts, segment customers, and trigger follow-up actions”).

This isn’t about AI “magic.” It’s about embedding the context of domain rules—whether financial logic, compliance standards, or subscription structures—into a protocol that AI respects as it carries work forward. With MCP, AI doesn’t just describe what’s happening; it ensures AI actions are bounded by explicit rules, system constraints, and approval workflows.

Applying MCP to SaaS Finance

In SaaS, the MCP concept finds its most natural application. Recurring revenue models depend on complex rules: subscription schedules, billing events, revenue recognition logic, and customer lifecycle stages. A finance-focused MCP encodes those rules so AI can automate workflows end-to-end without creating risk or rework.

This is the approach behind Maxio MCP—our implementation of the broader MCP framework designed specifically for SaaS finance. It understands subscription objects, required fields, downstream impacts, and the dependencies that make finance operations unique. By aligning AI with these rules, MCP makes execution-ready workflows possible.

From Insight to Execution

Consider churn analysis. An MCP-enabled workflow doesn’t just surface that churn is rising; it layers in firmographic data, customer segmentation, and ICP alignment to diagnose why churn is happening. From there, it can recommend targeted outreach and update forecasts—all without the finance team having to piece it together manually.

Or take ARR reporting. Without MCP, teams pull exports from multiple systems, chase missing context, and stitch together slides under deadline pressure. With MCP, AI can prioritize the trends that matter, highlight anomalies, and produce a clean narrative dataset in minutes. The result isn’t just speed—it’s a workflow that executes from start to finish with confidence.

Execution-Ready AI Versus Insight-Only AI

Insight-only AI helps finance teams interpret and summarize information faster, usually by surfacing descriptive analytics or generating narrative summaries. Execution-ready AI goes further. It is capable of coordinating actions across systems in a way that aligns with the organization’s governance, compliance, and operational realities.

Execution-ready AI doesn’t merely answer, “What am I looking at?” It also answers, “What should we do next, and can we do it now?” This shift is the difference between a fast analyst and a reliable operator.

Why Now: The SaaS Finance Context

SaaS finance leaders are contending with:

• Data fragmentation: Customer data, billing events, and revenue schedules are scattered across CRM, billing, and accounting systems.
• Complex rules: Revenue recognition, deferred revenue, and subscription proration require careful handling.
• Manual workflows under deadlines: Board reporting and forecasting demand accuracy at speed.

In this context, AI that stops at insight creates more follow-up work. AI that is context-aware and action-oriented can close books faster, standardize reporting, and reduce the gap between measurement and execution.

The Role of Guardrails

Execution-ready AI must operate within clear boundaries:

• Financial logic and compliance: ASC 606, GAAP, and internal accounting policies.
• System constraints: How data is structured in CRM, billing, and GL systems.
• Approval flows: Which actions can be automated, and which require review.

MCP encodes these boundaries so the AI can safely move work forward without introducing risk.

Maxio’s MCP in Practice

Revenue Scheduling and Recognition

• Generate and validate revenue schedules for new bookings based on product, term, and billing cadence.
• Propose corrections for misclassified schedules and route to finance for review.

Churn and Retention Workflows

• Detect churn risk by combining usage patterns, contract terms, and ICP fit.
• Trigger targeted outreach, renewal playbooks, and forecast updates.

ARR and Board Reporting

• Consolidate inputs from CRM and billing systems.
• Highlight anomalies, prioritize trends, and produce narrative datasets and charts for board decks.

Building Blocks of an Implementation Approach

1. Map the domain: Subscription objects, lifecycle stages, revenue rules.
2. Define guardrails: Compliance policies, approval thresholds, and audit trails.
3. Instrument workflows: Identify steps that can be fully automated versus human-in-the-loop.
4. Iterate with feedback: Start with constrained scopes (e.g., revenue schedule validation) and expand.

Benefits for Finance Leadership

• Speed with control: Faster close and reporting without sacrificing accuracy.
• Fewer swivel-chair tasks: Reduce reconciliation and handoffs between tools.
• Confidence in action: Move from insight to execution with auditability and domain alignment.

Looking Ahead

The industry has celebrated AI’s ability to summarize and explain. The next wave will be judged by its ability to act—reliably, safely, and within the rules that govern finance operations. For SaaS companies, MCP is the missing link between intelligent analysis and accountable execution.

Take Action: Close the Execution Gap Before Your Competitors Do

The greatest barrier to effective AI adoption in finance isn’t access to insights—it’s the ability to act on them. Many teams successfully pilot AI tools but never integrate them into everyday workflows. The result: more awareness, less momentum.

The organizations that bridge this “execution gap” first will set the standard for speed, accuracy, and efficiency in SaaS finance. Execution-ready AI is no longer an emerging concept; it’s here, and it’s already reshaping how leading teams operate.

The opportunity is clear: embed AI into the workflows that matter most, remove manual bottlenecks, and reallocate your team’s time toward strategy and growth. Those who act now will be the ones defining the next chapter of SaaS finance operations.

Get hands-on with execution-ready AI—join the early access list for Maxio MCP.

The CRM says ARR is $1.2M. The billing system says it’s $1.1M. Your ERP? $1.25M.

Which one is right?

Nobody knows… not right away, at least. And it’s not because your team isn’t doing their job. It’s because the systems aren’t talking to each other. The contract terms live in Salesforce, the invoices are handled in a separate billing platform, and revenue schedules are built manually in Excel. By the time it all lands in your general ledger, you’re hoping the numbers reconcile.

This isn’t just a spreadsheet headache — it’s a strategic risk.

Instead of analyzing trends, finance is chasing inconsistencies. Instead of advising the business, you’re firefighting your way to a finish line. And when every system reports a different number, confidence evaporates across the team, the board, and the business.

What a unified revenue stack looks like (And why it matters)

A modern SaaS finance team can’t afford to operate in silos. If you want clean, timely numbers and confident reporting, your revenue data needs to flow cleanly across four core systems — from contract to close.

Here’s what that looks like when it’s done right:

CRM: Where revenue starts

Revenue tracking starts the moment the deal closes—but only if the source of truth is your CRM, not a PDF buried in a folder. If ARR isn’t captured in CRM line items clearly, consistently, and accurately, things fall apart fast. A single added or deleted clause can force manual interpretation and rework. 

ARR should be structured data, not tribal knowledge.

Billing: The bridge between Sales and Finance

Your billing system reflects how the contract actually plays out — subscriptions, usage, terms, invoicing cadence. But if it doesn’t pull directly from the CRM or sync with your rev rec system, you’re inviting delay and inconsistency.

