Here is the challenge I faced when running the Mac Consulting Group – how to do recurring billing, when our system (LightSpeed) didn’t support it.
I’m pretty sure that some version of this process could be added to any system which supported either Quotes, or Invoice duplication. It was the spreadsheet that did all the work.
Every time someone filled in our support agreement, a copy would go to our Accounting person.
From there, we’d make a quote for the total of the monthly revenue we just landed.
That quote number would be added to a google doc, next to the client’s name.
On the 20th of each month, we’d create a new column and title it YYYY-MM
(so, 2012-08 for August 2012).
We’d find the quote in LightSpeed, create a new invoice from the quote, and send it to the customer. If a customer had their card on file with us, we’d locate that in our processor’s online interface, and charge the card, allowing us to send a paid invoice.
The invoice number (paid or not) was entered into the current month’s column as a way to show it was billed for the month. This invoice # served the purpose of showing the money was billed. We could tell in LightSpeed who billed it, when, and of course we’d track the payment/AR in LightSpeed.
See the sample spreadsheet.
At its height (before I sold it), the Mac Consulting Group was bringing in about $5000 a month, and it took about 2 hours to do the billing. Not bad, if you ask me.
-Allen Hancock
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