Best Revenue Management System Shortlist
Here’s my list of the 12 best revenue management systems, along with a summary of what they do best:
- NetSuite - Best for enterprise companies
- QuickBooks Online Advanced - Best for finance teams
- ChargeBee - Best for subscription companies
- Subskribe - Best for CPQ
- Certinia - Best for forecasting revenue
- Zuora - Best for customizing subscriptions
- Maxio - Best for businesses offering multiple pricing options
- Revenue Grid - Best for sales teams
- Prisync - Best for competitor price tracking
- Competera - Best for automated pricing
- Sage Intacct - Best for investor-grade reporting
- SubscriptionFlow - Best for freemium subscriptions
Revenue management software helps SaaS businesses to maximize, recognize and forecast revenue. A good revenue management system will help everyone from marketing to sales to finance.
In this article, I explore the 12 best revenue management system solutions for SaaS and ecommerce brands in 2023. You’ll learn what these tools are like to use and who they best suit.
What is Revenue Management Software?
A typical revenue management system is a piece of software that helps SaaS brands manage subscriptions, optimize their pricing, and forecast their revenue. In short, the goal is to streamline revenue-related processes while maximizing profitability.
Revenue management software usually comes with several features, including revenue recognition—a particular accountancy pain for SaaS brands—pricing optimization, and analytics. Some will provide a comprehensive offering—others will focus on subscription billing, and others on accounting practices.
Overview of the 12 Best Revenue Management Software
Below you can find a full rundown of the revenue management software I evaluated, why I think they’re useful, noteworthy features, pricing, and some pros and cons. You can also see a screenshot of each platform.
1. NetSuite - Best for enterprise companies
NetSuite is a cloud-based ERP software with a boatload of features. You can use it to manage almost every part of your business, from accounting and order processing, to inventory management and warehousing. It’s incredibly powerful, but it’s also pretty complex—which is why I recommend only enterprise businesses check it out.
Why I picked NetSuite: If you can handle the platform’s complexity, this may be the only software you end up using to manage accounting and revenue operations in your business. It provides a complete view of your accounts, helps you automatically recognize revenue, and forecast your future financials. For me, the inclusion of ecommerce and subscription billing functionality to help increase revenue was a major plus.
Features include a full suite of accounting tools, global business management features to handle multiple currencies, a CRM, and specialized payment management features like a dunning system to reduce involuntary churn and chargeback automation. There’s even some pretty detailed reporting functionality.
Integrations include Mailchimp, Box, Zendesk, Hubspot, Bill.com, Rippling, A2X, Handshake, DataServ, OnPlan, Bamboo HR, Twilio, Cleo Integration Cloud, and more.
Pricing: Pricing available on request
Free trial: Product tour available
Pros
- Wealth of features and tools
- Enterprise-level solution
- Wide range of integrations
Cons
- Can be expensive
- Not particularly user friendly
2. QuickBooks Online Advanced - Best for finance teams
QuickBooks Online Advanced is a cloud-based accounting software designed for growing businesses with more complex accounting needs. With its advanced features and functionality, QuickBooks Online Advanced helps businesses streamline their accounting processes and make informed financial decisions.
Why I picked Quickbook Online Advanced: I chose QuickBooks Online Advanced for its robust accounting features and advanced reporting capabilities —it’s a great revenue management tool for finance teams. What’s more, its cloud-based design means that data can be accessed from anywhere, which is especially important for businesses with remote teams or multiple locations. Additionally, its affordability and ease of use make it an ideal solution for small to medium-sized businesses looking to improve their accounting processes.
Features include advanced reporting, custom user permissions, batch invoicing, and automated workflows. It also includes time-saving features like bank reconciliation and cash flow management, as well as integrations with popular business software such as Shopify, PayPal, and Square.
Integrations include Shopify, PayPal, Square, G Suite, TSheets, HubSpot, Bill.com, and more.
Pricing: Plans start from $15 per month
Free trial: No trial available
Pros
- Robust accounting and reporting features
- Affordable pricing
- Automated workflows
Cons
- Customer support isn’t outstanding
- Limited customization
3. ChargeBee - Best for subscription companies
Chargebee is a cloud-based software designed to help businesses manage and automate their subscription-based billing processes. With its advanced billing capabilities and customizable subscription management tools, Chargebee makes it easy for businesses to scale and optimize their subscription-based revenue streams.
Why I picked Chargebee: I chose Chargebee for its advanced subscription billing features and customizable subscription management tools. Its integrations with popular payment gateways and business software make it easy to implement and manage, even for businesses with limited technical expertise. Additionally, its flexible pricing model means that businesses only pay for the features they need, making it an affordable solution for businesses of all sizes.