ERP: Your financial source of truth

The ERP is where everything lands: revenue, expenses, forecasts, and financial reporting. 

But without real-time inputs from your CRM and billing tools, your ERP becomes a lagging indicator. It tells you what happened weeks ago, not what’s happening now. A connected ERP lets you manage the business in the moment.

Revenue recognition system: Where the rules get applied

This is where revenue gets structured, scheduled, and tracked. The best finance teams automate their rev rec logic — allocations, timing, policy enforcement — at the moment of contract creation. That way, finance isn’t rebuilding spreadsheets each month. They’re reviewing and validating what’s already in place.

When all four systems are synced, finance stops operating retroactively and starts operating in real time. You get faster closes, cleaner audits, and sharper insights — without the last-minute scramble.

The Missing Link Between Sales and Finance: CPQ

Now, let’s walk through what a unified stack really looks like — starting with the quote, and flowing all the way to audit-ready reporting.

A unified revenue stack isn’t complete without a Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) system that ensures every deal is structured correctly from the start. When reps build quotes with accurate products, pricing, and terms, all governed by predefined logic, it sets the tone for everything downstream: billing, revenue recognition, and audit readiness.

Without CPQ, Finance is left deciphering spreadsheets and PDFs. Discounts aren’t standardized. Product configurations get misinterpreted. And revenue teams waste time cleaning up what should’ve been correct from the start.

But with Maxio CPQ, every quote becomes a reliable source of structured data:

• ARR is enforced at the point of quote, not guessed later in the CRM.
• Contract terms flow cleanly into billing and rev rec systems.
• Recognition rules are triggered automatically based on deal structure.

That being said, CPQ isn’t just about operational efficiency. It’s about strategic control. 

You get cleaner forecasts, pricing discipline, and tighter approvals that are all built into the quoting process itself. It also becomes the shared system of record between Sales, Finance, and RevOps, making approvals faster, deal desks smoother, and cross-functional alignment stronger from day one. And because reps can configure complex deals without constant handholding, you unlock faster sales cycles (without compromising control).

That means three things altogether:

1. Sales gets speed
2. Finance gets accuracy
3. The entire revenue stack starts on solid ground

And as you scale, CPQ ensures that complexity doesn’t become chaos — because every deal starts with structure.

The before/after comparison

What happens when your stack is disconnected? Data lives in silos. Handoffs are manual. Numbers don’t match. Finance teams spend days reconciling what should already be aligned.

What happens when your stack is unified with Maxio at the core? Data flows cleanly across the entire revenue lifecycle from contract to close.

Here’s the side-by-side comparison:

Visual Concept Suggestion: Before/After Stack Diagram – two vertical stacks, side by side:

Before (Disconnected Stack):

• Boxes: CRM → Billing → Rev Rec → ERP
• Dotted lines between boxes
• Red warning icons or ⚠️ labels: “Manual Handoff,” “No Sync,” “Excel-Based,” “Audit Risk”

After (Unified Stack with Maxio):

• Boxes: CRM → Billing → Rev Rec (Maxio) → ERP
• Clean arrows showing real-time sync
• Optional callout: “Maxio sits at the core, connecting the revenue lifecycle”

Why it’s hard to scale without this

When you’re small, disconnected tools might feel manageable. You’ve got fewer contracts, simpler billing, and just enough headcount to patch the gaps.

But as the business grows, the cracks widen.

Every manual step becomes a bottleneck. Every workaround becomes a liability. Suddenly, your team is juggling hundreds of contracts, usage-based billing models, multi-entity consolidations — and still relying on spreadsheets to tie it all together.

The risks aren’t just operational. They’re strategic.

• Close timelines start to slip.
• Audit prep becomes a full-time job.
• Investors start asking questions you can’t answer confidently.

The more complex your revenue becomes, the more dangerous it is to operate on disconnected systems. Because eventually, the close breaks. And so does trust in the numbers.

How Maxio unifies the stack

Maxio sits at the center of your revenue stack, connecting the systems that matter most and enforcing logic that scales with you.

• Connects CRM, billing, and ERP: Maxio creates bi-directional sync between your core systems so revenue data flows cleanly from deal to dollars to disclosure. No more manual uploads, no more data mismatches.
• Automates revenue recognition and allocations: Revenue schedules are created automatically at the point of sale, using your pre-defined rules. Allocations adjust dynamically based on billing and usage, so you’re always accurate, always compliant.
• Maintains policy compliance across the stack: Maxio enforces policy logic programmatically. That means recognition rules, allocation methods, and audit metadata are applied consistently — no matter how fast you scale or how complex your contracts get.
• Provides real-time visibility across the lifecycle: From contract creation to financial reporting, your team gets one connected view of the truth. That’s what unlocks proactive decision-making, and not just reactive reporting.

Want to unify your revenue stack?

Download The New Rules of Revenue Close: How SaaS Finance Teams Move Fast and Stay Compliant to see how top-performing teams are building modern finance infrastructure from the ground up.

Book a demo with Maxio and see how a unified stack can transform your month-end close.

Atlanta, GA – August 26, 2025 – Maxio, the leading platform for billing automation and revenue management, and Rillet, the AI-native ERP platform, today announced a strategic partnership to deliver a modern finance stack designed for the unique complexity of SaaS and Professional SaaS and Professional Service business, as well as the emerging needs of AI companies. By integrating the the power of both platforms, Maxio and Rillet streamline the close process, eliminating manual reconciliation and seamlessly flowing customer, invoice, and revenue data into the general ledger.

“This isn’t just integration – it’s liberation. We’re freeing CFOs from the manual grind so they can focus on strategy, not spreadsheets,” said Branden Jenkins, CEO of Maxio. “Modern business moves too fast for legacy systems. Together with Rillet, we’re rewriting the rules for how modern finance teams operate.”

As SaaS and AI companies scale, they need finance stacks that scale with them. This partnership reflects that growing customer demand: Maxio delivers specialized billing, collections, and insights, while Rillet brings AI-driven ERP flexibility, consolidation, and reporting, all in a single, intelligent finance stack.

“Rillet was built as an AI-native ERP from day one, and our partnership with Maxio accelerates that mission,” said Nicolas Kopp, CEO and Co-Founder of Rillet. “Finance teams don’t just need automation – they need intelligence. together, we’re eliminating the manual burdens that slow finance teams down and giving them the clarity and speed they need to drive strategy – not just keep the books.”

Organizations ready to streamline finance operations, improve accuracy, and accelerate insight can learn more and sign up for early access at https://www.maxio.com/integrations/rillet.

