Heron Data's manual and time-consuming billing process led to late payments and created an operational burden for the finance team.
Software
B2B
Heron Data's manual and time-consuming billing process led to late payments and created an operational burden for the finance team. Using Received, Heron Data reduced billing time from 5 days to a few hours, collected 70% of its due payments in one day, and gained real-time visibility into billing and revenue data.
Powered by proprietary ML models, Heron Data helps small business lenders of all types to underwrite cash flow, scrub merchant applications, analyze bank data and ultimately fund more deals.
“I spoke with several other billing providers, and they were all difficult to use and required a lot of engineering resources. With Received, I could tell right away that it was built specifically for finance teams. It is easy to set up and use, and provides full flexibility to create and automate complex contracts in no time.”
Strategy & Operations
Heron Data offers multiple products and uses several usage-based pricing models that require the team to manually collect and calculate usage data from multiple sources. Moreover, each contract includes bespoke billing logic and pricing, making each customer different and adding complexity to the billing process.
Using spreadsheets to manage billing data and manually calculating and creating invoices, took up a lot of time for the finance team which needed to spend 5 days a month on billing alone. In addition, as their customer base grew, maintaining the spreadsheets and making sure they were up-to-date became a real operational burden, leaving little time for strategic initiatives.
The lengthy billing process at Heron Data resulted in delayed invoicing, which led to late payments that impacted the company's cash flow.
Heron Data's manual billing process was subject to human error. This created headaches like having to refund customers, issue revised invoices, and ensure all updates were properly reflected in reporting. In addition, sending inaccurate invoices can damage customer relationships and lead to late payments which hurt the company's cash cycle.
Having customers pay both through Stripe and wire transfers, combined with a lack of visibility into billing amounts and payment status, made cash and revenue reconciliation a real pain for the finance team.
With full billing automation, Heron Data eliminated late invoicing and is now able to collect payments faster, generating revenue early in the month and maintaining a healthy cash flow. Within the first month of using Received, Heron Data collected 70% of its due payments on the first day.
Using a single source of truth for billing and revenue data, Heron Data gained real-time visibility into invoicing and payment status, providing accurate reporting and allowing seamless reconciliation of cash and revenue.
Using Received, Heron Data was able to automate even the most complex contracts and billing logic, including full usage tracking automation. This saved them valuable time and allowed them to reduce 5 days of invoice processing into a few hours each month.
With this time back in hand, the finance team can focus on key areas of the business that require their attention, such as data analysis, strategic planning, and revenue growth.
Received's setup and maintenance require no engineering expertise, thus eliminating IT dependency and freeing up engineers to focus on the core product. By not requiring any technical support from IT, the finance team is able to work independently, preventing operational bottlenecks and reducing time to market.
Designed specifically for finance professionals, Received's intuitive and user-friendly interface enables the finance team to easily automate complex pricing models and bespoke contracts at scale with no technical knowledge. This allows the team to rapidly implement their streamlined billing process and seamlessly make additions and changes at any time, enabling them to remain agile as market demands evolve.