4 ms·

Ask HN: How do you bill your clients? (for your app)

28 points by perezd 18y ago

We are building a software service that will be paid for based on a monthly subscription model. We are not really interested in reinventing any wheels and writing a billing system, and are interested in what you all are doing for your applications. Do you create bridges to other third party billing system? If so, which ones do you recommend to integrate with (we are a ruby on rails application). If you think its a bad idea to use a pre-existing billing system, could you give reasons why you feel that way? Thanks for the advice!

jcapote 18y ago
Try railskit or servicemerchant.org
cbrinker 18y ago
You can integrate your system with Quickbooks. They have an API. I don't know if you want to deal with their software, though.
- josefresco 18y ago
  I can understand why you were modded down (boo Quickbooks) but for a lot of small business owners it's a tempting strategy. And with people out there pushing carts that integrate with QB 'out of the box', it makes building something custom for people a harder sell.
  - netcan 18y ago
    What boo Quickbooks? It's what people use. It's a bit rich expecting businesses to switch bookkeeping software (which their accountant/bookkeeper recommended & uses) because your cart has a better idea.
justinkelly 18y ago
i use Simple Invoices - http://www.simpleinvoices.org http://www.simpleinvoices.org to bill my clients for freelance work cheers justin
nextmoveone 18y ago
billingcircle.com ? ariasystems.com ?
callmeed 18y ago
If you're doing it in Rails, I'd recommend the ActiveMerchant plugin and a gateway/merchant account from Braintree. That's what we use on our main Rails app (as opposed to PayPal on our other main subscription-based offering). It works great. The only hangup has been accepting international currencies (we're having to work with a different company for that). The transaction fees are low, too–which actually makes a difference when you start getting a lot of subscribers. http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/ http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/ http://www.activemerchant.org/ http://www.activemerchant.org/ https://peepcode.com/products/activemerchant-pdf https://peepcode.com/products/activemerchant-pdf
- wmwong 18y ago
  For Braintree, what are the fees like? I can't seem to find them posted anywhere. It would be nice to know to help the shopping before diving into a particular company.
  - markessien 18y ago
    They used to charge an arm and leg, but with the economy being depressed and all, they offer a discount where you pay an arm and a foot.
  - callmeed 18y ago
    I believe they resell some of the services. In our case, they had to set us up with a different merchant because we are a payment aggregator (we take payments on behalf of our customers and charge a transaction fee). I believe our merchant fees are $0.20 + 2.34% per transaction. That's still lower than PayPal unless you're doing over $10K a month. I believe they charge a monthly fee for the gateway/online services too (I don't know what it is because my biz partner handles that stuff). All in all, I would choose this over PayPal regardless of the fees. The user experience is far superior.
- bradgessler 18y ago
  Braintree actually doesn't work very well for recurring payments since you end up writing your own biller. They offer some sort of a subscription billing system, but since their API only works 1-day (Data-in, no data-out) so its damn near impossible to keep your system in synch with theirs. Also, be careful with that peep-code PDF; their design isn't really the best so keep that in mind when reading through it and take their content merely as a suggestion. They couple their Orders with Transactions in a funky way. Another thing, when dealing with BrainTree, be sure to pester them about how much the SecureVault costs. They came to us 6 months after we started using them and demanded that we pay $0.10-$0.15 anytime we touched a customer in the SecureVault. After a few back-and-forth's via email, they finally waived these fee's because they neglected to bring it up when we negotiated our rates. In technical terms of payment gateway APIs, I liked Google Checkout's the best. They had a nice asynch RESTful XML API that made a lot of sense; although I didn't really like that fact that we had to send users through the Google Checkout screens. We had to move away from GCO because they didn't support recurring billing. Has anybody used the Amazon Flexible Payment System?
jasonlbaptiste 18y ago
check out zuora. if youd like an intro drop me an email: jason[at]publictivity.com
- perezd 18y ago
  This looks very promising, but its sort of off-putting that they don't explicitly define their pricing. Is that a sign that its pricey? I was also looking into blinksale and its API integration, thoughts?
  - lux 18y ago
    I spoke with someone at Zuora a couple weeks ago. They said it was a minimum $1,000 US / month to use their system, and I think it was around 2% as a transaction fee beyond that minimum. A bit pricey for most bootstrapped or self-funded startups I'd say. I guess they're after the big boys first...
    - swombat 18y ago
      Sounds like a great opportunity for someone to fly underneath them....
wave 18y ago
Previous discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=198502 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=198502

