As your business grows, the systems that worked when you had a handful of customers might not cut it anymore – especially if you’re managing subscriptions and complex billing. What used to be manageable can quickly become overwhelming, leaving your team scrambling to maintain accuracy and efficiency. That’s when you know it’s time for something more advanced.
If you’re trying to figure out how much you could save with billing automation software or how automating with ZoneBilling could reduce your Days Sales Outstanding (DSO), you’re in the right place. This guide will walk you through our free billing automation ROI calculator, with a practical example of how much your business stands to gain.
How billing automation with ZoneBilling reduces DSO.
Many companies focus on the back end of the billing process – collections and payment terms – when trying to shorten DSO. But the real delays often start much earlier. Bottlenecks at the front end of the billing cycle, like manual invoice generation, fixing billing errors, dealing with contract changes and syncing CRM, CPQ, payment gateway and ERP data, all add unnecessary days to your DSO, slowing down cash flow and straining your working capital.
The real key to reducing DSO is stopping those delays before the invoice even goes out and ensuring invoices are generated quickly and accurately in the first place. ZoneBilling takes care of everything on the front end – from creating contracts and invoices to verifying data, applying contract amendments and sending invoices – all inside NetSuite. The sooner your invoice goes out the door, the faster payment terms can start – and this is where true DSO improvement actually begins.
What are the benefits of automating billing and revenue recognition in NetSuite?
Automating billing and revenue recognition in NetSuite goes beyond just speeding up processes. Whether you’re a small business, a scale-up or an enterprise, ZoneBilling is designed to offer enterprise-level capabilities without breaking the bank – making it an accessible solution for companies of all sizes. Here are the key benefits you can expect from using ZoneBilling:
1. Faster invoicing, shorter DSO.
With ZoneBilling in NetSuite, you can cut your billing cycle by up to 80% and free up to two months of billing work annually. With invoices sent more quickly, your payment terms start sooner, helping you improve cash flow and reduce DSO by about four days on average.
2. Fewer errors, less manual work.
By automating billing tasks in NetSuite, you can expect up to a 90% increase in billing efficiency and scaling your billing operations to handle eight times more revenue per billing employee, all without needing to hire additional staff.
3. Seamless CPQ, CRM and ERP integration for complex subscription management.
If you’re relying on CPQ, CRM and ERP systems, like Salesforce and NetSuite, ZoneBilling ensures everything stays connected. It keeps customer and billing data flowing automatically between systems, so you get accurate billing and revenue reporting without necessary manual intervention.
4. Handling complex contracts with ease.
ZoneBilling was built to manage everything from simple subscriptions to complex pricing models for NetSuite customers around the world. You can easily handle any type of pricing structure and scenarios, including multi-tier, usage-based pricing, prorated billing, mid-term changes, upgrades, downgrades and cross-sells. ZoneBilling keeps it all accurate and up to date across your systems – no delays, no errors.
5. Simplified revenue recognition and compliance.
ZoneBilling automates compliance with revenue recognition standards like ASC 606 and makes audits smoother. You can cut rev rec time by more than 70% and rest easy knowing your revenue is fully aligned with actual usage and contractual terms. Plus, you can handle more revenue without needing to expand your finance team because everything is streamlined.
6. Strategic insights and reporting.
With ZoneBilling, your finance team isn’t just doing the numbers – they’re driving growth. You get deeper insights and improved accuracy, your audits are easier with no surprises and you can better support sales with real-time financial data and scenarios.
Why it matters to measure ROI on billing automation in ERP.
As a finance professional, we know you don’t just want to know that automation works – you need to see the numbers. Whether you're a controller building the case for new tools or a CFO weighing your options, you need clear, hard data to back up this decision.
Our ROI calculator gives you a personalized estimate of the potential savings from automating billing and revenue recognition in NetSuite with ZoneBilling, factoring in labor costs, billing errors and cash flow improvements.
This tool allows you to build a clear business case backed by numbers and prove to stakeholders that automation will not only reduce stress and errors but also lead to significant financial gains.
Steps to calculate the DSO and ROI of automating revenue cycle management in NetSuite with ZoneBilling.
Automating your billing and revenue recognition processes will unlock significant time and cost savings, but the real question is: How much? By calculating both the potential ROI and the impact on DSO, you’ll have a clear, data-backed view of how these efficiencies translate to your bottom line.
Step-by-step guide to calculating the ROI of billing automation in NetSuite.
Our ROI calculator is designed to give you a clear picture of the potential savings and efficiency gains you can achieve with ZoneBilling inside NetSuite. It’s quick, easy, and tailored to your business. Here’s how to get started:
Step 1: Access the calculator
Head over to the ZoneBilling ROI Calculator. This tool helps you estimate the financial benefits of automating your billing and revenue management in NetSuite.