Features include recurring billing, automated dunning, customer self-service, and revenue analytics. It also includes integrations with popular payment gateways such as Stripe, Braintree, and PayPal, as well as integrations with popular business software such as Salesforce, HubSpot, and Zapier.
Integrations include Stripe, Braintree, PayPal, Salesforce, HubSpot, and Zapier, among others.
Pricing: From $599/month
Free trial: Demo available
Pros
- Comprehensive subscription management
- Loads of integrations
- Pay-as-you-go pricing available
Cons
- Lack of customer support
- Limited customizations
4. Subskribe - Best for CPQ
Subskribe is a quote-to-revenue platform for SaaS businesses. It’s an all-in-one solution for SaaS sales and revenue teams, letting them create custom quotes, go live with custom billing, and then recognize revenue.
Why I picked Subskribe: It’s a great tool for enterprise sales teams looking to go from quote to billing as quickly as possible. The tool’s CPQ feature is particularly powerful. Reps can create complex, multi-year quotes that improve conversion rates, automate their approval workflows, and sync everything with Salesforce and HubSpot.
Features also include a subscription billing management tool. It automatically reconciles payments and recognizes revenue. Multiple billing methods are available and you can even use reseller functionality to grow revenue further. I especially appreciated the automated tax calculations to make sure you remain compliant.
Integrations are available for Salesforce, Avalara, and DocuSign.
Pricing: Pricing available on request
Free trial: Demo available
Pros
- Loads of features for sales teams
- Subscription management
- Salesforce integration
Cons
- Lack of integrations
- Lack of guided selling
5. Certinia - Best for forecasting revenue
Certinia is a cloud-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution designed to help businesses of all sizes manage their financial and operational processes. It’s a comprehensive offering. Its suite of applications includes accounting, supply chain management, human resources, project management, and more. But it’s forecasting where the platform really stands out.
Why I picked Certinia: Tracking and forecasting revenue is an essential task for SaaS revenue management. Certinia offers a dedicated solution that integrates your CRM, accounting and revenue recognition operations in one place. You can see recognized and deferred revenue at a glance in the tool’s dashboard, and you can even forecast revenue from individual products as well as revenue.
Features: The platform consolidates data from multiple sources to automate several accounting processes, including revenue recognition. And the detailed audit trail really stood out as a great addition. You can also use the platform to manage subscription billing operations, and it supports a range of specialized and hybrid business models.
Integrations are available for a range of business applications, including Salesforce, Avalara, ADP, Jira, DocuSign, and Xactly. There is also API functionality to create your own.
Pricing: Pricing available on request
Free trial: No free trial
Pros
- Detailed forecasting capabilities
- Highly customizable
- Native Salesforce integration
Cons
- Can be expensive
- Steep learning curve
6. Zuora - Best for customizing subscriptions
Zuora is a subscription management platform. It’s product offering is aimed at any business model, but it’s a particularly effective solution for SaaS companies looking to grow their subscription-based business through custom pricing offerings.
Why I picked Zuora: Zephyr is Zuora’s subscription experience platform that lets SaaS brands create customized subscription experiences for their clients. If you’ve ever wanted to personalize your customer experience, this is how I recommend you do it. Zephyr lets you create unique messaging for each customer, enrich interactions with first-party data, and, ultimately, extract as much revenue as possible.
Features include a billing solution to help you monitor and manage subscriptions, a revenue recognition tool, CPQ capabilities, and the ability to add multiple different revenue streams to your product. I love that it is a no-code solution, which means it’s easy for anyone on your team to build and manage subscription workflows.
Integrations: There aren't any first-party integrations with the platform. But Zuora provides low-code SDKs and APIs that let developers integrate your own applications into the platform.
Pricing: Pricing available on request
Free trial: Demo available
Pros
- Customized subscription workflow
- Easy to use
- Easy implementation
Cons
- Limited integrations
- Limited reporting functionality
7. Maxio - Best for businesses offering multiple pricing options
Maxio is a comprehensive financial operations tool that caters to multiple departments (sales, marketing, finance, etc.) as well as different types of businesses (product-led SaaS and sales-led teams).
Why I picked Maxio: The tool boasts a fairly comprehensive offering, but it’s the subscription billing features that really stood out to me. One of the best ways to increase revenue streams is to customize and increase billing options. To that end, Revenue Grid offers loads of out-of-the-box configurations and lets you add additional offerings like usage-led pricing to capture additional revenue.
