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The reason billing systems are hard is because they tend to just accumulate features/behaviours/requirements. Forever. Although billing is not my specialty I ha
by nickdothutton 4y ago
The reason billing systems are hard is because they tend to just accumulate features/behaviours/requirements. Forever. Although billing is not my specialty I have had to involve myself in it as product owner and business unit manager. Try and imagine the amount of logic, complexity, rules, and exceptions involved in a system that has accumulated perhaps 30-40 years of customer sign-ups. Umpteen contracts, umpteen iterations of each contract, and perhaps 50 or 100 products, each sold in 10 or 100 countries. I now know more about the tax system in South America than I ever wanted to.
- Rafsark 4y agoYep, totally right. Same at the previous company we worked for and built the billing logic. You start doing it in house because the first version is simple. It’s getting complicated when you keep adding paying features to a product. Often see product managers becoming experts in taxes and accounting :)
- r00fus 4y agoI see building or implementing these kind of systems as "discovering" use cases for given scenarios/customers/markets. That's why "billing" is almost too generic - instead "billing for telco in South American markets" - is more useful because those verticals have specific sets of use-cases and challenges.