About Maxio

Maxio is the billing and financial reporting platform trusted by over 2,000 SaaS and subscription businesses worldwide. With $17B+ in billings under management, Maxio empowers finance teams to scale recurring revenue, automate quote-to-cash, and deliver the insights needed to grow confidently. Learn more at maxio.com.

About Rillet

Rillet is the AI-native accounting platform made to tailor-fit the workflows of accountants and a full replacement for legacy ERPs. Scalig and hyper-growth companies like BitWarden, Windsurf and Postscript use Rillet to enable a smarter close with native integrations, automated journal entries and AI-embedded workflows. They are backed by Sequoia, a16z, and ICONIQ with offices in San Francisco, New York, and Barcelona.

The Problem:

Sales compensation gets complicated in usage-based models for two reasons. First, the primary method for measuring the value of a sale is unclear — it’s no longer the amount of the first year’s subscription. Second, much of the value of a sale is realized over time through expansion, and this expansion is a shared responsibility between sales and customer success (CS).

Standard solutions to these two issues are hard to come by due to the wide variety of go-to-market motions and hybrid pricing approaches. A good comp plan for a mature enterprise sales company with minimum consumption levels makes little sense for an emerging PLG company with a freemium offer.

Framing the Issue:

One way to evaluate your compensation plan is to identify your sales priorities in light of your pricing plan. Your sales priorities, along with your pricing structure, will help identify specific sales compensation requirements.

Sales Objectives:

Ultimately, all SaaS companies aim to increase revenue, but there are various ways to achieve this goal. An established company in the midst of a recession may want to invest primarily in revenue expansion opportunities (as new logos are almost impossible to acquire). In contrast, a start-up may wish to focus on developing new logos, regardless of their size. Sales objectives can even vary by territory. Snowflake assigns different compensation weightings to various territories. “Green Field” territories pay more on new logo acquisition, while a “Mature” territory is weighted toward expansion.

Pricing Structure:

The second dimension is the nature of your pricing package. Pricing ranges from pure usage (pay-as-you-go) to multi-year subscriptions. Most companies with usage-based revenue are not pure pay-as-you-go models; therefore, most compensation plans have some form of dual quotas to incentivize both new bookings and usage/expansion.

Below is a simple graphic illustrating the two-dimensional framework.

The graphic also includes the employees responsible for the different growth elements. Organizing and aligning sales and customer success resources is one of the most challenging aspects of usage-based compensation planning, and we will discuss roles in detail below.

Since expansion revenue is much more critical in UBP businesses, let’s focus on that first.

The Expanded Role of Customer Success in UBP?

According to a survey by Viola Ventures, 54% of UBP SaaS companies share the responsibility of expansion and renewals between sales and CS, 33% rely upon CS only, and 13% on sales only. That’s much different from subscription businesses, where 40% of those surveyed relied solely on sales for retention and expansion. A few SaaS companies operate at each extreme. At Snowflake, sales handles everything, and at Atlassian, CS handles everything.

What are the best practices? According to Ben Chambers, a sales compensation expert who honed his skills at Databricks, New Relic, Dropbox, and Facebook, there are clear advantages to handing off a customer from sales to CS. “When you hand off a customer, each role has clear and measurable objectives. New business is the job of sales, and retention is the job of CS. The structure allows for less complicated comp plans tied to more focused measures.” Keeping salespeople tied to existing accounts will distract all but the best reps from focusing on closing new business.

Viola Ventures further notes that about half of the companies that hand off accounts from sales to CS do so after six months, and the other half, after one year. Until the handoff, sales get credit for expansion/overage revenue.

An exception to the handoff recommendation is when selling into very large enterprises, where it makes sense to have an AE stay connected to the customer long-term. Some AE’s can spend an entire career selling into one large customer.

What About Expansion?

Explicit expansion goals in CS are somewhat new. Companies that have effectively built CS teams to drive expansion have changed their hiring profile compared to those focused solely on retention. They are recruiting more technically proficient reps with critical thinking and consultative selling skills.

Another approach is to embed an expansion sales team within the CS group. That has been a successful approach in UBP as well as subscription companies with highly modular offerings.

Measuring Expansion:

Organic or Company-led? 

Most companies treat all expansion revenue equally, but a few have successfully distinguished between naturally occurring expansion and CS- or sales-led expansion. MongoDB uses a series of relatively simple questions to determine whether expansion was driven by a new use case unearthed by the CS team or if the growth occurred unprompted. They pay commission on the former and not the latter.

That said, most of the time, it’s either impossible or too cumbersome to disaggregate “sold” expansion from “organic” expansion.

Furthermore, some companies have tested expansion revenue in cohorts with and without CS engagement and found similar growth across both groups. Simply put, in some cases, trying to drive expansion is a waste of resources. In these cases, NPS and GRR would be better anchors for CS bonuses.

The Year-over-Year Problem:

When calculating expansion revenue, comparing a customer’s total revenue for the most recent year to that of the prior year reveals that expansion occurring early in the year has a greater impact than expansion later in the year, even though the ARR growth is the same. Imagine a 25% increase in revenue in the last two weeks of the year. It adds virtually nothing to total revenue for the year and then rolls into the baseline for the following year.

In the example above, an expansion in March would result in commissions three times greater than those from the same expansion in October.

Snowflake addressed this issue by measuring expansion based on run-rate, which can be calculated on a monthly or quarterly basis.

Calculating based on run rate is suitable for customers with relatively stable revenue from month to month, but does not work well if there is volatility or seasonality.

In cases with clear seasonal revenue patterns, measuring expansion is best done quarterly, comparing the current quarter to the same quarter one year ago. e.g. Q4 2025 vs Q4 2024.

Sales Comp:

SaaS cannot live on retention and expansion alone. Companies need new customers, and for most companies, salespeople are responsible for securing them.

Salesforce Structure:  Not surprisingly, more than half of UBP companies go to market with an inside sales force—compared to just 40% of subscription-based businesses. They also place greater emphasis on customer success, with 0.6 CS team members per salesperson versus 0.4 in traditional subscription models, according to the previously referenced Viola Ventures survey.

Basic Comp Plan: Like subscription businesses, most UBP plans are 50% salary and 50% commissions at target. One enterprising company allows its representatives to opt into a higher-levered plan at 70% commission and 30% salary (so far, just a few takers.)

Commission rates in UBP companies break down as follows: 33% pay over 9%, 40% pay 7% to 9%, 13% pay 5% or 6%, and 13% pay less than 5%, per that same Viola Ventures survey. Very few companies pay extra for multi-year commitments.

Commitments: For the majority of UBP companies, there remain fixed elements in the pricing structure, whether it be committed minimums or traditional subscriptions. In these cases, commissions on those elements follow a conventional compensation model.

