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Billing systems are a nightmare for engineers

getlago.com

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Re: Billing systems are a nightmare for engineers

#61

Post by dawkins »

spchampion2 wrote: post #5

Just wait until you meet billing's angry roommate: invoicing. In the US, an invoice is just a weird PDF that you might glance at before sending off to your accounts payable team. But in other countries, especially those that use VAT style taxing systems, an invoice can be a legal document that expresses costs and taxes in a legally prescribed way for accounting purposes. Many countries have prescriptive rules over ho…

Invoicing gets even better in countries like Portugal, where you have to send to the tax authorities every invoice that you generate.

Re: Billing systems are a nightmare for engineers

#62

Post by biermic »

Absolutely agree with the poster. This is my life at the moment. Just to take money for a small piece of software I built.

Multiple currencies, trial periods, when in the process do you ask for the creditcard, country specific taxes,... And the worst: invoices.

While paddle.com takes care of many of those things - I was shocked after realizing how much work this is going to be.

Please think carefully about those things before you quit your job to work on your "Micro SaaS" or "unicorn startup".

Re: Billing systems are a nightmare for engineers

#63

Post by pimterry »

notch656a wrote: post #59
AnhTho_FR wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey cm2012, I'm one of the cofounders of Lago (my business partner wrote this post). Actually even if you're incorporated in the US, if you serve a client in EU for instance, the VAT rules of EU apply to how you're supposed to invoice your customer, beyond a certain transaction limit. So... unless you're based in the US, and only serving US-based users, it gets complex very fast!

If you wire your dollars onto US soil, for a service performed in the US by US business, good luck getting the US legal system to enforce upon that US business whatever euro-cucked invoicing scheme is called for.

This doesn't matter. For B2B, if you don't show your EU customers a valid invoice, they simply cannot pay you.

It's not EU governments or post-purchase issues you have to deal, most of the time - it's trying to persuade a large accounting department to pay you unaccountable money. If you can't follow their invoicing requirements, it's just not going to happen.

Re: Billing systems are a nightmare for engineers

#64

Post by AnhTho_FR »

giantg2 wrote: post #44

I work on a team collecting fees at a financial company. It is tedious and boring. There is a lot of complexity. I've often asked the business if they had ever thought about a different fee model that would be less complex. They just want to stick the legacy business model into the new tech...

I'm Anh-Tho, one of a co-founders of Lago, thanks for your comment! Financial and cloud infrastructure companies are the ones with the most complexity. I've been on the business side, and sometimes you do want to change the pricing but there's so many implications: - Maybe existing users will churn and/or revenue will decrease as a result - If you change the billing system, there's a risk of bugs/errors and complains - If you spend engineering time on this, then you need to deprioritize other projects So... business teams often end up giving up, and that's a shame because iterating on pricing is a very powerful lever of revenue growth.

Re: Billing systems are a nightmare for engineers

#65

Post by DocTomoe »

notch656a wrote: post #59
AnhTho_FR wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey cm2012, I'm one of the cofounders of Lago (my business partner wrote this post). Actually even if you're incorporated in the US, if you serve a client in EU for instance, the VAT rules of EU apply to how you're supposed to invoice your customer, beyond a certain transaction limit. So... unless you're based in the US, and only serving US-based users, it gets complex very fast!

If you wire your dollars onto US soil, for a service performed in the US by US business, good luck getting the US legal system to enforce upon that US business whatever euro-cucked invoicing scheme is called for.

That american exceptionalism approach will work with private citizen customers. With business customers, leaning back in the legal framework encouraging tax fraud will not fly. They just won't buy from you then.

That's why any US company wanting to do business in Europe either has an European subsidiary, or follows something that's compatible with EU invoicing schemes.

Re: Billing systems are a nightmare for engineers

#66

Post by ptsneves »

aerovistae wrote: post #19

> To solve this problem at scale, we adopted a radical sharing approach. We’ve started building an Open-Source Alternative to Stripe Billing (and Chargebee, and all the equivalents). This is so great. I personally haven't had to deal with this problem, but I've worked at a number of organizations (and heard about many others!) where this sort of business logic had to be implemented. It's just reinventing the wheel. I…

This is where solutions like WooCommerce shine. WooCommerce is an amazing piece of software that is many times used for free, but generates thousands of dollars.

Re: Billing systems are a nightmare for engineers

#67

Post by yupper32 »

AnhTho_FR wrote: post #45
cm2012 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just one of many reasons its easier to do business in the US

Hey cm2012, I'm one of the cofounders of Lago (my business partner wrote this post). Actually even if you're incorporated in the US, if you serve a client in EU for instance, the VAT rules of EU apply to how you're supposed to invoice your customer, beyond a certain transaction limit. So... unless you're based in the US, and only serving US-based users, it gets complex very fast!

That's their point, they said "do business in the US". You're saying the same thing.

Re: Billing systems are a nightmare for engineers

#69

Post by duxup »

spchampion2 wrote: post #5

Just wait until you meet billing's angry roommate: invoicing. In the US, an invoice is just a weird PDF that you might glance at before sending off to your accounts payable team. But in other countries, especially those that use VAT style taxing systems, an invoice can be a legal document that expresses costs and taxes in a legally prescribed way for accounting purposes. Many countries have prescriptive rules over ho…

Not even legal issues.

In my experience invoicing, and really all 'printable' documents is the land of "oh someone did something wrong put X on the document". And then again and again and again... And "this is two pages long that's too much" and on and on ...

It's bike shedding insanity with no ideal or end in sight. Every change is arbitrary with no real measure of success.

I swear the only time anyone LOOKs at these documents is to bitch about them.

Oh man and just as if I summoned it someone just sent me a ticket about something on an invoice.

Re: Billing systems are a nightmare for engineers

#70

Post by radicalbyte »

trollied wrote: post #11
spchampion2 wrote: post #5

Just wait until you meet billing's angry roommate: invoicing. In the US, an invoice is just a weird PDF that you might glance at before sending off to your accounts payable team. But in other countries, especially those that use VAT style taxing systems, an invoice can be a legal document that expresses costs and taxes in a legally prescribed way for accounting purposes. Many countries have prescriptive rules over ho…

Yup, it's a nightmare. Invoices needing to be in specific number sequences. Any corrections need to be dealt with by reissuing a special "corrective invoice". Don't even get me started on geocoding for taxes. Urgh. Also, when you've got the invoicing right, you've got to work out how to do the feeds to the accounting systems so that it all posts to the right place.

A credit note. How the ** do you handle it in the US without issuing credit notes in your bookkeeping?
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