Basecone Case: From manual to fully automated billing process

Basecone uses CloudBilling to automate its billing process and centralize data from different (consumption-based) pricing models in one invoicing system to get valuable insights in revenue drivers via BI-solutions.

Basecone was established in 2011 with a commercial launch in 2012 and provides pre-accounting software solutions geared towards processing of purchasing invoices and other documents for administrative purposes.

Basecone's main strategic objective is to integrate the Basecone solution with as many key accounting platforms as possible and make it available to tax accountants (TAs) across Europe. Their mission is to give back time to the accountant, by automating invoice processing and reducing manual data entry.

At the time of writing, Basecone sends out approximately 10.500 invoices every month, with a substantial number of relatively small invoices. These invoices are a combination of a fixed monthly fee and a variable consumption-based component. Aside from that, Basecone also has different customers across several countries with different pricing models, adding another layer of complexity to the billing and invoicing process and financial reporting. The company struggled to efficiently generate invoices of the different subscription models and usage-based components.

To tackle these challenges, Basecone was looking for a solution to complement their software and thereby seamlessly automating their billing process. The solution should also have the ability to gather billing data and transform it into one single comprehensive invoice for clarity and transparency (detailed non-financial data) to their customers across Europe with as little human intervention as possible.

Solutions

Since the implementation of CloudBilling, Basecone’s billing process speed up rapidly with the same amount of people, making Basecone’s entire billing process vastly more scalable. In less than a day, a mere 1.5 FTE can complete the billing and invoicing for more than 10.000 customers across Europe, including all required revenue- and financial reporting. Before CloudBilling, this took several FTEs multiple days to complete, with a quality level in the process that wasn’t meeting expectations and resulted in lots of rework.

CloudBilling’s user-friendly interface allows Basecone to easily make changes, add customers and products, and experiment with new pricing models without the need of external support or development. Using CloudBilling’s data for business intelligence purposes increased efficiency in the billing and invoicing process while safeguarding the quality and completeness of the results.

Basecone’s business is driven by an annual reporting cycle; this means that revenue recognition and allocation is of key importance. CloudBilling ensures that no revenue is missed, and everything is accounted for. The billing and invoicing process always works - without manual intervention!

With CloudBilling, Basecone achieves significant cost savings compared to a self-built solution that would require development, hosting, maintenance, and issue resolution. By using CloudBilling, Basecone taps into the many years of billing and invoicing experience already accumulated by CloudBilling, instead of having to re-invent the wheel.

CloudBilling allows Basecone to accommodate and combine standard prices, tailored agreements, volume-based discounts, customer segments, different exchange rates and different VAT regimes into standardized invoices and financial reports. As a result, Basecone can tailor their pricing models and offers to specific markets and customer segments while retaining the ability to have standardized financial reporting on a consolidated level. Due to this standardized and automated process, Basecone’s billing process is very scalable.

By using CloudBilling, Basecone has achieved a credit note-to-invoice ratio of 0,3%. All necessary billing data is automatically synchronized between the product database, ERP system and CloudBilling, via the tight API integration.
In addition to efficiency gains, this also results in a very high quality of invoices, which in turn leads to less credit notes and therefore even moreefficiency gains and cost savings; not to mention satisfied customers
because they always receive a correct invoice.

With CloudBilling’s excellent support services, any issues that may arise are handled in a timely and adequate manner. Moreover, there is a personal touch to the relationship between Basecone and CloudBilling: some people at Basecone even see CloudBilling more as colleagues than external consultants.