However, some companies saw customer commitments increase when reps were not pushing for them, but rather the customer was asking for them to lock in better pricing. These companies have minimum commitments but do not commission the representatives on them; instead, they pay based on actual usage over time.

Paying on Estimated Usage: Some companies pay commissions on estimated usage. This allows them to operate in a pure pay-as-you-go model, while still paying their reps upfront. They use a scoring system to estimate a new customer’s annual revenue, taking into account factors such as company size, number of users, company revenue, and historical volumes. In some cases, estimating is easy; in others, it is not.

Estimating revenue allows you to pay up-front to align incentives. But don’t pay everything up front, your estimate might be wrong, and attempting to claw back commissions is not a good position to be in.

Pay 60% to 80% of the estimated booking amount at closing, and pay the remainder after one year, based on actual usage.

Paying Based on Actual Consumption: For pure consumption pricing or to incentivize usage within a hybrid model, companies need to select the best usage metric to drive commissions. The two most popular metrics are: 1) actual metered usage (in dollars), and 2) billed invoices. These commissions are paid monthly. Less popular are commission payments based on invoice collection.

Take-Aways:

Sales compensation plans involving variable revenue are highly individualized, based on what the company is trying to achieve with its sales team and the pricing structure in place at the time. Both these things evolve, and so should the compensation plans.

Many companies favor clear handoffs between sales and CS because they provide more clarity to the objectives and metrics for each team.

As a SaaS CFO, I can tell you the speed of your month-end close is more than a metric. It is a signal to your investors, your Board, and your leadership team about how in control your finance function really is.

During a recent webinar, my cohost shared his experience adopting a chaotic 30-day close, where it would take a full 30 days to report on the prior month. It made their team slow to course-correct and slower to respond to strategic questions from leadership. While it is dramatic, it isn’t a unique experience in SaaS. The reality is, speed to close is not just about efficiency. It is about insight. And insight is where real value is created. We’re seeing the controller role evolve in real time, where their value is not just ensuring the books are closed efficiently and correctly. They also take time to ensure data is ready for more in-depth analysis across multiple stakeholders. 

Why the 5-Day Close Matters

The five-day close has become the gold standard for modern finance teams. But speed is only half the equation. The greater half of the equation is centered on adopting a strategic mindset. It signals operational excellence and positions finance as a decision-making engine. Here’s what that looks like:

• Revenue recognition is automated, consistent, and tied to clearly defined rules
• Bookings, billings, and revenue are reconciled in real time, not retroactively
• Finance, sales, and customer success are aligned around a single source of truth for ARR and MRR
• The close delivers not just financials, but actionable insights for GTM and product leaders
• Every line item is traceable, auditable, and ready for investor scrutiny or due diligence
  

This is what I call a controlled close. And it is what separates high-performing finance teams from those constantly playing catch-up.

What Slows Teams Down

You’ve probably noticed that this blog is primarily focused on the revenue portion of the close. This is a very intentional choice. In my experience, closing revenue is typically the most complicated portion of close deliverables. When you get revenue close down everything else gets easier.  

There are three common barriers I see that slow revenue close:

1. Disconnected systems that do not talk to each other
2. Over-reliance on spreadsheets
3. Undefined or inconsistent revenue recognition policies
   

Without automation and integration, even the best finance pros are forced into manual work that eats up time and increases the risk of error. 

The Real ROI

Freeing up time is a very real and tangible benefit from a stronger close. With only so many hours a month, accounting teams must balance always-on monthly tasks with one-off operational projects. Making month-end more efficient means accounting can begin chipping away at the list of projects collecting dust. The benefits also go beyond accounting. Faster closes trickle down cross-functionally.

• Enable faster FP&A cycles
• Improve Board reporting
• Build confidence with stakeholders
• Tie metrics to product goals and strategy
• Lay the foundation for due diligence
  

In the companies I work with, moving from a 15-day to a 5-day close often unlocks real ROI. We are talking about faster decisions, better forecasting, and fewer surprises.

How to Get There

• Map the full quote-to-cash process
  • Understand where data originates (CRM, contracting, invoicing), how it flows (subscription management, GL), and where it breaks. Your close is only as strong as the flow of your operational data.
• Eliminate the patchwork of spreadsheets
  • If you are reconciling ARR in Excel or managing MRR schedules manually, you’re bottlenecking your close. Move this into systems where rules, automation, and audit trails exist.
• Centralize contracts and standardize terms
  • A messy contract process creates noise in your data. Contracts should be digital, searchable, and mapped to structured revenue schedules. That’s what makes revenue predictable—and diligence-ready.
• Enrich your accounting data with metadata
  • This goes beyond GL codes. It means tagging transactions with customer segments, product lines, geographies, and sales channels. Why? Because strategic finance isn’t just about total revenue—it’s about where it’s coming from and how it’s performing.
• Build toward AI-readiness
  • You don’t have to adopt AI today. However, your systems need structured, repeatable, connected data if you want to automate variance analysis or forecasting in the near future. It starts with standardizing naming conventions across platforms like Salesforce, Maxio, and your GL.
• Collaborate with your Salesforce admin and GTM teams
  • Finance can’t operate in a vacuum. The best closes happen when finance is aligned with sales and success—especially on renewals, expansions, and churn definitions. This shared visibility reduces rework and speeds up insight delivery post-close.

It starts with processes and systems. Get your revenue data right. Connect your CRM, billing platform, and GL. Implement a subscription management system that can handle the complexity of recurring revenue. Maxio is a tool I see many high-performing teams use because it brings ARR, revenue, and billing together into one source of truth.

Final Thought

Modern finance teams aren’t just closing the books. They’re unlocking the story behind the numbers, faster, cleaner, and with more confidence than ever before. The ability to deliver accurate, actionable insights in near real-time is a real competitive advantage that is becoming an expectation rather than a nice-to-have. 

If you want to elevate the role of finance in your organization, start with the close. Tighten your processes. Invest in the right systems. Collaborate across teams. Because when finance leads with clarity, the entire company moves faster and, more importantly, smarter.

It’s two weeks before your audit, and panic is setting in.

The schedules aren’t up to date, the rev rec logic was changed three months ago (by someone who didn’t document it), and the only person who remembers why a journal entry was made… is on PTO.

Sound familiar?

This scramble happens year after year — not because your team isn’t working hard, but because your systems weren’t designed to keep you audit-ready in the first place.

Audit prep shouldn’t feel like a second job. It should be a byproduct of how your revenue operations are built.

In this post, we’ll show you how leading SaaS finance teams stay ready all year long. Not by working overtime, but by structuring their data, systems, and workflows the right way.

