Automating Billing and Revenue Recognition for an HR Solutions Provider by Integrating NetSuite and Salesforce
A business that supports recruiters in efficiently hiring hourly workers now generates one comprehensive invoice that consolidates all charges —licensing, user, and usage fees— to improve accuracy, reduce manual work, and simplify payment processes.
The integration of Salesforce, NetSuite, and Celigo enabled the company to generate comprehensive invoices that include all product and subscription details. This streamlined both revenue recognition and invoicing processes.
Challenge
An HR solutions provider had difficulty managing subscription and recurring billing processes with legacy systems, poor synchronization between its CRM and ERP platforms, limited visibility into software subscription metrics, and reliance on manual billing processes across systems. Additionally, subscription usage assessments and revenue recognition were handled manually, leading to inefficiencies, revenue leakage, and errors. When manually calculating and reporting, the company faced challenges in terms of fair value allocations for revenue recognition. Only basic reports were generated, leading to inefficient client-facing documentation. The business also lacked synchronization between the opportunity lifecycle in Salesforce (SFDC) and the subscriptions that existed in other systems.
How We Helped
To address these challenges, Riveron’s expert consultants helped the company streamline invoicing and payments and ensure accurate reporting. A tailored solution integrated data from SFDC CRM to NetSuite ERP Suite Billing via Celigo, without utilizing the SFDC Configure-Price-Quote (CPQ) for the integration, while still tapping into the benefits of CPQ for quoting processes. Invoice generation was also automated on a recurring basis, ensuring timely and accurate billing. Additionally, a customized approach to automated revenue recognition was introduced, handling the financial impacts of customer actions. A workflow was implemented through Celigo to automatically calculate both usage and overage charges, further unifying the billing for customers.
The integration between SFDC and NetSuite helped the relevant data to be available on both platforms for the reference of various users in two different systems. The synchronization addressed the complex use cases and opportunity structures built in SFDC. Fair value pricing and revenue allocations were formulated in NetSuite for the allocations to be as expected for the various product offerings of the customer. This helped the company generate valuable deferred revenue waterfall reports and forecast revenue. The integration of Looker and NetSuite using Celigo helped in capturing the usage data avoiding revenue leakage. Finally, a comprehensive PDF invoice was generated, consolidating all charges—licensing, user, and usage fees—into a single document, simplifying the client’s billing and payment processes.
These solutions not only improved operational efficiency but also enhanced accuracy and visibility into financial metrics.
Results
Recurring billing was automated in NetSuite by integrating Salesforce (SFDC) opportunities with the order-to-cash process in NetSuite using Celigo. This integration streamlined new product introductions and bundling options and also created seamless synchronization between the opportunities in SFDC and orders in NetSuite, interchanging relevant data between the records for analyzing and reporting purposes.
Along with the integration process, the company’s complex revenue allocation structure was addressed by implementing Revenue allocation in NetSuite using fair value pricing and configuration. This ensured proper revenue recognition that enabled the company to align its accounting practices with global revenue recognition standards and improve financial transparency.
Overall, the HR solutions provider was able to address its billing and revenue recognition challenges and have effective reporting and consolidation across multiple subsidiaries in NetSuite. The approach led to quick and measurable financial gains, enabling an estimated 50 to 60% faster billing process than the company’s prior process, which involved posting invoices manually. The company also observed a more efficient system in terms of revenue recognition and reporting while maintaining operational efficiency with a more streamlined process between the Sales and Finance systems. Additionally, the company gained real-time insights into cash flow, supported by automated dunning notices that improved collections management.