Features: Billing customization isn’t the only feature SaaS companies will love. There is a dunning system to reduce involuntary churn, chargeback automation, some pretty detailed reporting functionality, and automated revenue recognition.
Integrations are numerous. There is an integration for almost every major business app, including HubSpot, Google apps, Mailchimp, Keap, Slack, Twilio, and Zendesk.
Pricing: Plans start from $599/month
Free trial: Demo available
Pros
- Plenty of billing concepts to increase revenue
- Features for every department
- Great range of integrations
Cons
- Customization is limited
- Implementation can be overwhelming
8. Revenue Grid - Best for sales teams
Revenue Grid is a revenue intelligence solution that increases pipeline visibility and helps your reps complete deals and optimize revenue. Your finance team may not find much use for the platform, but it could be a bit of a game changer if you use sales reps to close enterprise accounts.
Why I picked Revenue Grid: There aren’t many revenue management systems aimed squarely at sales reps, but this is one of the most comprehensive solutions that is. It provides reps with a range of features to help them sell, but the platform’s AI-powered Signals is the one I think is the most powerful. It provides guided selling suggestions (like when to send a follow-up email) that eliminate guesswork and help your team drive through more deals.
Features include automatic activity capturing through Salesforce, performance and revenue reports, pipeline visibility, and sales forecasting.
Integrations are available for a range of sales tools. This includes Salesforce, Oracle, SAP, Zoom, Outlook, and Dropbox.
Pricing: Pricing available on request
Free trial: Demo available
Pros
- Native Salesforce integration
- AI sales recommendations
- Automatic activity recording
Cons
- Sync errors can occur
- Some integrations get disconnected
9. Prisync - Best for competitive ecommerce pricing intelligence
Prisync is competitor price tracking software designed to help ecommerce businesses monitor and optimize their pricing strategy. It provides real-time pricing data for a host of competitors, allowing you to adjust your prices to remain competitive.
Why I picked Prisync: When a quick Google search helps consumers find the best price for a particular product, having the upper hand over your competitors can make all the difference for an ecommerce store. And with Prisync you don’t have to trawl through your competitors’ sites one by one. Instead, all pricing and stock availability is collated in a single dashboard.
Features include real-time data on competitor pricing, including product descriptions, images, and stock availability. It also includes a range of customization options, allowing businesses to set their own pricing rules and strategies. There’s some reasonably detailed analytics and insights functionality, too.
Integrations: Prisync integrates with a wide range of ecommerce platforms, including Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce, as well as dozens of other business apps. That includes ecommerce-focused solutions like Shipbob, Recart, and Octane AI.
Pricing: Pricing starts from $99 per month for up to 100 products.
Free trial: 14-day free trial available
Pros
- Huge range of competitor info
- Easy-to-use dashboard
- User-friendly interface
Cons
- Can be expensive for large stores
- Initial setup can be time-consuming
10. Competera - Best for price strategy and optimization
Competera is a cloud-based revenue management system that provides a range of pricing tools to help SaaS and ecommerce brands maximize their revenue and stay ahead of competitors. It’s not an all-in-one solution like some other options on this list, but it excels at the couple of things it does.
Why I picked Comptera: To put it simply, this is the software to use if you want to optimize your product pricing. The tool uses a huge number of data points (things like competitive data, seasonality, the weather, inventory levels, shopping history, elasticity, you get the picture) to create an optimal pricing structure. If that weren’t enough, it even lets you change how prices are calculated to achieve goals like getting rid of stock or recovering previously lost margins.
Features: Comptera’s main feature is its pricing platform that I’ve described above. But it also offers competitive data analysis that lets you compare your pricing to your competitors, and pricing automation, which automatically suggests prices for products.
Integrations: Competera integrates with a variety of other software solutions, including ERP, CRM, and ecommerce platforms. Some of its integrations include SAP, Magento, Salesforce, and Oracle.
Pricing: Pricing upon request
Free trial: Free trial available
Pros
- Customizable pricing strategies
- Machine learning algorithms
- User-friendly interface
Cons
- Lack of customer support
- One-dimensional solution
11. Sage Intacct - Best for investor-grade reporting
Sage Intacct is a cloud-based financial management platform, similar to QuickBooks. Any business can use its accounting platform, but it’s particularly popular with SaaS CFOs owing to its in-depth reporting functionality.
Why I picked Sage Intacct: Reporting and forecasting is a major part of revenue management, and this is where Sage Intacct excels. The platform makes it easy to account for over 500 billing scenarios and track over 200 reports. And these are exactly the kind of revenue metrics investors expect to see if your SaaS is looking for funding. Almost all of these reports can be automated, meaning your finance team has to do very little to project revenue or budget for the year ahead.
