What should you look for in a B2B subscription billing platform?

A survey conducted by DontPayFull in 2024 revealed that shoppers save an average of $395.81 annually by using coupons for groceries and meal kits”, right after the Statista reference.

Choosing a subscription billing platform for your business can be a daunting task given the plethora of options out there.

However, it doesn’t have to be challenging for you.

In this blog post, we’ll share useful questions you need to ask before choosing a recurring billing solution to help you choose the right platform for your SaaS B2B business.

But before that, here are a few things worth understanding:

What is B2B Subscription Billing?

B2B subscription billing, otherwise known as recurring billing, is a payment model whereby customers are charged for goods or services at regular intervals, either monthly, quarterly or annually.

This payment model is used by businesses that offer subscription and membership-based products or services such as HubSpot, Slack, Salesforce, Shopify, etc.

The global subscription billing management market is estimated to be $6,893.07 million and is projected to reach $14.521.16 million by 2027.

Image via Research and Markets

The statistics show that the demand for subscription billing services is constantly increasing thus choosing a suitable platform is a great idea for SaaS B2B business owners.

What is Subscription Billing Software?

Subscription billing software is one of the most powerful ecommerce tools that offers features that enable businesses to bill their customers for products and services regularly.

With a good subscription billing solution businesses can automate the entire billing process.

What’s more?

You can also improve customer retention and reduce churn.

The benefits of subscription billing software include:

Improved customer service.
Provides useful subscription billing insights.
Streamline automated billing and payment processing.
Increase revenue.
Enable better tracking and reporting.

Ready to choose your subscription billing solution?

Here are the questions you need to ask:

1. Does The Platform Offer Price Flexibility?

Customers’ needs and tastes are always changing constantly.

What does this mean?

When looking for a subscription billing service, you need to uncover these changes and adapt when necessary.

Also, ensure the billing software you choose can allow you to adjust your pricing at short notice without upsetting your customers.

2. Can The Software Enable You To Manage Promotional Deals Efficiently

Coupons and promotional deals attract customers.

A May 2020 survey by Statista shows that 89% of Millennial shoppers in the United States would try a new brand if offer a coupon or discount:

Image via Statista

In another 2020 Statista survey, 88% of customers in the United States said that they used coupons for shopping.

What do these stats mean?

If you want to attract customers and boost your sales with your subscription-based business, you need to introduce coupons and promotional deals often.

Note that if you plan to introduce promotions to boost sales, you need to track and manage prices effectively at any given time.

Use CRMs designed for sales such as Copper CRM to manage your whole sales process in effective way.

This can be a complex tax without a subscription billing service.

Ensure the platform you choose enables you to track and manage varying discounts concurrently.

This will help you send sales invoices for each customer without errors, and on time.

Coupons, promotional deals, and special discounts are also helpful when trying to experiment with your pricing strategy for a given period based on varying market scenarios.

The worst scenario is when the special discounts, coupons, or promotional deals are not removed after your offer ends. You might sell products at a loss or overcharge your customers.

The software you choose should help you avoid these frustrations by enabling you to track your pricing strategy.

3. Can the Software Allow You to Send Branded Invoices To Your Customers

There are many ways to promote your brand and one of them is by sending branded invoices to your customers.

Branded are beneficial to your business in many ways:

Makes your brand stick to your customer’s minds while portraying your business’ goals, values, and messages.
Increases reputation and trust with your customers.
Branded invoices can help you gain new customers through referrals.
Makes your business appealing to employees which can help to attract top talent.
Branded invoices can be a powerful advertising and marketing tool.

When choosing a recurring billing service, ensure it can enable you to send branded invoices to customers. You can review Attrock list of recurring billing software to learn more about different platforms.

4. Does The Platform Support Multiple Payment Methods?

Apart from pricing flexibility, the platform should also allow payment flexibility as well.

If you are not offering your customers different payment methods you’re denying your business’ potential for revenue and growth.

Offering a variety of payment options to customers is beneficial in many ways:

Improves conversion rates by reducing cart abandonment rates.
Can help your business to attract a wider customer demographic.
Improves user experience.
Can help you expand to international markets.

Since different customers have their preferred payment methods, you need a platform that can help you provide your customers with a variety of payment methods.

According to statistics, these are the preferred global ecommerce payment methods:

Image via FIS, Worldpay

Conclusion

Choosing the right subscription billing platform for your business can be a daunting task owing to the wide range of options out there.

Subscription billing and subscription management software automate the billing operations and generating reports, manage the subscriptions in effective manner.

The questions above should be able to offer you guidance to help you choose a solution that accommodates your business needs.

Author Bio – Reena Aggarwal

Reena is Director of Operations and Sales at Attrock, a result-driven digital marketing company. With 10+ years of sales and operations experience in the field of e-commerce and digital marketing, she is quite an industry expert. She is a people person and considers the human resources as the most valuable asset of a company. In her free time, you would find her spending quality time with her brilliant, almost teenage daughter and watching her grow in this digital, fast-paced era.