When an organization makes the decision to transition to usage-based billing, that kickstarts a critical process of selecting a billing partner and system, configuring and implementing the system and preparing internal and external stakeholders for a seamless transition. We recently published a series of articles outlining every step of the process, but this week, we want to zero in on one of the biggest challenges a vendor like Gotransverse faces in designing and implementing a system that will meet our customers’ needs — and what we’ve done to mitigate that challenge.

According to Gotransverse founder and CEO James Messer, one of the most challenging aspects of designing and implementing a new billing solution is “balancing your design to be able to accommodate very sophisticated needs of clients who may also have employees very accustomed to working with sophisticated billing while at the same time having a system and interfaces that billing novices and/or [clients] with simple subscription needs can easily utilize.”

In other words, we’re setting out to build a system that works for a wide range of clients. Usage-based billing — and the rating engines and currency conversions and integrations and everything else that goes with it — is complicated. Some clients will be very experienced and savvy about how all of that works, and they’ll be ready to go all in. So we need to create a system that’s sophisticated enough to meet those needs right out of the box. But other clients will be newer to the world of usage-based billing. They may have more straightforward billing needs or they may just need a more user-friendly interface to master the processes. Either way, they need a system that’s simpler to drive.

The challenge, of course, lies in accommodating the two opposing needs with just one system.

Here are a few of the ways Gotransverse has designed our platform to do just that:

Two CPQ Setups

Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) is a critical, rules-based billing tool that enables companies to generate quick and accurate quotes for customers. Many companies with complex billing needs will prefer an extensive CPQ that’s separate from their billing platform. For those companies, we offer integration with a comprehensive external system. On the other hand, clients who aren’t billing specialists may prefer our out-of-the-box microservice, “CPQ Essentials,” which is easy to use right away and powerful enough for a wide range of billing models.

Tax & Currency Exchange Management

We also have an out-of-the-box “tax essentials” microservice and a currency conversion module called “Currex” that can support most currency and conversion needs with minimal configuration Or, for billing experts with highly complex needs, we enable integration with specialty external tax and currency conversion engines.

In addition to these options for CPQ, tax, and currency exchange management, we also offer a variety of extensibility options, from connectors to APIs to other microservices to enable businesses to integrate their billing platforms with the systems they already have working for them — no matter their level of expertise in billing.

Variable Usage & Rating Engines

Finally, when it comes to setting up usage and rating rules, Gotransverse offers multiple options as well. For simpler needs, we provide an easy-to-use user interface that any user can master quickly. For more complex needs, we have a rules-based rating engine that can support virtually any type of global rating engine, handling multivariable rating, serialized rules and logic, and more with ease. Configuring these rules is as simple as building a spreadsheet, which is then converted into software that our rating engine can use to power your billing.

At Gotransverse, it’s important to us to be able to support a wide variety of businesses in adopting sophisticated billing methods. We believe the power of usage-based billing shouldn’t be limited to billing experts (though we love working with those, too), so we take great pains to build a platform that is both sophisticated enough to meet our clients’ most complex needs and simple enough to be user-friendly for everyone we work with. If your business is ready to step up its billing game, whether you’re experts in billing or new to the field, we invite you to take a tour of the Gotransverse platform today, and call us to schedule your complimentary, personalized demo.