Thanks for your question Craig.

We have replaced competitive solutions – but most commonly our clients are moving from a ‘work around’ based or Excel based solution.

The vast majority of companies still approach significant portions of this requirement with a manual or custom system approach – something they continue until the pain is too great to continue.

If you have more questions please do write.

Hi Bob,

Thanks for your thoughtful insight. The application of revenue recognition in the software market is a very complex topic and thankfully there are companies out there that have solutions to help businesses solve the problem at an affordable(?) rate. When thinking about the software market, what percentage of the companies that use your solution previously had:

1. no automated solution (i.e. consultants/finance providing rev rec guidance)
2. had an alternate solution
3. some mixture of 1 & 2

We always love hearing some real market feedback on topics like this so feel free to offer up additional information that you think is relevant.

cheers,

craig.

1) Billing. How does your company go to market (eCommerce? enterprise agreement? channel model?) – and look for a billing system or a billing support system that matches your go to market model.
2) Revenue Recognition. The general rules are above for software industry revenue recognition. For the basics you will need a sub-ledger for deferred and recognized revenue analysis and appropriate methods and models to support your revenue recognition.
3) Revenue Compliance. Could be part of the above – but is often a sub-set that not everyone needs. No easy way to describe this – but if you have a sales process with multiple related elements in it (like software plus maintenance) and there are different recognition periods for the elements you are most likely subject to more complex accounting guideslines.

Our company (Tensoft) also provides software that supports both the billing requirements as well as the software revenue recognition.

Looking forward to seeing more of Cleverbridge fans in our SyncApps subscriber base soon:)

~Clint
@cazoomi

Hi Clint,

Thanks for the information about Zuora and NetSuite. I think that a lot of companies need both the subscription management and revenue recognition capabilities to manage a subscription business. I’m sure that there are many ways to skin a cat (no offense to cat lovers), but a top tier accounting system is the foundation and a flexible subscription/e-commerce platform must work hand-in-hand to handle revenue recognition correctly.

cheers,

craig.

Yet for most businesses you will need more than Zuora on the billing front to get the revenue recognition part correct which is why I think they turned to partner with NetSuite:)

http://zuora.com/products/z-suite/index.html

~Clint
@cazoomi