What happens when you’re reactive

Most audit fire drills don’t start the week before the audit. They start months earlier, when critical details go undocumented and revenue data gets buried. And when you rely on manual processes and tribal knowledge, you’re leaving the door open for costly surprises. 

Here’s what that looks like in practice:

• Revenue policies don’t match actual treatment: A change in product bundling or contract terms creates a gray area. But without enforced rules at the point of transaction, policies get applied inconsistently, and auditors notice.
  
• Metadata goes missing: No one tagged the revenue event with the right department or region. Now it takes hours to trace why a number landed where it did — or who touched it.
  
• You can’t explain why something changed: A rev rec schedule was updated, but there’s no version history, no notes, and no audit trail. Just a spreadsheet with overwritten cells.
  
• There’s no source of truth: Your CRM, billing tool, spreadsheets, and ERP all tell a slightly different story, and reconciling those versions becomes its own full-time job.

The end result is a stressful, expensive audit process that burns time and erodes confidence with leadership and your board.

What proactive audit prep actually looks like

If you want audits to be clean, fast, and low-stress, the real work doesn’t start in Q4. It starts in how you structure your revenue data every single day.

Enforce policy logic at the point of transaction

If you want audits to be clean, fast, and low-stress, the real work doesn’t start in Q4. It starts in how you structure your revenue data every single day.

Audit prep is about three things:

1. Summary schedules that tie to the three key financial statements — balance sheet, income statement, and cash flow.
2. Detail schedules that sit behind each of those, showing the line item detail.
3. Producing these schedules regularly (monthly).
   

If you can do those three things, you will crush your audit. If you can’t, you’re in for a world of hurt.

Audit readiness starts with consistency.

Instead of applying rev rec rules manually at month-end, configure your systems (like Maxio) to embed revenue policies directly into contract workflows. This ensures recognition logic is applied the moment a deal is signed, and every transaction aligns with company policy from day one.

Auto-tag metadata on every contract and revenue event

Add structure to your data from the beginning. Use templates and predefined fields in your CPQ, billing, or revenue systems to capture details like region, business unit, contract type, or sales channel. 

When metadata is automatically captured and categorized, segmenting revenue for audit reports becomes effortless.

Track every change: who, what, when, and why

Create an always-on audit trail by implementing systems with built-in change tracking and version control. 

This means logging who made a change, when they made it, what they changed, and the rationale — ideally in the system of record. Not only does this reduce audit friction, it protects your team from “he said, she said” compliance risk.

Generate exportable, supportable audit reports on demand

Waiting until audit season to prepare documentation is a guaranteed fire drill. Instead, standardize your revenue reporting processes so key reports — like revenue schedules, deferred balances, or allocation justifications — are always current and export-ready. With tools like Maxio, these reports are generated automatically, not manually assembled in Excel the night before the audit.

Being audit-ready doesn’t mean doing more work. It means setting up your systems to do the heavy lifting for you, so audit season becomes a formality, not a fire drill.

The 3 building blocks: metadata hygiene, version control, audit trails

If you want to be audit-ready year-round, you need more than just clean numbers. You need systems that explain those numbers (and prove they’re right).

Here are the three building blocks high-performing SaaS finance teams rely on:

1. Metadata Hygiene

Every transaction should be tagged with the right context: who closed the deal, what product was sold, what terms apply, and where it fits in your reporting structure.

When metadata is missing or inconsistent, segmentation falls apart, and auditors are left guessing. But when it’s clean, structured, and enforced at the point of entry, slicing revenue by entity, region, or product line becomes second nature — not a fire drill.

Suggested Product Screenshot:

A contract detail view or revenue schedule view showing metadata fields like:

• Product/Plan Name
• Entity or Subsidiary
• Tags for region, contract type, etc.
• Customer or sales rep attribution

2. Version Control

If your audit trail lives in a spreadsheet, you don’t have a trail — you have a liability.

With proper version control, every change to a revenue schedule, policy, or journal entry is logged automatically: who made it, what changed, and why. This eliminates finger-pointing and keeps auditors confident that your data is not only accurate, but also accountable.

Suggested Product Screenshot:

A version history panel or audit log view showing:

• User activity (e.g., “User X updated allocation rule”)
• Timestamps
• Descriptions of the changes (before/after)
• Filter or search option for audit review

3. Automated Audit Trails

Audits don’t stall because the numbers are wrong. They stall because the backup is scattered or missing. Automated audit trails mean your supporting detail is always attached to the transaction — not living in someone’s inbox or buried in a shared drive. 

With platforms like Maxio, every number has a clickable path back to its source, so you can prove accuracy without scrambling.

Suggested Product Screenshot:

• A journal entry or rev rec dashboard with clickable drill-downs

How Maxio makes this automatic

Audit readiness isn’t something you scramble to achieve once a year. With Maxio, it becomes your default operating mode.

From the moment a contract is signed, Maxio: 

• Enforces your revenue policy logic
• Tags every transaction with the metadata you need
• Logs every change with a full audit trail

That means no last-minute reconciliations, no manual cleanup, and no second-guessing what happened when.

Instead of hunting down spreadsheets and piecing together a story, you’ve got a system that tracks everything in real time, and backs it up with structured, exportable evidence. Whether your auditors are in the room or you’re prepping for your next board meeting, you can move fast and stand behind every number with confidence.

Want to stay audit-ready year-round?

Check out The New Rules of Revenue Close: How SaaS Finance Teams Move Fast and Stay Compliant for the full playbook.

Then, book a demo with Maxio to see how we can help you close faster, and with confidence.

Shifting to Events-Based Billing

As SaaS companies strive to create more customer-centric experiences, many have moved beyond traditional subscription models to explore usage-based and events-based billing models. Unlike flat-rate or per-user pricing, event-based billing ties a customer’s payment directly to their usage, allowing them to pay for the exact value they receive. Previously the domain of tech giants like AWS and OpenAI, this model is now increasingly accessible for SaaS businesses of all sizes, providing a powerful avenue for growth and customer satisfaction.

In this article, we’ll explore the mechanics and advantages of events-based billing, walk through steps for setting it up, and outline why SaaS companies may find it a strategic fit for scaling their offerings.

From AWS to ChatGPT: The Evolution of Usage-Based SaaS Billing

Events-based billing has been transformative for companies like AWS and OpenAI, who built pricing models that flexibly align with customer usage. Both companies have harnessed this approach to deliver pricing that scales dynamically with customer needs, creating a seamless connection between value provided and price paid.

