Billed monthly, recognised properly.
Subscriptions and plans, billing runs, metered usage and collections — with revenue recognised over the period it is earned rather than in the month the invoice happened to go out.
- →Revenue Contracts
- →Recognition Runs
- →Plans
- →Subscriptions
- →Billing Runs
- →Metering
- →Standalone Prices
- →Run Rate Movement
- →Acquisition Costs
- →Revenue Reports
Recurring billing with revenue recognised properly
Anything sold by the month rather than by the item — a service contract, a retainer, a rental, a maintenance plan, a membership — creates two separate jobs. Raising the invoices is the easy one. Recognising the revenue over the period it is actually earned, rather than in the month the invoice happened to go out, is the one that gets looked at when the accounts are audited. Vantage Point does both from the same records.
Billing runs once per cycle and raises every invoice due, priced from the plan the customer is on and from whatever usage was metered against them. Upgrades, pauses and cancellations are recorded as events rather than as edits, so the history of what a customer was on and when is intact — which is what makes the run rate movement report possible: what was added, upgraded, downgraded and lost this period, so a change in recurring revenue is explained rather than merely observed.
Underneath, revenue contracts hold performance obligations with their own recognition schedules, allocated against the standalone selling price of each obligation — which is what makes a bundled contract defensible when somebody asks. Commission and onboarding costs are capitalised against the contract that earned them and amortised over its life. And because recurring revenue is only revenue once it is collected, failed and due payments are queued and chased on a dunning ladder rather than left to be noticed.
For anything sold by the month rather than by the item.
Service contracts, retainers, rentals, maintenance plans, memberships. The billing is the easy half; recognising the revenue correctly is the half that gets audited.
Revenue & Recurring Billing, asked and answered.
Can Vantage Point bill customers monthly automatically?
Yes. Customers are placed on a plan, and a billing run each cycle raises every invoice due, priced from the plan and from any metered usage. Exceptions are listed for review rather than buried, and the invoices are the same branded documents the rest of the system produces.
What is revenue recognition and do I need it?
It is recognising income in the period it is earned rather than the period it was invoiced. If you invoice a year of service up front, the whole amount is not this month's revenue — eleven twelfths of it is a liability you still owe the customer. Vantage Point holds the schedule and posts the entries, which matters as soon as anybody audits your accounts or lends you money against them.
Does it handle usage-based billing?
Yes. Usage is metered against a subscription and billed on it, and each charge can be traced back to the usage that produced it — which is the part a customer will query.
Can I see why my recurring revenue moved?
Yes. The run rate movement report breaks the change into new business, upgrades, downgrades and churn for the period, because the net figure on its own does not tell you which of those to do something about.
The rest of the system.
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