Subscription Billing - Renewals

One thing I appreciate about subscriptions is the automatic renewal process. It's nice to sign up for a subscription and not have to worry about manually renewing every time the contract period is up. This brings in automatic revenue for the company and keeps the hassle of manually renewing out of everyone's hands. 

Fortunately, the process for setting up renewals in Subscription billing in Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations is fairly simple to execute as well. Let's dive in! 


Subscription Billing - Terminate

From time to time, we have all ended a subscription service. It happens - maybe the service doesn't meet your needs anymore. Perhaps it has gotten too expensive. Regardless of the reason, it is a common occurrence and Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance's Subscription billing module has a solution for terminating subscriptions.

Now you are probably thinking, "Oh great, something complex to add to my never-ending duties..." 

Nope! Terminating a Billing schedule in the Subscription billing module is easy, and I am going to walk through it. 

The Terminator
"I'll be back... when I am ready to subscribe again"

Deprecate != Depreciate

I often hear/see the words deprecate and depreciate used interchangeably, both in reference to ERP features and functionality. There is a difference in the words, and it's not just the letter i! This is a tough one, because even when you search on the internet, you get mixed results between the two. Let's look at the differences. 

The letter i is not the only difference between deprecate and depreciate.
This letter is not the only difference between these words!

Subscription Billing - Expense Deferrals

A nice addition to the Subscription billing module is Expense deferrals. It's a subtle addition, and some may not even notice it's there! However, you may see benefit if you are part of an organization that pays for large subscriptions, memberships, or investments upfront and you require a methodology to defer these large expenses into an account then move these expenses from that deferred account into an expense account over a period of time. 

Hands taking money out of a wallet

This new addition is not quite as obvious as the Revenue deferral piece discussed in the previous blog: Subscription Billing - Revenue Deferrals, but it is very powerful and can be leveraged in any organization! 

Let's look at how to set up Expense deferrals in Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance!


Subscription Billing - Revenue Deferrals

When selling subscriptions, memberships, or prepaid investments, companies often receive large sums of money upfront from their customers and cannot recognize that revenue immediately. This can cause accounting and cashflow issues if the money was immediately available as revenue all at once. Therefore, Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance offers Revenue and expense deferrals as part of their new Subscription billing offerings. Revenue deferral allows the revenue to enter a deferred account and be recognized on a schedule to be defined by the accounting team. Let's discuss how to set this up.

Subscription Billing - Free Text Invoice or Sales Order?

When setting up Subscription billing, there are two options for setting up the Recurring contract billing Invoice transaction type - Sales order or Free text invoice. 

Sales order vs Free text invoice

Subscription Billing - Pricing Methods

In my last post on Item types in Subscription billing, I broke down the different item types and how they are used to define the methods in which an item gets billed. In this blog post, I will dive into the Pricing methods that are available to add into our Billing schedule lines.

When setting up Billing schedules within the Subscription billing module for your Customers, there are four Pricing methods that a user can employ. 

  • Standard
  • Flat
  • Tier
  • Flat Tier

The methodology behind a couple of these pricing methods can be a bit confusing, so I am here to help de-mystify them for you!