AWS was a pioneer in this model, introducing “pay-as-you-go” pricing in the early 2000s that allowed customers to pay only for the compute, storage, or API calls they actually used—replacing rigid annual contracts with flexible, consumption-driven pricing. This innovation not only accelerated AWS’s adoption but also set a new standard for scalable SaaS monetization.

Fast forward to today, and ChatGPT by OpenAI exemplifies the next wave of this model. With a flexible billing structure that includes both free access and paid tiers, ChatGPT allows users to scale usage based on need—whether through monthly Pro subscriptions or metered API access. Power users and developers can pay based on prompt volume or access to premium model capabilities, ensuring they’re charged in proportion to the value they receive.

Together, AWS and ChatGPT illustrate how usage-based billing can evolve with customer expectations—lowering barriers to entry, promoting adoption, and aligning pricing tightly with actual usage. For SaaS companies, these models serve as blueprints for building monetization strategies that grow with their users.

Why Events-Based Billing? Flexibility, Precision, and Customer Value

Events-based billing gives innovators a compelling advantage: the ability to capture revenue in direct alignment with the value delivered. With metered billing tools that automate tracking and invoicing, it becomes easier to scale these models efficiently. This model offers key benefits:

1. Enhanced Flexibility – Events-based billing allows SaaS companies to offer varied payment models, such as monthly recurring or pay-as-you-go, accommodating customer preferences. This flexibility can be especially appealing for customers whose usage fluctuates month-to-month or seasonally, making it easier for them to scale their costs with their own needs.
2. Increased Precision – By utilizing SaaS reporting tools to focus on specific usage metrics (e.g., data stored, API calls), SaaS companies can provide a highly detailed invoice that transparently shows exactly what a customer is paying for. This precision helps build a reputation for fairness and clarity, which strengthens customer loyalty.
3. Improved Customer Value – Events-based billing helps SaaS companies attract new segments of customers who are wary of long-term commitments. These customers see value in paying only for actual usage, particularly in uncertain or fluctuating market conditions. It also opens opportunities for SaaS providers to expand their reach, enabling even smaller businesses to adopt sophisticated, scalable software on a pay-as-you-go basis.

Steps to Implement Events-Based Billing in SaaS

For SaaS businesses considering events-based billing, here’s a roadmap to implementation:

1. Identify Billable Metrics
   Begin by defining which metrics most effectively capture the value you deliver to your customers. These metrics should be specific to your product and its impact. For example:
   • Data Events: Data storage or usage (e.g., AWS’s model based on storage volume or API calls).
   • AI Interaction Events: The number of tokens processed—input and output (e.g., OpenAI’s API billing model for ChatGPT and other models).
   • Usage Events: Customer engagement metrics, such as transactions processed, security activities logged, or emails delivered.
2. Choose the Right Pricing Model
   With your metrics established, select a pricing model that aligns with your business goals and customer preferences. Options could include:
   • Straight usage-based billing: Charge based on each unit of usage, like per message or per API call.
   • Hybrid models: Combine flat rates with events-based billing, allowing customers to use a basic level of service with additional charges for higher usage.
3. Capture and Monitor Customer Data in Real-Time
   Accurately tracking customer events is essential to provide real-time, dynamic pricing. Integrate a robust metered billing software that captures and routes usage data reliably and in real-time, reducing delays and supporting responsive billing. This not only simplifies billing but also improves transparency and data accuracy.
4. Apply Pricing and Bill Customers
   Once you have reliable data collection and metrics, structure your invoices to clearly display how charges are tied to usage. Offer multiple payment methods and emphasize transparency in billing, providing customers with detailed breakdowns of their usage. Clear invoices help customers understand the value they’re getting and reduce the likelihood of disputes.
5. Bill Customers with Flexibility
   Events-based billing gives companies an edge in customer retention by allowing flexible payment options and personalized billing practices. Offering various methods of payment and accommodating dunning processes helps avoid involuntary churn, particularly where recurring, usage-based charges are involved.

The Future of SaaS Billing

Usage-based billing is transforming how SaaS companies approach revenue, creating opportunities to align price more closely with the value delivered. By offering flexibility and detail in a pay-as-you-go model, events-based billing doesn’t just drive customer satisfaction and loyalty—it opens the door to customer markets that were previously out of reach. For startups and established companies alike, this model provides a way to align with today’s demand for transparency and customer-centric pricing.

No matter how you leverage events-based billing, adopting this value-driven approach gives innovators the tools to attract new segments, drive growth, and enhance retention. If you’re ready to establish events-based billing for your company with the same level of precision as the big players in the market, Maxio’s team is here to help. Learn more about how our metered billing software supports usage-based and events-based models—so you can grow revenue with precision, not guesswork.

Why Lean Startups Can’t Afford the Hidden Costs of Manual Revenue Processes

As a leader in an early-stage startup, you’re likely no stranger to the reality of guiding product, technology, and revenue operations teams all at once. You’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do, after all. 

In fact, “wearing many hats” is a familiar challenge for most startup leaders that can draw your focus into the day-to-day operational details of revenue processes like billing, reporting, and tool management.

When operational drag from manual tasks or disconnected systems slows you down, the opportunity costs are substantial. The strategic bandwidth that’s consumed when leaders are pulled from high-level planning into tactical execution directly impacts your ability to innovate on pricing, launch Product-Led Growth (PLG), or proactively manage customer churn. 

We’ll discuss those implications and offer perspectives on how recognizing and solving operational friction with a flexible billing and financial reporting tech stack can unlock strategic capacity.

The Dilemma of Balancing Multiple Roles Alongside Operational Realities

Leaders at lean tech startups naturally step into diverse roles, providing much needed flexibility and support, but when revenue operations need attention, leadership absorbs the workload, which diverts attention from strategic work.

Imagine yourself in these scenarios:

• The Chief Product Officer (CPO), who also champions go-to-market (GTM) strategy, spends valuable hours on manual billing adjustments instead of refining value propositions.
• The Chief Technology Officer (CTO), whose primary goal is to scale the tech stack, piecing together data from disparate systems for revenue reports because integrated reporting isn’t available.
• The Head of RevOps (or a founder in this role) is struggling to get a clear view of revenue data for forecasting, impacting your ability to advise on strategic investments.
• Any leader working cross-functionally and being pulled into customer escalations for subscription upgrades or dunning because automated workflows are underdeveloped.

Would your skills and experience be better utilized in other ways? How could you avoid experiencing these types of operational drag? 

How Leaders Can Unlock Strategic Momentum in Critical Growth Areas

Operational drag directly impacts key growth initiatives, but by addressing the underlying inefficiencies with a central billing infrastructure, leaders can reclaim their strategic focus and impact the following growth areas.

