AI usage billing: Why your ERP is the key to getting it right

Summary (TL;DR)

• Usage-based pricing for AI features adds a layer of complexity most ERPs weren’t built to handle – fluctuating consumption, expiring credits, token-based billing and constantly shifting pricing tiers.

• It’s not just “add a SKU” and move on. These models reshape billing, rev rec and compliance – and when attribute-based charges are managed in disconnected tools or spreadsheets, finance is left patching systems together every month.

• The good news? You don’t need to rip out your ERP. With billing automation embedded inside NetSuite, you can support usage-based, hybrid and AI-specific pricing without introducing new tools or reconciliation overhead.

• If AI feature monetization is on your roadmap, it’s worth asking: is your ERP equipped to support finance – or just getting in the way?

AI monetization is changing the rules of billing – fast

Usage-based pricing has exploded in the last decade, and now AI-driven features are pushing monetization models even further – introducing complexity that legacy ERP setups weren’t designed to handle.

In our recent conversation with industry veterans, billing expert Jon Leipzig pointed out a clear pattern he has observed while working with SaaS businesses worldwide: companies adding AI features aren't just changing pricing models to seem innovative – they're facing a fundamental shift in how value is delivered and measured. Every AI query, token or feature usage must be tracked, billed and recognized as revenue – creating unprecedented complexity for finance teams still using traditional ERP systems.

This raises a key question: can your financial infrastructure keep pace with these new revenue streams?

38% of businesses have lost deals because of inflexible billing systems, 52% are frustrated with their subscription process speed and 55% will likely get a completely new billing system.

This article explores why keeping AI billing inside your ERP creates a critical advantage for finance teams, how to address common challenges with usage-based AI pricing and what to look for in a solution that extends your ERP's capabilities without creating disconnected systems.

Why billing for AI usage isn’t as simple as adding a new SKU 

Billing for AI usage introduces a layer of complexity beyond traditional B2B transactions. While many businesses consider their offerings a “subscription”, the addition of AI features creates unique challenges driven by factors such as:

• Fixed platform fees for core product access
• AI-specific charges (token, queries, completions)
• Usage thresholds with different pricing tiers
• Credits that expire or roll over
• Service components with separate billing cadences

An AI chatbot feature won’t be just another product you add to your billing process. This dynamic service with usage that fluctuates daily, will most likely require a different billing logic than your core offering. 

This is a classic example of attribute-based billing – pricing that depends on variable usage attributes like the number of tokens processed, API calls made or AI outputs generated. Unlike flat-fee subscriptions, this kind of model requires tracking usage at the granular level, applying pricing logic in real-time and aligning revenue schedules to actual consumption.

Process breakdowns

If your billing tech stack isn’t integrated and leveraging automation to handle the billing complexity that accompanies AI pricing, your financial scalability will be limited by manual processes and Excel bottlenecks. Your finance teams will quickly hit operational bottlenecks:

• Manual tracking of AI consumption metrics
• Complex calculations for tiered pricing in spreadsheets
• Reconciliation challenges between usage data and invoices
• Revenue recognition timing mismatches
• Compliance risks with prepaid AI credits

Reputational risk 

These challenges aren’t just on the tech side either. Consider what happens when customers receive their first AI usage bill. Did they understand what they were paying for? Can they verify the usage metrics? 

One enterprise software company we work with discovered that billing errors in their AI feature resulted in a 15% increase in support tickets and delayed payments by an average of 12 days.

Billing errors surrounding new and unfamiliar services – especially when they’re related to usage – can quickly eat into your customers’ time and resources and damage your reputation. 

Growth barriers

Financial scalability hinges directly on how your ERP handles billing and revenue recognition for evolving models and pricing changes and additions. Rapid growth will only magnify these challenges. If your ERP can’t handle AI pricing models today, it won’t scale tomorrow.

“Having the potential to handle hundreds of thousands of transactions a month in three to five years while operating in the same environment is really important. Companies are looking for that scalability because, if they try to swap systems during a major growth phase of their business, it can wreak a lot of havoc.” – Derek Hitchman, NetSuite practice leader at CrossCountry Consulting

The best time to build scalable AI billing infrastructure is before you outgrow your current setup. If finance teams are already hitting reconciliation bottlenecks, that’s a sign your ERP isn’t equipped for AI monetization.

3 most common misconceptions and risks of managing AI billing outside your ERP

Because AI monetization is relatively new and may not be well understood, we often hear some common assumptions about what it takes to implement AI pricing strategies. We’re breaking the most prevalent “myths” below.

Misconception #1: "We'll need a separate billing tool for AI-based pricing."

Many companies initially turn to outside billing tools for AI monetization. At first, it seems simple – plug in a specialized tool, track AI usage and generate invoices. But what happens when that data has to flow into the ERP?