28 points by perezd 18y ago

jcapote 18y ago

Try railskit or servicemerchant.org

cbrinker 18y ago

You can integrate your system with Quickbooks. They have an API. I don't know if you want to deal with their software, though.

josefresco 18y ago
I can understand why you were modded down (boo Quickbooks) but for a lot of small business owners it's a tempting strategy. And with people out there pushing carts that integrate with QB 'out of the box', it makes building something custom for people a harder sell.
- netcan 18y ago
  What boo Quickbooks? It's what people use. It's a bit rich expecting businesses to switch bookkeeping software (which their accountant/bookkeeper recommended & uses) because your cart has a better idea.

justinkelly 18y ago

i use Simple Invoices - http://www.simpleinvoices.org http://www.simpleinvoices.org to bill my clients for freelance work cheers justin

nextmoveone 18y ago

billingcircle.com ? ariasystems.com ?

callmeed 18y ago

If you're doing it in Rails, I'd recommend the ActiveMerchant plugin and a gateway/merchant account from Braintree. That's what we use on our main Rails app (as opposed to PayPal on our other main subscription-based offering). It works great. The only hangup has been accepting international currencies (we're having to work with a different company for that). The transaction fees are low, too–which actually makes a difference when you start getting a lot of subscribers. http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/ http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/ http://www.activemerchant.org/ http://www.activemerchant.org/ https://peepcode.com/products/activemerchant-pdf https://peepcode.com/products/activemerchant-pdf

wmwong 18y ago
For Braintree, what are the fees like? I can't seem to find them posted anywhere. It would be nice to know to help the shopping before diving into a particular company.
- markessien 18y ago
  They used to charge an arm and leg, but with the economy being depressed and all, they offer a discount where you pay an arm and a foot.
- callmeed 18y ago
  I believe they resell some of the services. In our case, they had to set us up with a different merchant because we are a payment aggregator (we take payments on behalf of our customers and charge a transaction fee). I believe our merchant fees are $0.20 + 2.34% per transaction. That's still lower than PayPal unless you're doing over $10K a month. I believe they charge a monthly fee for the gateway/online services too (I don't know what it is because my biz partner handles that stuff). All in all, I would choose this over PayPal regardless of the fees. The user experience is far superior.
bradgessler 18y ago
Braintree actually doesn't work very well for recurring payments since you end up writing your own biller. They offer some sort of a subscription billing system, but since their API only works 1-day (Data-in, no data-out) so its damn near impossible to keep your system in synch with theirs. Also, be careful with that peep-code PDF; their design isn't really the best so keep that in mind when reading through it and take their content merely as a suggestion. They couple their Orders with Transactions in a funky way. Another thing, when dealing with BrainTree, be sure to pester them about how much the SecureVault costs. They came to us 6 months after we started using them and demanded that we pay $0.10-$0.15 anytime we touched a customer in the SecureVault. After a few back-and-forth's via email, they finally waived these fee's because they neglected to bring it up when we negotiated our rates. In technical terms of payment gateway APIs, I liked Google Checkout's the best. They had a nice asynch RESTful XML API that made a lot of sense; although I didn't really like that fact that we had to send users through the Google Checkout screens. We had to move away from GCO because they didn't support recurring billing. Has anybody used the Amazon Flexible Payment System?

jasonlbaptiste 18y ago

check out zuora. if youd like an intro drop me an email: jason[at]publictivity.com

perezd 18y ago
This looks very promising, but its sort of off-putting that they don't explicitly define their pricing. Is that a sign that its pricey? I was also looking into blinksale and its API integration, thoughts?
- lux 18y ago
  I spoke with someone at Zuora a couple weeks ago. They said it was a minimum $1,000 US / month to use their system, and I think it was around 2% as a transaction fee beyond that minimum. A bit pricey for most bootstrapped or self-funded startups I'd say. I guess they're after the big boys first...
  - swombat 18y ago
    Sounds like a great opportunity for someone to fly underneath them....

wave 18y ago

Previous discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=198502 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=198502