NetSuite SuiteBilling Made Easy (2023)

Move away from manual billing and embrace more efficient and flawless automated invoicing with Oracle NetSuite’s SuiteBilling! NetSuite SuiteBilling helps manage your invoices more easily through a streamlined billing process. It gives you the ability to support multiple pricing models and have real-time visibility into your financial billing and accounting activities.

In this article, we will dive deep into the key features and capabilities of NetSuite’s SuiteBilling, how it can benefit you, and how it can be set up and used in your business!

What Is SuiteBilling in NetSuite?

To put it simply, SuiteBilling in NetSuite automates the management and billing of recurring payments. It allows for maximum flexibility by combining flat, tiered, and volume pricing models with promotions and customer-specific pricing and discounting. Having this support for multiple pricing models and complex rating scenarios makes generating accurate invoices easier for you.

Even better, SuiteBilling gives you control over the entire subscription lifecycle — from modifying subscriptions and prorating billing, consolidating multiple charges on a single invoice, and auto-generating renewal invoices for improved customer retention.

The Key Features and Benefits of NetSuite’s Subscription Billing Functionality (SuiteBilling)

Features and Capabilities of NetSuite’s SuiteBilling

NetSuite’s SuiteBilling is unmatched when it comes to its billing and subscription functionalities. It offers sophisticated features and benefits ranging from pricing and rating models to flexible scheduling, and automated invoicing in a single platform.

We have listed down the key features and benefits of SuiteBilling for you:

Subscription Renewal Management

SuiteBilling supports multiple subscription schemes from traditional time-based (e.g. 1-year or 3-year) to evergreen. It makes it easy to manage changes to these subscriptions such as upsell, downsell, etc., and benefit from automated renewals. For example, you can automatically apply a percentage price increase to a customer’s renewal.

Pricing Models

Multiple pricing models are supported — ranging from simple flat rates to complex volume and tier-based scenarios with minimum and maximum thresholds. It also supports standard or customer-specific pricing to maximize revenue.

Rating Engine

SuiteBilling is a powerful rating engine that allows a combination of one-time, recurring, and usage-based charges. This allows consolidated invoicing of subscriptions that capture setup fees, license counts, and consumption at once.

Billing Schedules

Create a schedule for back-dated, real-time, and future-dated invoices. This allows you to automatically bill subscribers when free trials end or increase rates when discounts expire.

Change Orders

Easily modify customer subscriptions upon request whether it’s upselling additional services or downgrading to lower pricing tiers. SuiteBilling automatically prorates future invoices for correct billing.

Recurring Revenue Recognition

Automate the revenue recognition process in accordance with the latest accounting standards and report financial results in a timely manner.

The Benefits of NetSuite SuiteBilling

With the growth of the subscription economy, businesses such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, and the like need a more flexible way of invoice generation that reflects pricing and consumption behaviors without sacrificing accuracy.

Here are the key benefits of NetSuite SuiteBilling:

Accurate and Timely Billing Process

With NetSuite SuiteBilling, you can increase accuracy and save time by achieving full automation of your billing process. With multiple pricing and rating models, companies can create subscriptions that capture setup fees, license counts, and variable consumption in a single step. This automated rating process allows you to bill your clients in a more efficient manner.

Maximum Flexibility on Pricing Plans

You get a lot of flexibility when it comes to pricing and billing options to meet the needs of your subscribers and the business. SuiteBilling allows both standard and customer-specific price plans based on volume, tiered, and flat pricing.

Powerful rating engine to automate usage/consumption billing

SuiteBilling is a powerful rating engine that allows a combination of one-time, recurring, and usage-based charges. This allows consolidated invoicing of subscriptions that capture setup fees, license counts, and consumption at once.

Flexibly Manage Subscription Lifecycles

Easily manage your entire subscription lifecycle with just a few steps — from the creation of subscription items, creation of orders, and change orders, up to dynamic revenue and billing reports.

Effortless Revenue Recognition

Accounting for recurring revenue can be a complex process. But, by bridging billing and revenue management, companies are able to easily comply with accounting standards. You can now automate the revenue recognition process and manage revenue in accordance with the latest accounting standards.

How To Use SuiteBilling in NetSuite (SuiteBilling Tutorial & Guide)

Now that we have laid out the key features and benefits of SuiteBilling, let us guide you through setting it up for your account:

Setting SuiteBilling Preferences

To enable the SuiteBilling features, the following actions must first be completed:

1. Log in using the Administrator role.
2. If you have the Projects feature enabled, before you can enable SuiteBilling, you need to set the Consolidate Projects on Sales Transactions preference. To set the accounting preference to consolidate projects on sales orders:
3. Go to Setup > Accounting > Accounting Preferences.
4. Click the Items/Transactions subtab.
5. Check the Consolidate Projects on Sales Transactions box.
6. Click Save.
7. Before you can enable SuiteBilling, you need to disable the Employee Commissions feature. To disable the Employee Commissions feature:
8. Go to Setup > Company > Enable Features.
9. Click the Employees subtab.
10. In the Commissions section, clear the Employee Commissions box.
11. Click Save.

Note: Before enabling the SuiteBilling feature, you may contact your NetSuite sales or account representative to provision this feature for your NetSuite account.

