Recurring billing made easy
Are you familiar with the term recurring billing? Have you ever considered using it in the context of your business to enhance payment for the products and services you provide? Most small business owners don’t know what subscription billing can do for their business. So let’s take a look at what recurring billing is and then – what it can do for your business.
Ask yourself, what is recurring billing? Subscription billing is used by businesses to charge clients a specified amount more than once. The amount can differ, but is usually the same on every recurrence and the term on which the debit is submitted can repeat on any frequency e.g. weekly, monthly, annually etc. Charges can be submitted to your credit card, bank account or account with a payment gateway.
Now that we know what subscription billing is, let’s see how recurring billing can make your business better:
Keeping your cash-flow healthy
Small businesses and freelancers stand to benefit a lot from adopting recurring billing procedures. Recurring billing is not just for big or enterprise type businesses. Small businesses can easily and very cost effectively initiate this strategy.
Debiting payment via recurring billing means increased cash-flow for small businesses. When billing only via wire transfer or direct deposit only you are intermittently getting small, unscheduled payments that each incur bank changes to you and your customer. These once off payments can be sporadic so you are never sure when or even if your customers will pay you.
Constantly having to worry about when you will receive payment from your customers means you never have a chance to plan ahead. Recurring billing gives you the ability to project income over several months. As payments are recurring and repeat on a scheduled basis you know precisely what date you will be receiving what amount. Excellent for planning your businesses expansion and scheduling your own debits.
Get paid now, ask us how
Recurring billing allows you to control when you get paid. It’s easy, when custolmers sign up you specify the debit amount and recurrence. Then sit back and wait and you watch funds being automatically debited on the dates specified. This means no more late payment or waiting for urgently needed money to clear. You now know precisely when you are going to get paid.
Spend less on payment collection & administration
Ensuring the bulk of your customers pay via subscription billing translates to reduced administration tasks for you and your clients. Administration is reduced on the client’s side because payment is automatic. The customer no longer needs to go into a bank to make a direct deposit or login to online banking to manually make a wire transfer. Administration is also reduced on your side because you do not have to recon hundreds of small individual payments. Gateways that facilitate subscription payments usually offer automated account reconciliation or provide bulk recon files that allows easy and accurate consolidation.
Wow, that sounds great! But how do I get started? Joining a payment gateway and payment facilitating system is step one. Find a gateway with competitive fees and a facilitator that enables automatic account reconciliation.
Susan Bapsnill is an expert at business cash-flow. She recommends a recurring billing system to automate your cash-flow. Click here to try a recurring billing system for free.. This article, Recurring billing made easy has free reprint rights.