Improving Your Pricing Strategy Execution

An effective pricing strategy is foundational to startup success, and the bandwidth to design, test, and iterate on pricing is constrained when implementing changes requires manual effort. This isn’t a reflection on the strategy but on the operational capacity to execute it.

When your operational systems are agile, you can make data-driven pricing decisions quickly. A flexible billing platform like Maxio provides the infrastructure to operationalize any pricing strategy, from simple subscription management to more complex adaptive billing models, freeing leadership to focus on finding the right pricing-market fit instead of worrying about back-office operations.

Enabling Your First-Time PLG Strategy

PLG offers a powerful path to efficient customer acquisition, and for leaders spearheading a first-time PLG motion, the strategic work involves defining value metrics and user journeys, and that  focus is broken if leadership’s time is diverted to manually managing the operational mechanics of self-serve signup, provisioning, or usage tracking.

Maxio acts as the central infrastructure for PLG, handling plan upgrades, billing entitlements, usage tracking, and seamless invoicing without custom engineering for each new motion, allowing leaders to strategically guide the PLG initiative rather than getting pulled into its operational execution.

Strengthening Your Customer Retention and Subscription Management

Proactive churn reduction is key for sustainable and predictable revenue growth, and leaders wearing many hats should dedicate time to understanding customer needs and improving value delivery. When they are pulled into reactive problem-solving due to error-prone subscription processes or difficult customer experiences, their strategic focus is spread thin.

Automating subscription management and centralizing billing functions with a platform like Maxio reduces customer friction and churn, freeing leadership to focus on higher-level retention strategies. 

Empower Leadership Teams by Turning Operational Efficiency into Strategic Advantage

As you well know, the reality of early-stage leadership involves balancing multiple roles amidst the controlled chaos of growth. And, the “wearing many hats” tax, paid in the currency of strategic focus, is a common challenge.

But by addressing operational inefficiencies in key revenue processes, leaders can unlock strategic capacity and agility, not just for themselves, but for the entire team. This is where flexible billing infrastructure matters. With Maxio, your team can launch new pricing tiers, test usage-based models, and gather revenue data without burdening engineering.

Viewing streamlined operations as a cost-saving measure and enabler of innovation allows leaders to focus their unique talents on building and scaling the core business, confident that their revenue infrastructure can keep pace with their vision.

Ready to get back to the business of growing your company? Maxio helps startup leaders shift out of the weeds and into a more strategic role—by eliminating operational drag from billing, reporting, and subscription management. Request a demo to see how Maxio can support your growth goals and free your leadership team to focus on what matters most.

If you’ve spent time in a fast-growing SaaS company then you already know that optimizing revenue generation and cash flow are almost always top priorities on any business leader’s KPIs sheet. However, lengthy product configuration discussions, manual pricing approvals, misaligned quotes, and orders, as well as delayed payments can hinder your sales cycle efficiency and make hitting these goals seemingly impossible. 

Both quote-to-cash (QTC) and configure-price-quote (CPQ) platforms aim to address these bottlenecks that frustrate salespeople and negatively impact deals. But which one makes the most sense for your company?

Throughout this article, we’ll explain what QTC and CPQ solutions are, how they differ, their unique benefits and drawbacks, and specific scenarios where one option may prove better than the other.

Differences between CPQ and quote-to-cash solutions

Quote-to-cash and CPQ (configure price quote) can be complementary software solutions that help companies drive revenue, though they serve different business processes. 

Quote-to-cash refers to the entire life cycle of a customer from the moment an inquiry or quote comes in, through negotiation, ordering, fulfillment, and renewals. It manages the end-to-end workflow from revenue generation to revenue management, payment, and renewals. 

CPQ, short for configure price quote software, focuses specifically on product configuration management and quoting, with cross-sell, upsell, and deal pricing optimization in real-time as key features. The main difference is that CPQ tends to be an embedded part of the quote-to-cash lifecycle that focuses on the product configuration and quoting experience—automating and optimizing that specific cross-sell/upsell revenue generation step for efficient order-to-cash operations. 

Both play an important role in standardizing business processes and generating revenue, but quote-to-cash takes a broader view across the customer journey.

Quote-to-cash process (QTC) defined

Quote-to-cash (QTC) refers to the end-to-end process that governs a customer’s journey from their initial engagement with your sales reps to revenue realization and renewal. QTC platforms manage the integrated workflows spanning marketing contacts, sales quotes, contracting, ordering, invoicing, collections, and maintaining ongoing customer relationships.

For example, when a prospect engages with a sales rep and requests a customized price quote, the QTC system steps in to guide product/service configuration conversations. It applies rules on pricing approvals, automatically generates proposal documents, and, once the deal is accepted, coordinates the entire order-to-cash process—from fulfillment and billing to final accounting through revenue recognition software. QTC unifies all required systems and data points—CRM, ERP, etc.—into a single automated workflow for each customer across their lifecycle.

Understanding quote-to-cash vs order-to-cash

The order-to-cash process focuses on what happens after a quote is accepted. It includes order fulfillment, invoicing, and payment. Quote-to-cash includes those steps, but also covers the work that happens earlier, such as quoting, pricing, and internal approvals. The key difference is that quote-to-cash captures the full process from initial quote through final payment.

Benefits of QTC

QTC solutions streamline business processes from deal creation to cash collection. Some of their key benefits include:

• Streamlines contract management and negotiation workflow: Automates contract drafting, approval routing, and version control for faster cycle times.
• Efficient order management for inventory and QTC process: Enables real-time inventory visibility and order orchestration from quote acceptance to fulfillment.
• Faster and more effective invoice process: Automates invoicing with flexible templates linked to contract terms for accuracy and speed.
• Streamlines entire sales cycle and operations: Provides a seamless workflow for the sales force from deal construction to order execution.
• Reduces customer churn rate: Increased efficiency, transparency, and compliance improve customer satisfaction and retention.
• Promotes pricing visibility for customers: Catalog, contract, and asset-based pricing rationalization provide accurate and accessible pricing.

The unified quote-to-cash platform enhances visibility, control, and coordination across the revenue lifecycle, especially when paired with SaaS reporting tools that provide performance insights, accelerating deals while optimizing business operations.

Drawbacks of QTC

While providing significant process improvements, QTC also poses some implementation challenges, including:

• Implementing an efficient QTC process: Mapping and optimizing complex workflow touchpoints across sales, legal, finance, and operations.
• Integrating add-ons and workflows: Ensuring seamless connections with add-on tools for contract lifecycles, billing, reporting, and more.
• Demanding accurate quotes and invoices: Delivering rigorous data governance and integrity required with little room for errors.
• Challenging pricing strategies: Requiring clear, consistent, and justified pricing for products, services, and deals.
• Scalability of automation: Evaluating infrastructure and capabilities to support the expansion of automated QTC processes.

