Apply now for early access to Paddle's new SaaS invoicing solution

People have been issuing invoices for as long as humankind’s been able to read and write. The electronic variety predates the internet, and online invoicing is now the go-to payment method for countless businesses across industries. Often the end-to-end process is very manual. It includes purchase order approval, price negotiation, tax-compliant invoices, reconciliation, and delinquency. This wasn’t built for the world of fast-growth B2B SaaS – a world where you want to support multiple payment methods, and better monetize your offering with proration and recurrence. 

Over the past two or three years, we’ve spoken to hundreds of companies struggling with SaaS invoicing and find they fall into one of two camps. 

On the one hand, you might be a product-led company selling subscriptions through a checkout with instant payment methods, like cards or digital wallets. But you’ve found yourself selling to larger companies who want to pay you more. A lot more. They want you to send invoices to cover their team’s ambitious usage of your SaaS product, but they want to pay by wire transfer. And on a recurring basis. We often hear things like:

• How do I combine self-serve, automated payments with a manual SaaS invoicing function? 
• How do I connect the data reporting from these manual processes with my existing inbound sales? 
• Can we better monetize our offering by selling services alongside SaaS access? 
• Do I repurpose my inside sales team for field sales? 

• Are these invoices we’re sending compliant? 
• How do we upsell customers alongside recurrence through manual outreach?
• Can I seamlessly connect my invoicing to my CRM so that my sales and Finance teams can work in tandem? 
• How much can be automated?

On a mission to solve these pain points, Paddle has been building a new product behind the scenes. From the start of Early Access in recent months, software sellers have already issued thousands of invoices for >$10million. As an all-in-one revenue delivery platform, they have found value in Paddle handling the sales tax, reconciling on their behalf, and providing unified data across both self-serve and manual sales motions. 

We want to make sure that we build a solution that truly solves the invoicing issues software sellers are experiencing. We’re looking to invite more build partners into Early Access so we can see how you use it, and evolve the ways it helps you save time and money as well as grow your SaaS revenue. 

What shape is Paddle’s invoicing tool going to take?

We've got some lofty ambitions for where we want our SaaS invoicing solution to get to. From speaking with hundreds of sellers, we’ve arrived at five key things people need from an invoicing tool:

1) Scalable invoicing

You need an invoicing solution that scales with your needs. This means the ability to automatically or programmatically issue invoices. We want to provide a level of automation from CRM over to ‘Invoice Sent’, so that once you’ve hit ‘Closed Won’, you’ve got an invoice ready to go. Less manual work and margin for error. 

2) Reconciliation

Reconciling hundreds of invoices across multiple payment methods and bank accounts can be a nightmare, and a challenge that grows over time - especially when people submit invoices with the wrong references. We want to take this burden from you in its entirety, no matter how many invoices you’re sending.

3) Collections & delinquency

We all know some invoices won’t be paid on time, or in some cases at all. You want visibility into paid and unpaid invoices so you know who to chase and can plan out cash flow. We want to do all that we can to reduce that time to receive cash.  

4) Single source of truth

We’ve heard from tonnes of companies who are having to cobble together all sorts of CSVs & data sources from different payment methods & bank accounts. Many are using a master spreadsheet to understand the full status of payments. This isn’t scalable and leaves you wide open to the risk of human error. We want to ensure you have confidence in your data - empowering you to make quicker decisions, from real-time reporting. Paddle has always been the single source of revenue and data for self-serve payments, but the same is now true of invoices. 

5) MoR & compliance

Last but not least, sellers don’t want to be blocked by compliance. You want to be able to invoice whoever you want, wherever you want, with confidence that you’re complying with local sales tax legislation.

Are you a software company looking for an invoicing solution that solves the above problems? Apply for early access now.

Apply now for early access to Paddle's new SaaS invoicing solution.