What constitutes a good billing solution depends on what you are billing for (goods, services), what else you want it to do, and what other systems it should integrate with.
If you are just billing people for microtrenching saws, that’s very different than if you are billing for recurring Internet service. As an ISP, we usually want to give customers a (secure) online payment portal where they can view their account status and pay their bills, change their credit card on file, etc. We also usually want it to integrate with our operations systems so people get notified if they are past due, get automatically turned off after a grace period, and can pay online and get automatically turned back on. Ideally with exceptions like don’t turn off the police station or the hospital without approval from a manager. We also want it to understand things like monthly bills are due on the service anniversary date but are sent out 20 days in advance, and not get confused by things like 28 day months or leap years. None of this is pertinent if you are selling goods not services. Customers also don’t seem to understand the difference between an invoice and a statement. I think they expect something like a utility bill, which typically shows account balance at the beginning of the period, payments received and services invoiced since then, and the new account balance. Kind of a combination invoice and statement. Also a place for notices, like our terms of service have changed, our payment address has changed, etc. Our current system does none of that, so I have nothing to recommend. As others have said, it is not realistic to love your billing system. Maybe one could aspire to hate it less? From: AF <[email protected]> On Behalf Of David Hannum Sent: Thursday, April 17, 2025 11:47 AM To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Billing We've been with Powercode since I believe 2009. We've frequently looked at other options and have always felt that Powercode was the best bang for the buck for our company. Nothing ever wowed me enough to want to jump ship. None of them are perfect. We've always gotten good support from Powercode - actually pretty great support at times. They've always responded quickly to custom reports and bug fixes. On Thu, Apr 17, 2025 at 12:40 PM Steve Jones <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote: I don't hate power code.I don't really love it or like it, but it functions.It works.It gives me what I need and irritates the hell out of me and sometimes bills are customers too much. It's monitoring system is a little archaic, but it can be made to work. Their support is hit-or-miss around The Times of any of the industry events. There is no support because they pretty much closed their doors. Overall it gets us through the day and it's not but it's not cheap On Thu, Apr 17, 2025, 9:34 AM Cameron Crum <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote: Simon is out at Sonar. Hasn't been there in over a year. It is majority owned by Blue Star (Jerry Jones). On Wed, Apr 16, 2025 at 9:05 PM Chuck McCown <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote: We are probably also dropping Playt but I have heard some ungood things about Sonar… Like they have stopped developing and support is not as good as it used to be. Don’t remember who said it and they may just be a sore head too. I presume Simon is still involved? From: AF [mailto:[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> ] On Behalf Of Mark - Myakka Technologies via AF Sent: Wednesday, April 16, 2025 6:31 PM To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > Cc: Mark - Myakka Technologies <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Billing Chuck, We are finally dropping Platypus and moving to sonar. Not in love with it yet. verifying and transferring our 12 year old data has not been fun. -- Best regards, Mark mailto:[email protected] Myakka Communications www.Myakka.com <https://www.Myakka.com> ------ Wednesday, April 16, 2025, 6:33:08 PM, you wrote: Once again, we are considering going to hopefully something better in the billing department. Anyone love their billing software? Best Regards, Chuck McCown McCown Technology Corporation 8401 N Commerce Drive <https://www.google.com/maps/search/8401+N+Commerce+Drive+Lake+Point,+Utah+84074?entry=gmail&source=g> Lake Point, Utah 84074 <https://www.google.com/maps/search/8401+N+Commerce+Drive+Lake+Point,+Utah+84074?entry=gmail&source=g> 801-250-9503 Office www.microtrench-blades.com <http://www.microtrench-blades.com/> www.mccowntech.com <http://www.mccowntech.com/> www.terabitnetworks.com <http://www.terabitnetworks.com> -- AF mailing list [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- AF mailing list [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- AF mailing list [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com
-- AF mailing list [email protected] http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com
