Software developers have unique needs with regards to renewing software maintenance plans and generating periodic invoices. The Dynamics SL Billing Schedule/Revenue Recognition Schedule screen in Dynamics SL’s Flexible Billings module does a nice job-but the product our product saw yesterday was much better for a firm that has periodic billing needs that can change as more users or software components are added.
The product is one that is developed by long-time Dynamics SL ISV Max Q Technologies.
Here are some of the things that impressed me about John Pavain’s demonstration to our software developer prospect:
- The recurring element can be configured in either or both Accounts Receivable as well as Order Management.
- The product accommodates software firms selling directly to end-users or to software firms selling through a reseller channel.
- Many periodic options were available for billing and revenue recognition including: weekly, bi-monthly, monthly, quarterly and annually, ad-hoc, or a user provided algorithm.
- There is an additional module for encrypted credit card transactions that can accept payments from clients right away.
- Contracts can be created automatically.
- Revenue Types can dictate the schedules for revenue recognition, Contract supply the billing rules.
- The number of days in a month method can make for precise revenue recognition.
- Can process “Bundles” with full compliance with VSOE rules. Each “Bundle” component can have its own revenue recognition rull.
- Contract can have beginning and ending dates there also is a perpetual option, like your cable company to allow billing to continue until the client says “stop”.
- There is a forecasting revenue option that allows you to “discount” the likelihood of getting paid by some percentage amount as the contract gets older. This makes for more accurate guesses at what revenue should come in.
Recurring billing shows a similar billing schedule as you could find in Flexible Billings but, the Software allows the schedule to be linked to a sales order as depicted above. Among the many benefits to an order entry link is being able to use the sales tax of the ship to in the order, as well as the many other nice options in the sales order screen. Sales by item or service reports can be better tracked for example.
This prospect has a self-proclaimed “mish-mash” of billing options where the sales staff can make lots of new and difficult billing options. I’m confident we will win this one due to the fact that MaxQ has Recurring Billing and a seasoned staff to help deal with any new billing or rev recognition methods that get added along the way.
The fact that the MaxQ screens were developed in the Dynamics SL toolset only makes the software that much easier to configure and train as users have a jump on the user interface already. Our prospect was very impressed in only 30 minutes of review of this product.
Nice job MaxQ. I hope this product works as well as other products you’ve sold our clients.
To review the full gamut of Dynamics SL add-on products offered by MaxQ, please click here on MaxQ SL products. I was fortunate enough that our Dynamics SL Practice Manager already knew of this product.
