Every business, big or small, will grow – growth is inevitable. Whether it happens through expanding into new markets, adding new pricing models, buying other businesses or launching new products or services, growth brings unexpected challenges, especially around billing.
We recently surveyed 200 finance leaders and found over 70% agree digital transformation is a necessity for their company’s survival. Yet, over 50% of them are not prepared for the complexity that comes with scaling their operations – they are not where they want to be with automation.
You might say, "We’re small. Our billing is simple." But our decades of experience tell us otherwise – growth sneaks up on you, and when it does, your "simple" billing system quickly becomes a major headache. Businesses that scale successfully do so by anticipating operational challenges early. Billing is one of the most critical areas to get right from the start.
This article explores the challenges businesses often overlook when it comes to scaling and explains why investing in the right billing system early will prepare you for growth and give you a competitive edge.
Industry trends: the shift toward complex billing models.
Billing is changing. It’s not just about sending invoices or collecting payments anymore – it’s about the customer.
Businesses are moving away from rigid, traditional systems to more flexible, customer-centric ones. Why? Because that’s what people want – they want flexibility in pricing, clear and accurate invoices, frictionless payments, the ability to easily upgrade/downgrade as needs change and a smoother experience all around.
Stripe’s report shows that although the flat rate is still a popular pricing model among businesses with recurring revenue streams, macroeconomic forces are pushing them to offer more flexible billing options. 67% of businesses expect usage-based pricing to grow, with cost-conscious subscribers driving this trend. At the same time, many subscription companies are adjusting their pricing by offering premium, higher-tier plans for those who want more value and are willing to pay more for it.
In the B2B space, while subscription-based pricing stays stable, there is a clear shift from perpetual pricing toward hybrid and usage-based billing. IT buyers want flexible payment options and billing systems that reflect real-time product usage rather than fixed pricing.
This is a direct response to customers demanding more flexible, value-based pricing. But with that flexibility comes complexity.
The reality of growth: what businesses often overlook.
Let's paint a picture. You're a startup with a handful of customers and a straightforward subscription management model. Life is good, right? Fast forward a year or two, and suddenly you're expanding into new markets, adding usage-based pricing tiers, maybe even considering an acquisition.
Sounds great for business, but have you thought about how your billing system will handle these changes?
If you're already using Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) for billing or currently considering purchasing an ERP like NetSuite, think about how it will scale with your business. As you start to grow rapidly and suddenly, manual data entry, contract amendments and complex pricing models become harder to manage, and without the right system in place, a rising tide of billing errors and delayed cash flow are inevitable.
For example, you might be using NetSuite for basic invoicing, but as you get more customers or launch new products or services, you’ll need to navigate the twists and turns of billing and revenue recognition. This can’t be done effectively with manual processes or legacy systems because you’ll end up dealing with billing errors, manual data entry issues and delayed cash flow.
Growth brings more than just more transactions; it brings complexity in every facet of billing.
Many companies don’t realize this until it’s too late.
Top 5 growth scenarios and the billing challenges they bring.
Market expansion: handling global complexity.
More than half of subscription businesses are planning international expansion within the next year. But entering new markets often means adjusting to local regulations, tax, currencies and accommodating customers who expect localized experiences – including their preferred payment methods. In fact, two-thirds of businesses plan to add at least one new local payment method in the next year to reach international customers and retain local subscribers.
Is your billing system prepared to handle these changes?
When expanding across multiple U.S. states or handling multiple international currencies, your billing system must calculate the correct tax for each jurisdiction, adjust for exchange rates and generate accurate invoices that apply these specifics. Without an automated billing workflow, finance teams most of the time need to do these tasks by hand, risking inaccurate tax or currency calculations and delays in revenue recognition.
With ZoneBilling, businesses easily adapt their billing in NetSuite to accommodate any invoicing changes related to entering new markets, managing diverse payment preferences (like Stripe payments) and ensuring compliance with local regulations.
Evolving pricing models: adapting to changing demands.
69% of businesses expect to shift toward more flexible pricing models like usage-based or tiered pricing. From business conversations, we’ve noticed a common misconception – companies often think usage-based pricing is straightforward, they just need to multiply units by a rate. But as they start adding complexities like minimum commitments, overages or pooling usage across multiple customers, the billing challenges multiply.
When your billing models evolve, your billing system must be able to adapt. Without automation, your billing team will struggle to manually manage these changes and most likely face billing errors, delays and missed revenue opportunities, especially as your company scales.
One of our customers, a leading AI-enhanced platform, grappled with managing multiple subscription types, mid-contract changes and manual billing inside NetSuite. After expanding ERP’s billing capabilities with automation from ZoneBilling, they saw a 90% increase in billing efficiency, gained flexibility in handling subscription changes and improved the accuracy of prorated calculations. This allowed them to easily adapt their pricing models and handle billing model fluctuations without delays or errors.
Increasing prices: responding to market conditions.
Half of CFOs expect to raise prices of their products and services to offset inflation and market volatility. Changes like these require an agile billing system that can adapt quickly to whatever comes your way, without creating friction for your customers. Manually adjusting prices mid-contract can disrupt your billing system, overwhelm your billing team and introduce errors and bottlenecks – even leading to customer dissatisfaction and direct, negative impact on your cashflow. Our customers use ZoneBilling to automatically adjust pricing in real-time, manage mid-contract price changes and recognize revenue, without disrupting business operations. This keeps them agile in a shifting market.