Enabling SuiteBilling Features

To enable features for Suite Billing:

1. Go to Setup > Company > Enable Features.
2. Click the Transactions subtab.
3. In the Billing section, check the following:

• Bill Costs to Customers
• Advanced Billing
• Charge-Based Billing
• Billing Accounts
• Billing Operations
• Subscription Billing
• Advanced Subscription Billing

4. Optionally, you can check the following boxes:

• Add-on Items
• Time-Based Pricing - used to create multiple time-based pricing intervals
• Commit Plus Overage - used to charge prepayment for a contracted minimum amount of usage at a negotiated rate

5. On the Company tab in the Classifications section, you can optionally check any of the following boxes, to help segment your recurring revenue, for example:

• Departments
• Locations
• Classes

6. Click Save.
   

Note: If you have billing accounts across subsidiaries, you can make use of the Multi-Subsidiary Customer functionality. To enable Multi-Subsidiary Customer for SuiteBilling:

1. Enable the SuiteTax feature. For details, see Enabling the SuiteTax Feature.
2. Enable the Multi-Subsidiary Customer feature. For details, see Enable the Multi Subsidiary Customer Feature.

Creating Subscription Items

To create Subscription Items in NetSuite:

1. Go to Lists > Accounting > Items > New.
2. Create new items of "Non-Inventory" type or "Service" type that will be included in the Subscription Plan.

• To add a non-inventory item, under Non-inventory Item, click For Sale or For Resale.
• To add a service item, under Service Item, click For Sale or For Resale.

3. Enter a value in the Item Name/Number field.
4. Define the Class, Department, and Location.
5. Complete any additional fields.
6. Click the Accounting subtab.
7. From the Tax Schedule list, select a tax schedule.
8. Click the Preferences subtab.
9. Clear the Can Be Fulfilled/Received box.
10. Click Save.

Creating Subscription Plans

Creating a subscription plan allows you to specify the items to include in the subscription. To create a subscription plan:

1. Go to Lists > Subscriptions > Subscription Plans > New.
2. Enter a name in the Subscription Plan Name field.
3. From the Initial Term list, select a term.
4. On the Lines subtab, In the Item column, select an item.
5. In the Required column:

• Check if you want the subscription to always include this item.
• Clear if you want the customer to be able to include or exclude the item at the time of sale.

6. In the Type column, select one of the following:

• One Time – For items that incur a single charge, such as a setup or initialization fee.
• Recurring – For items that incur charges throughout the subscription, such as recurring service.
• Usage – For items that incur charges based upon how often the customer uses them, such as minutes or data.
• Commit Plus Overage – For items that are charged in advance for a committed usage quantity and incur a charge for overage if more than the committed quantity is used.

7. In the Mode column, select one of the following:

• In Advance – Payment is due at the beginning of the charge period (e.g. the first day of the month).
• In Arrears – Payment is due at the end of the charge period (e.g. the last day of the month).

8. In the Include in Renewal Subscription column, click the down arrow to display the available renewal options.
9. If required, for recurring items, check or clear the Prorate Start Date and Prorate End Date boxes.
10. Click Add.
11. Repeat Step 4-10 until all items have been added to the subscription plan.
12. Click the Renewal subtab and complete the renewal options.

Note: When you renew to a new subscription, you can select the renewal plan and price book. After renewal setup is complete, your settings affect any new subscriptions created with this plan.

1. Complete any necessary additional fields, and click Save.

Note: When you save, NetSuite opens the Price Books subtab. After creating a subscription plan, the next task is to create a price book by creating a price plan for each item. See Creating Price Books.

Creating Billing Accounts

A billing account record shows all of the customer’s billing information. To create a new billing account:

1. Go to Lists > Relationships > Billing Accounts > New.
2. If required, select a subsidiary.
3. Select the customer name.
4. From the Currency list, select the customer’s currency.
5. From the Billing Schedule list, select a billing schedule.
6. Select a Start Date.
7. Click Save.

Managing Subscriptions

Once we have created the prerequisite parts of a subscription, we can now proceed with the tasks you can perform repeatedly to manage your subscription billing. See SuiteBilling Management.

Who Is SuiteBilling Made For?

SuiteBilling is a combination of billing software and invoice software. This design makes it useful for companies across different industries, particularly those that require comprehensive billing and revenue management capabilities. It caters to a wide range of companies, including:

SuiteBilling for Software Companies

SuiteBilling is well-suited for businesses that operate on a subscription model which is widely common in software companies and services, media streaming platforms, and more.

SuiteBilling for eCommerce Companies

SuiteBilling can accommodate various pricing models, discounts, and promotions. This makes it suitable for e-commerce businesses and retail companies that need flexible billing solutions to manage transactions and invoicing.

SuiteBilling for Manufacturing and Distribution

Manufacturers and distributors can utilize SuiteBilling to manage billing for products, handle pricing tiers, manage contracts, and deal with one-time or recurring transactions.

What Pricing Models Are Available for NetSuite SuiteBilling?

NetSuite SuiteBilling supports multiple pricing models making it possible to bill customers in a variety of ways. Here are the pricing models you can choose from:

Flat Model

This model charges customers the same value for each billing cycle.

Volume Model

This model is based on consumption or entitlement where the highest volume tier unit rate reached is applied to the entire quantity to charge.

Tiered Model

In this model, the rate for each unit of consumption or entitlement tier is applied to a specific range. Therefore, the total end-rated value consists of varying per-unit rates to achieve the final amount to charge.

How Much Does SuiteBilling Cost?

NetSuite’s SuiteBilling features can be exciting for any business if you are looking to streamline your billing process.

If you are an existing NetSuite user, there is a one-time implementation fee for the initial setup. Then, you subscribe to an annual license fee made up of three main components: core platform, optional modules, and the number of users. SuiteBilling is an additional NetSuite module.

These costs may vary depending on your unique business needs so we recommend that you reach out to us today to learn more information.

How Seller Universe Can Help

At Seller Universe, our team of NetSuite ERP consulting experts and accountants make us one of the best in the game. Our expertise ranges from a variety of modules including SuiteBilling best practices.

From expanding your sales channel with SuiteCommerce to improving your existing financial reporting and financial management system with SuiteBilling, we are here to understand your needs and provide the perfect solution for your business. Find out how our team can help you today!