Subscription billing has transformed the way businesses generate revenue, creating predictable recurring income and improving cash flow. What started with newspaper and magazine subscriptions has evolved into a model embraced by companies across nearly every industry. Today, businesses offering software, streaming services, memberships, maintenance plans, subscription boxes, meal kits, car washes, travel clubs, and countless other services rely on recurring billing as a core part of their business.
For organizations using Dynamics 365 Business Central, however, managing subscriptions isn’t always simple. Without a built-in solution, finance teams are often left manually creating recurring invoices, collecting payments, and applying those payments every billing cycle. The result is a time-consuming process that increases administrative work, introduces opportunities for errors, and makes it harder to scale a subscription-based business efficiently.
The Solution for Subscription Billing in Business Central
With iPayments embedded in Business Central, managing subscription billing is simple. Whether you offer monthly memberships, annual contracts, maintenance plans, or any other recurring payment model, you can create a payment plan and assign it directly to your customer. Once it’s in place, AutoPay in iPayments automatically processes each payment on schedule and applies it to the appropriate customer and invoice, eliminating manual billing, payment collection, and reconciliation.
Examples of Subscription Billing Capabilities in Business Central
- Managed IT Services Company Bills Monthly
An IT provider bills hundreds of customers each month for managed services. Previously they had to create each invoice manually and send out to customers. This process takes days each month and often results in overdue invoices that need follow up.
With AutoPay in iPayments for Business Central, customers are billed automatically each month, eliminating the need for collections and strengthening predictable cash flow.
- Commercial HVAC Company with Annual Service Agreements
An HVAC company sells annual service agreements that include quarterly preventative maintenance visits. The accounting team manually tracks contract dates and invoices customers every quarter.
With AutoPay, quarterly invoices are generated on a schedule and customers are automatically charged, eliminating the need for manually tracking agreements.
Benefits of Subscription Billing in Business Central
Companies deploy Dynamics 365 Business Central to take advantage of robust features and functionality to help them run their business. Subscription or recurring billing is not included out of the box with Business Central, so users need to implement iPayments in order to automatically process those ongoing payments. With AutoPay, included in iPayments, Business Central users can eliminate manual invoicing, improve the customer experience, increase predictable revenue, and scale without hiring.
What does iPayments for Dynamics 365 Business Central cost?
iPayments for Dynamics 365 Business Central starts at $350 per month for any number of users. The solution includes the full AR toolkit designed to streamline the entire accounts receivable process.
- Click to pay links
- Credit card or ACH payments
- AutoPay for recurring payments
- Credit card reconciliation
- Advanced collections management
- Real-time customer portal
What is Subscription Billing?
Subscription billing is the process of automatically charging customers on a recurring schedule for products or services.
What Industries Use Subscription Billing?
Subscription billing has rapidly expanded across industries including:
- Managed IT
- Software companies
- Manufacturers
- Equipment maintenance
- HVAC
- Plumbing
- Electrical
- Pest control
- Lawn care
- Healthcare
- Nonprofits
- Associations
- Membership organizations
- Car washes
- Subscription boxes
- Security companies
- Cleaning services
What Different Types of Recurring Billing are Available in Business Central?
With iPayments for Dynamics 365 Business Central, you have complete control over the payment schedules for each customer. Payment schedules can be set up to run:
- Monthly
- Quarterly
- Annually
- Weekly
- Custom schedules
What Challenges are Caused by Manual Subscription Billing?
Manually processing recurring invoices or subscription billing is a time consuming process that can be prone to errors and slower payments. In fact, most companies are able to reduce manual processing time by 60 to 70 percent after automating recurring or subscription billing. Additional challenges can include:
- Manually generating invoices
- Late payments
- Missed renewals
- Payment failures
- Slow cash flow
- Increased collections on past due accounts
- Human error
How Does Subscription Billing Work in Dynamics 365 Business Central?
AutoPay in iPayments allows users to set up subscription or recurring billing in Business Central.
- Create a payment plan based on your business processes. This can be a one time payment, scheduled recurring payments, paying off customer balances, or any payment plan that fits your needs.
- Assign the plan templates to one or multiple customers.
- The payment profile is used when processing payments. When there are multiple merchant you can select the merchant that you would like to process the payment.
- The payment details outline the type of payment to process.
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- Amount Option
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- Fixed Amount – Used when you would like to charge the same amount for every payment (ie. Subscription Billing, Monthly Charge, etc)
- Amount Due (Due Date) – The Due Date will be used to determine the invoices to be included in the payment amount
- Amount Due (Document Date) – The Document Date will be used to determine the invoices to be included in the payment amount
- Total Amount Outstanding – At the time the payment is captured, the Amount Outstanding (Balance Due) will be captured
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- Fixed Amount
- Only available when the Amount Option is set to ‘Fixed Amount’
- Include Unapplied Cr. Memos & Include Unapplied Payments
- Only available when the Amount Option is set to anything other than Fixed Amount. You can specify whether to include Credit Memos and Payments when calculating the balance
- Fixed Amount
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- Send Email Receipt
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- Determine if a receipt will be sent for the payment
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- The payment schedule determines how often a payment is processed.
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- Frequency
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- Once – One time only payment
- Day of the Month – Specify the Day of the Month you would like to take payment
- Monthly – Specify the start date, and iPayments will calculate the schedule based on a 1 month calculation
- Weekly – Specify the start date, and iPayments will calculate the schedule based on a 1 week calculation
- Bi-Weekly – Specify the start date, and iPayments will calculate the schedule based on a 2 week calculation
- Semi-Monthly – iPayments will calculate the schedule based on the 1st & 15th of the following Months
- Quarterly – Specify the start date, and iPayments will calculate the schedule based on a 3 month calculation
- Yearly – Specify the start date, and iPayments will calculate the schedule based on a 1 year calculation
- Daily – Specify the start date, and iPayments will calculate the schedule based on a 1 day calculation
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- Day of the Month
- Only valid when the Frequency is equal to ‘Day of the Month’
- Starting Date
- When the Frequency is not ‘Day of the Month’, specify the day the Plan should start processing payments
- Next Payment Date
- Based on the Frequency, and the Starting Date, the next scheduled payment date
- Last Payment Date
- When an End Date or Max No. of Occurrences is defined, the last payment date
- End Type – Specifies how/when the last payment calculation is calculated
- No End Date
- End by Date– Payment process started but an error occurred. You can ‘Retry Payment’ from the Actions menu to attempt to complete the process
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- End after No. of Occurrences
- End Date
- Only valid when the End Type is equal to End by Date. Specify when the plan is over
- Max No. of Occurrences
- Only valid when the End Type is equal to Max No. of Occurrences. Specify how many payments need to be processed
6. Once set up, you can validate the setup from the home menu to ensure all fields are set up correct.
7. Once validated, you need to choose activate and the AutoPay will run.
Why use iPayments instead of recurring journals in Business Central?
With recurring journals in Business Central, you’ll run into roadblocks as the feature wasn’t meant to be a true subscription billing function. The following features are only available with iPayments and not out of the box in Business Central.
- Automatically collect payments
- Store payment methods through secure tokenization
- Process credit cards
- Process ACH
- Reconcile payments
If you use Dynamics 365 Business Central and you need recurring or subscription billing, reach out to the team at iSolutions. We’ll show you how easy it is to use AutoPay in iPayments to streamline your AR processes.