Step 2: Input your business data
You’ll need to provide a few details about your current billing and revenue processes:
- Monthly invoices: Enter the average number of invoices your business sends to customers each month.
- Line items per invoice: Input the average number of billing line items per invoice.
- Billing FTEs and their salaries: Enter how many full-time employees (FTEs) are involved in billing. Think of everyone who touches the process, from entering contracts into the billing system or a spreadsheet, generating invoices or credit memos, to handling collections. Add their average annual salaries too.
- Revenue recognition FTEs and their salaries: Provide the number of FTEs working on revenue recognition tasks like compliance or financial reporting, along with their average salaries.
- Billing errors: Input the average number of billing errors your team deals with each month. We typically see billing error rates hover around 3% of total invoices.
- Annual Revenue: Lastly, enter your company’s annual revenue.
Step 3. Review your results
After entering the data (no form fills needed), the calculator will show you:
- Improved billing and revenue recognition FTE efficiency
- The potential cost savings from increased cash flow, fewer billing errors and prevented revenue leakage
- Your projected ROI over the next three years.
Pair this with our DSO calculator, and you’ll have a complete picture of how ZoneBilling can transform your billing, reduce manual work, save money and speed up your cash flow. These tools together give you everything you need to build a strong business case for automation, whether you’re pitching it to your manager or CFO.
How much could you shorten DSO with ZoneBilling in NetSuite? Try our DSO reduction calculator.
Cash flow is king, and every day you shave off your DSO puts more cash in your pocket. Our DSO reduction calculator focuses on the front end of DSO – the time between closing a sale and getting that invoice out the door. It shows exactly how much you can shorten your total DSO by automating your invoicing process with ZoneBilling.
How it works?
- Enter the number of days it typically takes for your team to generate and send an invoice after a sale.
- Enter your company’s annual revenue.
- The calculator will show how many days you could cut from your DSO by automating the front-end billing process.
Practical example: Calculating DSO reduction and ROI with NetSuite billing automation.
Let’s consider a hypothetical business, SubscriptionCo, which sends out 1,200 invoices each month. Each invoice has on average 15 line items and the billing process involves four full-time employees with salaries averaging $70,000 per year. SubscriptionCo also has two employees working on revenue recognition, each earning $90,000.
For billing errors on a monthly basis, we’ll use our standard 3% estimation, so the SubscriptionCo handles around 36 billing errors per month. The company has $70 million in annual revenue.
After entering this data into the ZoneBilling ROI calculator, the results show that SubscriptionCo could save around $340,000 annually by automating financial operations, with a total three-year ROI of $680,000. The company usually takes 5 days to send an invoice to the customer, and the DSO calculator shows they could reduce the invoice generation time by 80% with ZoneBilling, shortening the total DSO by four days in total. See what results you can expect.
Real-world success stories: Advanced lead to revenue management in NetSuite.
If you're building a business case for automating your billing and revenue recognition processes, it’s helpful to see how other companies have benefited from using ZoneBilling, apart from the projected ROI and annual savings.
How others have benefited from ZoneBilling?
- Sourcegraph, a software company offering a code intelligence platform, faced growing billing complexities and compliance issues with the ASC 606 standard. Their manual processes, lack of integration between NetSuite and Salesforce and time-consuming revenue recognition made scaling difficult. After switching to ZoneBilling, they cut billing time by 72 hours each month, eliminated billing errors by integrating their CRM and ERP and reduced revenue recognition time by 70%.
- A software company offering an AI-powered HR platform, Lattice, struggled with disconnected systems, manual billing processes and proration challenges. The reliance on NetSuite, Salesforce and Stripe led to errors and process inefficiencies, with a team of five spending hours on manual data entry and invoicing. After implementing ZoneBilling, they saw a 90% increase in billing efficiency – now, one person handles the work that used to take five, all in under two hours. Automation also improved accuracy in prorated billing, streamlined subscription changes and improved compliance.
- As Devoli’s, a New Zealand-based telecommunications provider, revenue surged from $12 million to $100 million within four years, their legacy billing system and outdated processes couldn’t handle the increased transaction volume and complexity. With ZoneBilling, they built a flexible billing system inside NetSuite to handle complex pricing models, cut their billing cycle by 80% and gained 48 extra days per year to focus on growth rather than manual billing tasks.
Get started with the ZoneBilling ROI calculator: A tool for controllers, CFOs and billing teams in recurring revenue businesses
If managing recurring revenue billing has become too complex for your team, it may be time to consider automation.
The first step?
Use our ZoneBilling ROI calculator to see exactly how much you could save by automating advanced subscription billing and revenue recognition in NetSuite. ZoneBilling was built to help businesses like yours scale more efficiently, reduce DSO, free up valuable resources, and ultimately improve overall financial performance.
If you prefer to take a closer look at how this works in practice, you can try our self-paced ZoneBilling tour or request a personalized demo with one of our billing experts to see it in action.
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