Companies must strategically assess their organizational readiness along with software capabilities when managing the intricacies of an integrated quote-to-cash platform.

When to use QTC to automate sales & revenue recognition

Deciding between a configure-price-quote (CPQ) solution and a broader quote-to-cash (QTC) platform depends greatly on your businesses’ specific automation goals and operations complexity. 

Companies that require deep accuracy in pricing for varied customer needs often benefit more from a QTC implementation than standalone CPQ software. The QTC system can incorporate all necessary pricing logic across products, assets, market conditions, etc., while optimizing the workflows used to construct personalized quotes and offers. 

Similarly, businesses focused heavily on end-to-end process automation—from initial quote to revenue recognition and renewals—often layer in renewal management software as part of their QTC system to support retention and recurring revenue efforts. This broader order lifecycle platform, combined with seamless connectivity into back-end financials and contract databases, helps improve coordination and cycle times.

Finally, companies with complex account management through integrated CRM systems gain more leverage from QTC as deal progress updates, account activity tracking, and order status communication remain fluid across customer-facing teams and back-office finance and fulfillment staff. The unified data and workflows help coordinate networks of people in addition to automating steps. 

In essence, businesses with customized pricing guidelines, straight-through order processing needs and multifaceted customer relationships tend to benefit most from evaluating dedicated quote-to-cash software rather than singular CPQ tools in their technology landscapes.

Configure, price, quote (CPQ) defined

CPQ solutions streamline and optimize the creation of quotes and orders for customizable products or services by automatically applying pre-defined rules for configuration options, pricing models, and deal generation. Key capabilities include:

• Configure: CPQ tools build product or service variations, options, and component combinations that meet customer needs and organizational guidelines through guided selection processes and restriction rules. For example, a CPQ system would allow a sales rep to walk through PC configuration questions on memory, accessories, etc., and create valid equipment definitions.
• Price: Sophisticated pricing engines contained within CPQ platforms evaluate configurations, discount policies, volume levels, and other parameters for dynamic real-time price calculation. Pricing logic stays centralized but flexible for quotes.
• Quote: The quotes generated by CPQ systems provide customized product/service proposals, accurate pricing, descriptive names/codes, and other details needed to share with prospects and execute orders downstream upon acceptance. The documentation trails back to the specific configuration and pricing logic.

The integrated configure-price-quote functionality provides sales teams and customers a streamlined, accurate way to co-develop the perfect order while optimizing profitability through predefined rules and analytics.

Now that you have a high-level overview of these tools, let’s examine their benefits and drawbacks.

Benefits of CPQ

CPQ platforms build efficiency, accuracy, and speed into the sales process for configurable products and services. Some of CPQ software’s key benefits include:

• Improves customer relationships: Guided and optimized configuration conversations increase relevance while minimizing back-and-forth.
• Improved accuracy in deals: Rules-based automated billing software minimizes errors in configurations and pricing.
• Provides faster sales cycles: Reduces time spent on manual product selection, pricing calculations, and quote creation.

By embedding industry and organizational intelligence into the quoting process, CPQ systems enable sales teams to have more strategic customer interactions, driving higher win rates, larger deal sizes, and accelerated cycles.

Drawbacks of CPQ

While it provides its users with a better quoting process, CPQ adoption has common challenges, including:

• CPQ integrations are time-consuming: Connecting CPQ tools across CRM systems, ERPs, and other backends can require heavy IT effort.
• Proper training for the sales team: Adoption requires change management as sales teams adjust to new system-driven workflows.
• Cost of the tool and maintenance: Ongoing costs can present a barrier, especially for smaller companies.
• CPQ solutions scalability: Finding solutions to scale across geographies, products, deal types, and operations can be difficult.

Companies should weigh business process disruption and complex integrations requiring technical skills against the efficiency gains from CPQ automation when budgeting implementation time, costs, and resources.

When to use CPQ to optimize quoting & pricing

When assessing configure, price, and quote (CPQ) solutions versus wider quote-to-cash (QTC) platforms, companies should analyze where the greatest sales process constraints and complexity exist. 

For many organizations, the front-end sales quoting stage for customizable deals proves most cumbersome. Lengthy product configuration discussions, compatibility assessments, pricing table analyses, and quote formulation bog down sales reps. This hinders efficiency and revenue growth. Purpose-built CPQ solutions directly address sales quoting bottlenecks through automated guidance on product selection, rules-based pricing, and streamlined proposal documentation. This not only accelerates deal completion but also enhances accuracy by reducing manual errors in configurations or discounted prices. 

It further enables salespeople to spend more time on customer interactions versus internal quoting steps. The sales cycle and rep productivity optimization from CPQ can generate quick revenue growth and better customer configuration experiences. On the other hand, fuller quote-to-cash capabilities add extensive backend financial automation, contract management, and post-sales order processing that may overcomplicate sales motions rather than simplify them. 

Companies seeing the greatest opportunities in fine-tuning the customer-facing quote experience itself can gain better traction from targeted CPQ tools. Evaluating where product intricacy and lost selling time drag on growth guides the solution choice.

Streamline your billing workflow with a quote-to-cash or CPQ software

When evaluating SaaS accounting and operations solutions to improve processes from your quoting through collections, you’ll need to decide between end-to-end quote-to-cash (QTC) systems versus more specialized configure-price-quote (CPQ) tools.

QTC solutions provide unification of financial processes under one umbrella—spanning marketing, sales operations like quoting, fulfillment, billing invoices, payments, and maintaining customer relationships. This integrated approach can maximize workflow efficiency, data continuity, and cross-departmental alignment. However, QTC requires heavy integration and process change management.

Alternatively, CPQ solutions focus deeply on enhancing the quote generation experience through rules-driven pricing, guided selling functionality, and streamlined proposal documentation. This directly accelerates quoting for sales teams. Yet CPQ tools need to seamlessly connect with downstream functions like contracts, invoicing, etc.

Ultimately, if you’re experiencing the greatest inefficiencies or loss of business during pre-order configuration and sales quoting stages, you may benefit most from targeted CPQ capabilities. However, if you need to connect decisions across departments surrounding a customer from acquisition to renewals, then you may want to invest in a QTC solution.

Want to start improving your quote-to-cash process before you start throwing your budget at these tools? Check out our Quote-to-Cash checklist—a comprehensive guide that’s designed to streamline your sales workflow and stop revenue leakage.

Ready to see how Maxio can help? Get a demo to learn more.