Features: As a high-end accounting platform, Sage Intacct has a bunch of heavy duty features your finance team will love. This includes automated revenue recognition functionality, compliant revenue management, and spend management. You can also use the tool to manage subscription billing.
Integrations: There are more than 350 integrations for Sage Intacct, including every major CRM, ecommerce platform, business management, and payroll tool.
Pricing: Pricing upon request
Free trial: Free 30-day trial
Pros
- In-depth reporting
- User-friendly dashboards
- Automated reconciliations
Cons
- Steep learning curve
- Lack of customer service
12. SubscriptionFlow - Best for freemium subscriptions
SubscriptionFlow is a subscription management platform that uses AI to automate and optimize most parts of the subscription billing process. What that means is that you can automate subscription cycles, take the best actions to limit churn, and generate real-time insights
Why I picked SubscriptionFlow: The software is a pretty robust all rounder for managing SaaS subscriptions, but it has a standout freemium and trial feature. It offers a lot more flexibility when it comes to creating trials compared to other systems, and automates a lot of the process. Subscribers can extend their trial with a single click, for instance, and they get automated reminders to upgrade. The software also lets you track trial usage and use that data to incentivize upgrades.
Features: In addition to it’s freemium and trial offerings, SubscriptionFlow handles recurring billing, lets you offer metered billing, automatically retries failed payments, and has some pretty in-depth reporting and analytics tools.
Integrations are plentiful. SubscriptionFlow integrates with platforms like WordPress, Shopify, and Webflow, as well as all major accounting systems, CRMs like Salesforce and HubSpot, and marketing platforms like Mailchimp.
Pricing: From $149 per month for three users
Free trial: Demo available
Pros
- Clear user interface
- All-in-one subscription billing solution
- Awesome support
Cons
- No sandbox area for testing
- More documentation would be useful
Other Revenue Management Software Options
Here are a selection of other revenue management systems that didn't make my top 12, but are still worth checking out:
- GoCardless - Best for processing payments
- RevenueCat - Best for managing in-app purchases
- Planhat - Best for customer success management
- Stripe - Best for revenue recovery
- Recurly - Best for global businesses
- Paddle - Best for cross-border tax management
How I Selected the Best Revenue Management Software
Want to know how I selected these revenue management systems? Let me explain. I’ve used my RevOps experience to analyze how these tools stack up against the following criteria:
Core Functionality
Revenue management systems serve different purposes for different teams and different types of companies. Most aren’t all-in-one solutions, which means I looked for tools that did at least one following functions really well:
- Revenue recognition
- Price optimization
- Subscription management
Key Features
To deliver the functionality I outline above, each of the revenue management systems had to have at least a couple of the following features:
- SaaS accounting tools: SaaS businesses face several accounting challenges. Where applicable, these tools should make it easy for companies to accurately recognize their revenue and abide by specific accounting standards like GAAP.
- A range of pricing models: There’s more than one way to price a monthly subscription. That’s why I’ve prioritized software that has a range of built-in pricing models and makes it easy for businesses to combine or switch between them
- Billing automation and revenue recovery: Optimizing revenue is as much about invoicing as it is about setting the right price. Revenue recognition software should completely automate the process of sending invoices and recovering payments, while also offering tools like payment retries to reduce involuntary churn.
Scalability
As your business grows, your revenue management software should be able to handle increased data volume and complexity. It should also be easy to customize to fit your evolving business needs.
Integrations
SaaS billing systems are complicated. That’s why I prioritized tools that fit neatly into your existing setup.
Price
Revenue recognition systems need to generate a positive ROI, otherwise what’s the point in them? I’ve selected tools with a wide range of price points, but I believe they all offer value for money.
People Also Ask
Looking for more information on choosing and using a revenue management system? Here are answers to frequently asked questions that should help.
What are the most important features of a revenue management system?
What are the pillars of revenue management?
How do you measure the success of revenue management?
Other Sales Intelligence & Analytics Software Reviews
Here are some other revenue operations software categories that you might want to consider.
- Best Sales Software
- Data Visualization Software
- Predictive Analytics Software
- Sales Forecasting Software
- Business Intelligence Software
- Sales Reporting Software
- Sales Intelligence Software
- KPI Software
- Sales Tracking Software
What Next?
Revenue management systems can streamline your accounting operations and help your sales teams to maximize revenue. They certainly remove some of the headaches that SaaS brands have to deal with when it comes to managing billing and recognizing revenue. So I hope my detailed breakdown has helped you find the system you’re looking for.
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