With the Advanced Billing function i NetSuite you can easily invoice according to a subscription model. And schedule the invoicing over a longer period of time. This functionality is tailor-made for you who offer your customers different types of subscriptions, subscriptions, memberships, agreements, contracts or similar arrangements. By setting up invoicing schedules, you keep track of how much you will invoice the customer and when, for how long in the future and so on.

How does it work?

You can work with the invoicing schedule already in the sales dialog. By adding a schedule to a sales order and specifying when invoicing should start, NetSuite keeps track of when it's time to create an invoice and how often. Invoice proposals are generated and ready for you to review and send. You can enter a specific start date, or leave that field blank - in which case invoicing starts when the order is fully delivered or partially delivered.

From the sales order, you can easily see which schedule is laid out on that particular order, through a link on the order. As smooth as usual in NetSuite.

NetSuite is unbeatable when it comes to flexibility and opportunities to adapt. So also in this area. Say you have a customer for whom you want to create the invoices for a while before they actually go off according to the invoicing schedule. No problem, you can easily send only the next invoice or all remaining ones. So even if you have set an invoicing schedule on the customer or the underlying sales order, it is no problem to go in and change the order so that it is invoiced as you want. If you always want to invoice in advance, you can set it as a preference in NetSuite.

What are Billing Schedules in NetSuite?

To summarize, it is about defining how an agreement, subscription or membership should be invoiced over time. When you want to invoice subscriptions and agreements in NetSuite, it can be about different intervals and agreement times. For example, a 1-year membership that is invoiced monthly, a 3-year service agreement where the customer receives quarterly invoices and so on. It can also be about project where you want to invoice your customers continuously as the project progresses.

You can post your billing schedules in different ways. To take an example; 50% of the value of the sales order is invoiced directly and the remainder is split over several occasions, e.g. 10% the following five months. Invoicing can be weekly, monthly or quarterly. The possibilities are many; you can also set an initial amount if that suits you better.

Furthermore, you can set different invoicing schedules on different lines of the order. And to further simplify the daily work, you can set an invoicing schedule on the article in your article register. That way, you get the same setup every time you create a sales order with that item.

Should it happen that you want to reuse an invoicing scheme, you can easily create it based on an existing quotation or sales order.

More advantages of invoicing subscriptions and agreements in NetSuite? Sure:

By using invoicing schedules, your forecasts show the correct income going forward, distribution of income takes place according to the schedules that have been set up. You don't have to do any manual accruals, but can be sure that the revenue will be distributed according to the different billing schedules set up on your sales orders. The calculations include any initial amount and adjust according to the start and end dates. So even the finance department benefits from the functionality for invoicing subscriptions and contracts in NetSuite!