The architecture becomes fractured almost immediately. Customer contracts live in your CRM. Usage data resides in your product database. Invoices originate in the billing platform. Payments land in the payment processor. And revenue recognition? That's still manual work in the ERP.

"If you're billing AI usage outside your ERP, you're creating unnecessary friction. Your finance team now has to reconcile records from multiple systems – your CRM, your billing tool, your ERP. That means more manual work, more errors and more compliance risks. The reality is, most companies end up using Excel as the ‘glue’ between systems, which is exactly what brings the risk and what finance should be eliminating." – James Hewitt, Senior Sales Consultant at Zone

Finance teams suddenly find themselves managing:

• Disconnected revenue data. AI charges live in one system, financial records in another. Deferred revenue tracking? Audit readiness? Now manual processes.
• Duplicate work. If usage is billed in a separate tool, finance has to re-enter transactions into NetSuite or extract and reconcile them in Excel. That’s lost time – every month.
• Scattered reporting. Finance can’t pull real-time insights when AI revenue is buried in external billing tools. Financial forecasts start running on guesswork.

The more AI-powered revenue grows, the bigger these challenges become.

With AI-powered services, usage-based pricing isn't just about billing. The customer experience matters too, and they want to see exactly what they're paying for. Without clarity on invoices and inside a customer portal, they won't understand the value. 

"AI billing has to be tightly integrated with ERP as billing isn't longer only a finance function, but it's becoming a core part of customer operations too." – Derek Hitchman, NetSuite practice leader at CrossCountry Consulting 

By investing in an integration that simplifies and automates your AI billing strategy within your ERP, finance benefits from the following advantages across the order-to-cash cycle:

• One source of truth: No manual work to sync AI usage data with financials.
• Faster, automated invoicing: AI usage gets billed alongside all other revenue streams.
• Better financial reporting: CFOs and controllers can track AI revenue directly in NetSuite.
• Scalability: Whether AI is a small add-on or a major revenue driver, billing stays simple.

If you’re currently evaluating whether your ERP can truly support your evolving billing needs, our guide on the 30 billing questions to ask provides a framework for assessing your current system's capabilities and identifying where native ERP extensions like ZoneBilling can fill critical gaps – before investing in disconnected solutions.

Misconception #2: "Our ERP can't handle AI usage-based models like tokens, credits or API calls."

Many out-of-the-box ERPs will struggle with AI usage-based models like tokens, credits or API calls – but the solution isn’t moving billing outside the ERP. The right ERP extensions (like our advanced billing management solution inside NetSuite) make it possible to:

• Automatically track AI usage metrics
• Configure flexible pricing tiers without custom development
• Bill accurately for actual consumption
• Recognize revenue properly inside your ERP

“Can you monetize the AI capabilities you’re putting into your platform? That’s the real question. You might have a platform fee, then an attribute-based pricing model for AI where customers buy 50 AI search credits. Those credits might be charged upfront, billed monthly or based on actual usage. " – James Hewitt, Senior Sales Consultant at Zone

That flexibility is exactly why AI billing needs to be embedded inside the ERP – because you need full control over invoicing, usage tracking and revenue recognition in one place.

Misconception #3: "Revenue recognition for AI usage is too complex for our ERP."

AI pricing often requires deferred revenue tracking, since AI credits and tokens may be prepaid but used later. Because of this, many finance leaders assume their ERP can't handle the complexities of AI revenue recognition – but this misconception leads companies to create more problems than they solve.

Even if your ERP (e.g., NetSuite) cannot handle this complexity natively, proper billing integrations that live within the walls of the ERP actually excel at solving exactly these revenue recognition challenges:

• Automatically tracking consumption of prepaid AI credits across time periods
• Properly deferring revenue based on actual usage patterns rather than invoice timing
• Creating compliant revenue schedules that align with ASC 606 requirements
• Maintaining a clear audit trail between original purchases and revenue recognition events

Without these capabilities, finance teams resort to disconnected spreadsheets and manual processes - creating the very complexity they feared in the first place.

"If a customer prepays for 200 AI credits but only uses 50 this month, and you've agreed to refund unused credits, you can't recognize that revenue upfront – it would break ASC 606 compliance. That's why revenue recognition for AI needs to be automated inside the ERP, where we can track usage and properly defer revenue based on actual consumption." – James Hewitt, Senior Sales Consultant at Zone

Are you prepared to explain to your executives, board or investors why your finance team manages critical revenue data in disconnected systems held together by spreadsheets?

Before investors start asking questions, take a step back and ask these internally:

• What's going to happen with the revenue? CFOs need to track profitability by product. But if AI-generated revenue enters the books as journal entries without product tags, your reporting will be incomplete.

