Notes for owners · Industry-Specific Software Guides
Where a Cloud Hosting Provider Loses Billing Revenue
A cloud hosting provider usually loses billing revenue in three places: usage that is never invoiced, negotiated rates that never reach the bill, and credits given without a record. GullySystem builds a custom system that holds customer, plan, usage and ticket records together, around the panels you already run.
Ganesh HS, Strategy and Technology, GullySystem · · 3 min read
Usage that never reaches an invoice
Most providers meter usage in a control panel or a hypervisor, and bill from an accounts package. Between the two sits an export, a sheet and a person. Anything the export misses is never charged.
A new server, an extra disk or a bandwidth overage is easy to lose here. The customer is happy, and the loss shows nowhere. The first step is to compare what the platform says is running with what was invoiced last month.
- List every running resource by customer from the platform
- List every line on last month’s invoices
- Mark resources with no matching invoice line
- Record who owns each gap and why it arose
Plans sold on email and billed on the rate card
Sales agrees a lower rate, a larger commitment or a free month in an email. The invoice is raised from the standard rate card because nobody entered the exception anywhere billing can see it.
The customer notices and disputes the bill. Finance reverses the charge, and the next month the same thing happens again. A plan record per customer, with agreed rates and dates, removes the argument.
Credits and outages without a record
A contract may promise a level of service and a credit when it is missed. If the incident log is a chat channel, the credit is settled by recollection. Customers who complain loudest get the most.
Record each outage with its start, its end and the services it touched. Then the credit follows from the contract terms, and the amount is shown on the next invoice for someone to approve.
- Outage start and end time, in the same log
- Customers and services affected
- Contract terms applicable to each customer
- Credit amount calculated and approved by a named person
Renewals, resold licences and suspensions
Domains, annual plans and licences bought from a vendor and resold each renew on a different date. If the vendor’s date passes first, the customer’s service stops and the relationship suffers.
Suspension has the same problem. Overdue accounts run on for weeks because nobody owns the list. Pick a rule for reminders, grace and suspension, and write the name of the person who applies it.
What software can and cannot fix here
A system can hold the customer record, the plan, the usage import, the invoice and the ticket together. It cannot provision a server or replace your hypervisor. Those stay where they are.
Live per-minute metering depends on what your platform exposes. Check what your panel can export, and on what schedule, before you decide how often invoices can be reconciled.
Usage-to-invoice gap sheet
A sheet with one row per running resource and columns for customer, plan, last month’s usage and the invoice line it landed on. Fill it once a month for each customer. Rows with an empty invoice column are the gaps to chase.
Open a blank worksheet to printQuestions owners ask
Can a billing tool read usage from our control panel?
Often, yes. It depends on whether your panel or hypervisor exports usage as a file or through an interface. Each platform is checked on its own before anything is promised.
Do we need custom software, or will a standard billing package do?
If you sell fixed plans and a few add-ons, a standard package may be enough. Custom work earns its place when metered use, negotiated rates and credits all need to meet on one invoice.
Does this link to Tally?
No. There is no live link. A file export for your accountant can be built at set-up, priced separately from the system.
Will it provision servers for us?
No. Provisioning stays in your platform. The system holds the records around it: customer, plan, usage, invoice, ticket and renewal.