General Consultant Discussion

Anyone out there know of a good system to create automatic, recurring, monthly credit card billing? We are trying to establish a ""set it and forget it"" billing system (think like a utility company, NetFlix, Cable Company, etc.) where the customer: - Gets and signs an agreement - Enters their credit card or ACH information in to a secure place via the web - Auto pays a monthly bill based on agreed upon terms We are using Xero for accounting. Any help would be appreciated!

I don't have any experience with the tool but have you considered Bill.com? Their website says they can do recurring invoices, automated payment processing, and integrate with Xero. Just a thought.

I use FreshBooks for all billings except I don't interface to a credit card processor. I think it supports recurring CC charges. I pay about $280/yr but I think the cost is higher if you add in more recurring credit card charges. FreshBooks.com

Thanks guys - I appreciate the response. We are already investigating bill.com. The odd thing is ... I can send customers an invoice where they fill in bank or credit card information for a one time payment. They do not allow me to send a recurring invoice to the customer to fill out their bank or credit card information. We have to request the information and set it up ourselves. Not the worst thing in the world but ... does anyone know why that would be that way? Our speculation internally is because of lawyers - they don't want to be auto charging customers without someone else (ie; us) to blame if the customer has buyers remorse.

We do recurring ACH via SPS. The customer sends us their bank info, and we set it up. Before each batch of pulls there can be several in a month, say 5th and 20th), we approve the SPS batch as correct. Then SPS sends the customers an email, which they could use to decline. Then SPS pulls the funds from the banks. This is input by the vendor (us), so it's not what you were looking for, but runs on autopilot afterwards. It is also decoupled from recurring invoices in accounting system, which has its advantages: 1. It is not dependent on any company person to trigger (although we must take action on the SPS batch monthly) so more foolproof. 2. It also follows the rule to ""invoice 1st, pay later"" even if that payment is only immediately after deliver/invoice. So you would run the recurring invoices 1st of month, effectively permitting accurate open invoice reporting. Then show the invoices as paid when the ACH/CC batch posts to the bank. This follows normal business process. Both APS and Direct Connect also support this recurring action, with more flex and faster payments.