• How will we report on it? If pulling up future billing obligations means running reports across multiple systems, extracting data and manually piecing it together in Excel, scaling will be impossible.

• How will we reconcile deferred revenue? With invoices in one system and revenue schedules in another, your finance team ends up stitching it together in Excel.

• How will we manage status updates? Order to cash is a holistic process. Your ERP is the best place to handle AI billing.

Embedding AI billing directly within your ERP creates a single financial source of truth. Usage data feeds straight into your core system, eliminating reconciliation headaches and providing real-time visibility into how each AI feature performs financially, both now and in the future as these add-on services expand and drive growth.

AI pricing models explained: Usage-based, tiered and hybrid billing strategies

AI pricing fundamentally differs from traditional subscription models. It's dynamic and usage-based, making it impossible to bill as a simple flat fee. Your billing system needs to accommodate:

• Fluctuating usage patterns that vary month to month
• Different consumption metrics (tokens, API calls, searches)
• Combinations of fixed fees and variable charges
• Volume discounts and tiered pricing structures

Usage-based AI pricing: AI tokens, search credits, API calls 

Usage-based AI pricing ties cost directly to consumption. Customers pay for exactly what they use – no fixed fees, no wasted spend. OpenAI’s ChatGPT, for instance, charges per token processed. AWS AI services charge based on compute time, storage and API calls. Zoom AI analytics charge based on the number of videos processed with AI-powered insights.

Unlike tiered or prepaid models, usage-based billing is dynamic. Each billing cycle varies, requiring an ERP that can track usage at the transaction level. For example:

• AI tokens: Charged per unit of text processed, deducted from prepaid credits or billed at the end of usage
• API calls: Billed per request, often with pricing tiers (e.g., first 1M calls at $X, additional calls at $Y)
• Search credits: Prepaid or pay-as-you-go, requiring tracking for unused credits and adjusting revenue recognition

Inside an ERP, usage-based transactions flow directly into customer invoices and revenue schedules. Prepaid AI credits remain in deferred revenue until consumed. If customers don’t use them, finance must track expiration policies or roll unused credits forward. Without automation, this means manual schedule adjustments and compliance risks.

Hybrid models: Fixed subscription + AI consumption charges

Many businesses combine a base subscription fee with usage-based AI charges. This provides predictable recurring revenue while also capturing the value of increased AI usage.

For example, a company might offer their platform for a fixed monthly fee, but charge additionally for AI-powered features based on consumption. This model provides more stable revenue than pure usage-based pricing while still aligning costs with value.

Why this model can be tricky to manage? Hybrid pricing creates two parallel revenue streams:

• Predictable revenue: A platform fee (fixed subscription)
• Variable revenue: AI-powered add-ons (billed based on consumption)

But what happens when these two revenue streams live in different systems? 

When your fixed subscription is managed in your ERP but AI usage is tracked elsewhere, how does your finance team reconcile these for accurate reporting? What happens when a customer makes a single payment covering both components? How do you ensure proper revenue recognition when subscription and usage follow different schedules?

Keeping both revenue streams within your financial home – your ERP – eliminates these challenges. With the right billing integration inside NetSuite, both fixed subscriptions and variable AI usage can be managed in a single system. 

This gives finance teams a complete view of customer relationships, streamlines invoicing, simplifies revenue recognition and ensures compliance without the manual reconciliation that often becomes a spreadsheet nightmare.

Tiered AI pricing: Volume discounts and threshold-based billing

AI services often use tiered pricing, where costs decrease as usage increases. Customers are grouped into pricing tiers based on their consumption, encouraging higher usage while making costs more predictable.

For example, the first 1,000 AI processing minutes might cost $0.10 per minute, while minutes 1,001-10,000 cost $0.08 each, and so on. This means customers benefit from lower rates as they scale, but finance teams must track not just total usage but which portion falls within each pricing tier. Now, consider the challenges:

• What happens when a customer crosses a threshold mid-cycle?
• What if different AI features have separate tier structures?
• How does finance provide real-time visibility into how close a customer is to the next discount level?

Without automation inside your ERP, tracking tiered billing across hundreds of customers creates manual work, reconciliation issues and potential pricing disputes. Embedded NetSuite billing ensures tiers are calculated automatically, eliminating errors and freeing your finance team from constant monitoring.

How ZoneBilling simplifies AI billing without disrupting your existing ERP setup

“The leap from our previous system to now has been night and day for prorated calculations. We’ve bridged the gap between Salesforce and our billing system in NetSuite thanks to ZoneBilling.” – Lakshman Manoharan, Head of Business Systems at Lattice

Can your billing system handle evolving AI-driven pricing models without creating data silos or reconciliation headaches?