“We chose Zone because of the level of customization that we knew we would have to do. We felt that ZoneBilling would be able to handle that customization with a higher degree of flexibility than maybe a more rigid tool.” – Sandro De Ciccio, VP Controller at Power Factors
If your billing system can’t easily adapt to price changes, you risk losing customer trust and creating bottlenecks in your revenue operations.
Mergers and acquisitions: integrating multiple systems.
74% of CFOs say they need stronger or new finance capabilities to support successful M&A activities, and over half expect M&A to contribute between 1% and 10% of their company’s growth in the next three years. At some point, you might also consider merging with or acquiring another company. This more likely than not brings the challenge of merging disparate billing systems and customer bases. Without a system that can handle this surge of data, you may run into inconsistent records, billing delays, accounting issues and bottlenecks.
After multiple acquisitions, one of our customers faced this exact challenge. Each company they acquired had a unique billing system, creating difficulties in managing invoicing and revenue tracking. By integrating ZoneBilling within their existing NetSuite environment, they were able to merge all systems seamlessly and ensure billing accuracy across all customer bases. Their billing system is now ready for all new acquisitions that come their way while simplifying the financial integration of the acquired businesses.
Customer growth: managing a growing customer base.
Scaling your customer base often means managing a wider range of billing preferences and payment methods. A telecom company that rapidly grew from $12 million to $100 million in revenue, found its legacy billing system inside NetSuite couldn’t keep up. The billing team struggled to manage usage fluctuations, renewals, cross-sells and up-sells manually.
Can your current billing system handle a sudden revenue surge without overwhelming your team?
ZoneBilling’s dynamic pricing flexibility allowed them to manage complex pricing models and charge varying rates across customer segments – all while ensuring billing accuracy. Integration of subscription data between systems reduced billing errors and improved financial reporting. The result? 80% reduction in billing time and 8x more capacity, so each full-time employee (FTE) could manage $30 million in revenue, up from $4 million. As their customer base continues to grow, they’re ready to manage everything billing-related – from contracts to payments.
Without automation, scaling adds more manual work, more billing errors and longer billing cycles – directly affecting your cash flow and customer satisfaction.
“Whether you're adding new customers, expanding into new markets or acquiring companies, growth doesn’t happen in isolation. It touches every part of your business, especially billing. Many businesses assume that because their transaction volume is low, they don’t need a more robust billing solution. This misconception almost always leads to significant billing problems as they scale.” – Jon Leipzig, Head of ZoneBilling COE
Is your billing system ready for the complexity of growth?
You might be thinking, "Wait, we're using ERP. Isn't that enough?" ERPs or CRMs are powerful, but they’re often not flexible enough to handle the increasing complexity of your business needs, especially as you grow.
Many businesses don’t realize the challenges they’re about to face until we ask them:
- How will your billing system look like when you implement new billing models?
- How will your billing look when you double or triple your customer base?
- How will you manage renewals, contract amendments and pricing changes?
- Will you be able to handle the increased manual workload and complexity?
- Would you prefer to hire new billing staff to manage the workload, or invest in automation that handles everything for you – from closed-won deals and data entry in ERP, to contract amendments and usage-based billing, all the way to automatic invoice delivery to your customers?
The misconception is that small transaction volumes don’t require a robust billing system.
But as many companies discover after speaking with us, growth demands you have it.
Billing systems that worked fine for small operations suddenly start to struggle under the pressure of new demands. Stripe found 38% of businesses have lost deals because of inflexible billing systems and 52% are frustrated with their subscription process’ speed. Even more telling, 55% will likely get a completely new billing system by mid 2025.
Many businesses also deal with rising Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) – the time it takes to collect cash. An inefficient order-to-cash process can slow down collections and cause revenue gaps that hurt growth. Manual systems make this problem even worse because when businesses have to manually amend contracts, update billing cycles or fix invoicing errors, DSO increases and cash flow suffers.
How to manage growth and billing complexity in NetSuite?
Investing in a scalable billing system early might seem unnecessary now, but the benefits are clear. Companies that use ZoneBilling inside NetSuite report:
- 80% reduction in billing time
- 70% decrease in revenue recognition time
- Lower billing errors and prevented revenue leakage
- Better cash flow and reduced DSO
- Better control, forecasting and budgeting
Whatever billing model and needs you have (one-time fees, pay-as-you-go, tiered usage, minimum commitments, evergreen contracts, renewal automation, and more), you’ll be able to apply changes in how you bill, without changing your billing system.
So how much could your business save every year with ZoneBilling? Just enter the number of billing and revenue recognition employees, their salaries, the average number of billing errors and your annual revenue, and our ROI calculator will provide you with detailed estimates.
So, it's not a matter of if you'll need ZoneBilling inside NetSuite, it's when.
Growth is inevitable. Your billing system needs to be ready for it. The longer you wait to address these challenges, the harder it will be to catch up.
ZoneBilling equips you to handle billing complexity within NetSuite from day one, so you’re ready when growth hits.
Want to see how much time and money your business could save? Use our ROI and DSO calculators to estimate the benefits, or request a personalized demo today.
Don’t wait for growth to happen – prepare for it.
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