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0 pointsnrmehta13y ago0 comments

Thanks (I'm the author). At a high level, the tweak was a big change but I didn't realize it. We used to pre-bill a customer for the next period (e.g., quarter) based upon the previous period's usage. So if you go from 10 users to 20, then in the next period, we'd pre-bill for 20. This obviously is great in that it captures maximize cash flow upfront but it's tricky in that you need to use usage that you're getting right now to calculate future bills. In addition, the variety of our billing plans and legacy customers made this more complicated. Truth be told, I don't think I even fully understood the complexity (my finance and engineering team could give the full story).

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lifeisstillgood13y ago

A company in the UK I used to work for underwent a similar transition - we had an in-house system that billed upfront. Then brought in a outside product - only half way through integration was it discovered to bill only in arrears.

Instead of running an overdraft for a year we tried to rewrite significant parts of the billing system, tying up valuable expert talent, drawing focus away from growing the business.

had you seen the problem before the switch would you have run the overdraft solution? Or ?

Also - I would (now) treat even external systems as part of my eco-system and so nned full testing. Your views

jessaustin13y ago

Thanks for being so open about this. I've worked from the IT side with a lot of different accounting folks, and I can't imagine any of them sitting in on meetings in which changes of this sort were discussed without pitching a fit. I've tried and failed to get much smaller changes approved. (E.g., a change to G/L journaling configuration in our customer billing application that would have made absolutely no change to output but would have made supporting new products MUCH easier.) I would have thought that a business large enough to have a controller (and an ex-controller!) would have someone defending the billing process. I guess you became that person...

csense13y ago

> We used to pre-bill a customer

I am firmly convinced that cash-up-front is the best way to bill your customers.

If your customers need credit because they don't have cash on hand to buy your product, that's their bankers' or investors' job.

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