We Saved Over Thirty Hours a Month by Automating Renewal Billing with MaxQ for Acumatica

For the last thirty years, processing annual renewals has been a time-eating task. We were processing renewal billing manually, and it was a pain. Small and mid-sized businesses, in particular, can’t afford to allocate resources to tasks like that without pulling them off of other jobs.

Imagine how thrilled we are to have found an automated solution that saves us over thirty hours a month on renewal billing.

When we changed over our internal on-premises ERP solution to Acumatica Cloud ERP and added the MaxQ Advanced Billing module, it was among the best technology decisions we’ve ever made.

Over ninety percent of our three hundred plus customers have an active annual support plan. Before switching to Acumatica with MaxQ, the customer renewal process required one employee to invest more than fifty percent of their time, every month, processing customer renewals. Calculations were made manually, emails sent manually, then resent, and everything tracked – for each customer!

Now, with Acumatica and MaxQ, we have automated the whole process.

Automation starts at the point of sale. For example, a Dynamics GP Starter Pack, which sells for $5,000, comes with an 18% support plan fee of $900. The MaxQ system assigns separate billing codes for the Starter Pack and the support plan. In subsequent years, when the support plan comes up for renewal, it will be processed automatically. A new contract based on the original sales invoice is automatically generated, and an email is sent to the client two months before renewal is due. We can even schedule to renew annually automatically.

Our staff can see what items are going to renew during a specific time. And we can review individual renewals in a preview window to see if any changes are needed.

For instance, suppose a client added new users a few months after the initial purchase. In that case, there would be two support plan renewal contracts - 18% of the original purchase and an additional charge for the added users. We can easily combine those into one invoice.

Before Acumatica with MaxQ, we had to manually search through customer records to see if additional users had been added, and when to start billing them.

ISV add-on partners process their annual support plan fees differently. Some charge a pro-rated amount to match the renewal date with the client’s Dynamics GP solution renewal date. Others charge differently. All these contingencies can be accounted for in the MaxQ system.

For our Acumatica clients in the Cloud, the renewal is even easier since the whole purchase amount is renewable each year. It is a different situation, but it is also an automated process with MaxQ Advanced Billing.

In the past, our invoices from Dynamics GP could not be formatted to show the renewal amount with price options for clients who selected a different support plan. A separate email with a Word doc attached had to be generated.

With general formatting, we configure the MaxQ system in Acumatica to include all the information we want the renewal form to contain. The design of the form is crisp and clean.

Where we used to have a time-consuming manual process, now renewals can be processed quickly, efficiently, and accurately. A template email is sent with the renewal invoice as an attachment, everything is tracked, and the entire team has access to the information for reporting and decision making.

The new MaxQ Advanced Billing for Acumatica system saves us over 30 hours each month.

This solution has truly transformed our operations, and we are excited to share the benefits with our Acumatica clients.

Learn more about Acumatica Cloud ERP.

Learn more about MaxQ Advanced Billing for Acumatica.

To learn more about how you can transform your business with Acumatica Cloud ERP, contact CAL Business Solutions online or contact sales@calszone.com or 860-485-0910 x4.

By CAL Business Solutions, www.calszone.com