AI-based pricing adds revenue complexity that finance teams can’t afford to manage manually. If AI billing isn’t handled inside NetSuite, finance teams face:

• Disjointed revenue tracking: AI usage logs live in one system, invoices in another and deferred revenue gets reconciled manually.
• Compliance risks: Prepaid AI credits must be deferred and recognized correctly under ASC 606, yet many companies still rely on spreadsheets.
• Customer billing disputes: Without clear, itemized invoices, customers push back on charges, delaying payments.

ZoneBilling keeps AI billing inside NetSuite, solving these order-to-cash challenges without adding another system. How?

• One source of truth: Finance teams stop wasting time reconciling scattered data and can answer revenue questions with confidence.

• Automated revenue recognition: The system tracks the consumption of prepaid AI credits and revenue schedules align with ASC 606.

• Consolidated contract management: All fixed subscriptions, usage-based charges and hybrid models live in one place, tracking what the customer purchased versus what they've used.

• Real-time visibility across teams: Product teams can track feature adoption, sales can monitor upsell opportunities and finance can produce accurate forecasts – all from the same verified data source.

Standalone billing tools create more fragmentation. ZoneBilling keeps all monetization models – usage-based, tiered and hybrid models – directly inside your financial core, your NetSuite environment. 

That means you can manage today’s billing complexities while staying flexible for future pricing strategies.

"Companies need to think beyond today's requirements. If you're just starting with AI features, you might think a simple solution works. But as usage grows and pricing evolves, you need a platform that can scale with you." – Derek Hitchman, NetSuite practice leader at CrossCountry Consulting

Want to see ZoneBilling in action? Book a demo to explore how ZoneBilling works inside NetSuite.

Not ready to talk to sales? Try a self-paced demo or calculate your potential savings with billing automation inside NetSuite.

FAQs

What are the biggest risks of billing AI usage outside your ERP?

Billing outside your ERP creates data silos, reconciliation issues and compliance risks. AI usage data ends up in one system, invoices in another, and revenue recognition for most teams becomes a manual process in Excel. Finance teams waste time syncing numbers across disconnected platforms, increasing errors and slowing financial reporting. Without a single source of truth, forecasting AI revenue becomes guesswork and customer disputes over unclear billing grow.

Can I bill for AI usage in ERP while still using a standard subscription model? 

Yes. Many AI-driven products require hybrid pricing, where a base subscription covers platform access and AI-powered features are billed based on usage. Your ERP should handle both fixed fees and dynamic AI charges in the same invoice – without requiring separate billing tools. If AI usage is tracked outside the ERP, finance teams will struggle to reconcile invoices, recognize revenue properly and provide customers with a clear breakdown of charges.

Why should I bill for AI products inside my ERP?

Your ERP is your financial source of truth. Billing AI usage outside of it leads to fragmented reporting, compliance risks and operational inefficiencies. When billing stays inside the ERP:

• AI usage data flows directly into invoices – no manual tracking.
• Revenue recognition aligns with actual consumption – no compliance gaps.
• Financial reporting includes all revenue streams – no missing data.
• Finance, product and sales teams access the same real-time numbers – no silos.

How does ZoneBilling support AI billing inside NetSuite? 

ZoneBilling brings AI usage tracking, invoicing and revenue recognition into NetSuite, eliminating disconnected billing tools. It automatically:

• Tracks AI consumption (tokens, API calls, search credits) in real time
• Applies tiered and hybrid pricing models without manual calculations
• Syncs billing with revenue recognition for ASC 606 compliance
• Provides clear, itemized invoices, reducing disputes and delayed payments
• Scales with AI-driven revenue models – whether AI is a small add-on or a core service

What if I’m just starting to monetize AI – do I need to change my billing system?

Fortunately, ZoneBilling makes it easy to keep your current ERP-based billing strategy in place while monetizing AI. You won’t need third-party tools that take billing outside your ERP environment. 

What should I look for in an AI billing solution for my ERP?

An AI billing solution should:

• Track AI usage in real time (tokens, API calls, search credits)
• Automate tiered and hybrid pricing models
• Sync billing with revenue recognition for compliance
• Eliminate manual reconciliation between systems
• Provide clear, itemized invoices for customers

Solutions like ZoneBilling for NetSuite ensure AI billing is fully embedded within ERP, reducing errors and supporting financial scalability.

How does AI pricing affect revenue recognition and compliance (ASC 606, IFRS 15)?

AI pricing often includes prepaid credits, usage-based charges and tiered billing, requiring accurate revenue deferral and recognition. Under ASC 606 and IFRS 15, revenue must be recognized only when the service is delivered. If AI credits are prepaid but not used, they remain in deferred revenue until consumed. Without ERP automation, finance teams must manually adjust schedules, increasing compliance risks.