Now, the billing system has successfully entrenched in different industries, such as IT, Aviation, Medical, Retail, Food and Beverage, Energy, Telecommunications, Accounting, Advertising, ornithology, etc. It has become an indispensable part of the management of enterprises.
In each area, billing has its own definition, but the general meaning is associated with remote settlements. Currently, billing acts as an effective tool, allowing companies to make complex calculations easily, collect the details of sold-out products and services, prepare accurate bills, and keep a close eye on the cash in and out of the organization.
There are different billing systems on the Market. Most of them are available free of cost to customers with limited features and functionalities. Business marketing professionals have to spend a considerable sum to use the premium version of the system which allows them to enjoy a number of features.
There are many companies that don’t want to use Premium billing software as it comes at a big price. They look for ways to create their own billing system at the lowest possible cost. So, let’s talk about some ways through which you can create a Invoice and billing software in just $10 Per month.
-
Know the Basic Features of a Good Billing System At first
To create a good billing system, you need to know the features and functionalities it should have. Some basic features are:
| Basic Features of The Billing System | Brief Explanation |
| Load Scalability | When the subscriber base grows, the software should be able to cope with a sharp increase in the load. While designing scalable systems, you must use a DBMS designed which is designed for large amounts of data. The software must be compatible with various computer platforms to support multiprocessor mode of operation. |
| Reliability | It is one of the basic requirements for any system. Always keep in mind that the reliability of the billing system is determined by the reliability of the DBMS and the technologies used in developing the system. The observance of certain standards also plays an important role to increase the reliability of the billing system. |
| Multilingual | The ability to use the billing system in different languages. |
| Support for Multiple Currencies | The billing system must support various currencies of the world in order to allow business organizations to operate their activities in different parts of the world and take payments from customers. |
| Deferred Billing | An important feature used by small, medium and large-scale business organizations to make payments on a deferred date. |
| Hot Billing | A change in account balance occurs during a conversation. |
-
Create the Initial Diagram of Your Billing Software
Based on the tasks and demands of the business, you should sketch out a system diagram. Have a look at some components of a future billing system:
- Service information collectors,
- Subscriber authentication system,
- Core (business logic),
- Multilevel database,
- Authorization module,
- Traffic type analysis module (local, peer-to-peer, etc),
- The Access control module,
- Statistics module,
- Administrative interface for manual subscriber management and
- Subscriber account and tariff management interface for the sales department.
-
Think About Collectors
The services may be different, it is necessary to ensure that the system core is delivered in a uniform way about what type of service, what subscriber, how much and what time consumed. In difficult situations, for each of the types of services will have to develop their own collector. You can use SNMP, Radius, NetFlow, etc, to create the billing system.
-
Handle Multi-level Database with Care
A multilevel database is needed in order not to work all the time with arrays of the most detailed information. It is logical to distinguish database in 3 different levels-
- The most detailed information without any processing,
- Classified and primarily aggregated information and
- Operative information
Always keep in mind that Base level is needed to resolve disputes with customers. It is important to keep it in its original form as it may be necessary to recalculate the bills for payment taking into account the adjusted tariffs.
Not every service can get detailed information about connections, but you should be ready for it. When calculating traffic through Web Proxy, this problem is solved automatically. The use of NetFlows you to track all these activities in detail. The base of the second level is more compact than the first. So, you can store the information for a long period of time.
-
Implement Basic Specifications on Your Billing Software
| Basic Specifications | Brief Explanation |
| Perspective Accounting | Think about what services your billing software should have while planning for the future. Today, traffic is most often considered, but tomorrow there may be a need for new services, such as paid content, VoIP, web hosting, anything else. |
| Calculation Error | As practice shows, traffic accounting can work with a non-zero error and large consumption volumes. To ensure against such unpleasant features, you can take this into account in the tariffs, although this is no longer a technical issue. Apart from this, there is also parasitic traffic. Nothing can be done about it. You just need to remember about it if you have a lot of real IP-addresses. If you resell traffic, do not forget when calculating that your head ISP can mean by the megabyte, not at all 1,048,576 bytes. |
| System Response Time | This should be maximum of 3 –4 seconds. |
| Fault Tolerance | As Billing includes money counts. So, you need to be extremely careful. With failures, the system should by default block access. Naturally, a reliable data backup system is always important. Always remember that the cost of additional disk space is often much less than the financial losses associated with the loss of information. |
| Accuracy of data | Your billing software must display accurate data on printed and E-bills. |
| License from The Government and Tax Department | You need to seek a license from the Government and Tax department, authorizing you to use features like GST and Tax calculation on your billing software. |
| Statistical Reports | The billing Software should display different types of Statistical reports in a few clicks. |
| Tariff Information | The billing software must display traffic information either on the front page or on a specific page to let visitors know about the all-inclusive cost of using the software. |
| Accounting | It should support POS software and different payment gateways so that business owners can easily take payments from customers and strengthen their finances. |
Final Words
A good Billing System helps you to easily create correct bills and invoices for customers with all details and get payments from them using different payment channels. By using the above-mentioned recommendations, you can easily create a feature-rich and amazing billing system yourself at a low price tag. Good luck!
