Billing operations at companies tend to require time-consuming tasks such as creating and sending invoices and confirming payments. This article introduces a method to automate these billing tasks to reduce time and effort, prevent errors, and improve work quality and efficiency.
Tools Required for Automation
The following two tools (cloud services) are required to automate billing operations.
- PayPal
- Questetra BPM Suite
What is PayPal?
PayPal is a payment processing service in the United States.
You can send money and make payments between PayPal accounts, and you can link multiple payment services such as bank accounts (transfer) and credit/debit cards to your PayPal account. Therefore, multiple payments can be made with a single account (email address ID/password).
What is Questetra BPM Suite?
Questetra BPM Suite is a business system development platform.
No-code/low-code business systems (workflow Apps) can be built. In addition to PayPal, the following cloud services can be linked through APIs to enable automated processing for each service.
- GoogleWorkspace
- Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Slides, Google Groups, Google Drive, Google Calendar, Gmail
- Microsoft 365
- Box
- kintone
- Slack
- WordPress
- Stripe
- Salesforce
- Google BigQuery
- Google Analytics
- Google Fit
- Google Translate
- DeepL
- AirTable
- SendGrid
- ChatWork
- Typetalk
- Backlog
- Image-Charts
- Zendesk Support
…amongst others.
Automation Mechanisms
A draft invoice is automatically created on PayPal based on the*1 billing information (email address, company name, name of the person in charge, billing amount, billing date, etc.) entered into Questetra BPM Suite. (In this case, Questetra BPM Suite sends a signal to PayPal to create a draft invoice and to send the billing information.)
Questetra BPM Suite signals PayPal to send the invoices created on PayPal to the billing address.
Questetra BPM Suite will retrieve the payment status of the billing partner*2 on PayPal.
*1 It is also possible to automatically insert information that has already been obtained.
*2 The billing party (payer) must have a PayPal account in order to automate the process described in this article.
How to Automate Invoice Creation/Sending and Payment Confirmation
In Questetra BPM Suite, the workflow diagram shown in the figure below serves as a blueprint for the business system.
On the workflow diagram created, there are steps that are processed by users and steps that are processed automatically (by the system). These steps are processed in sequence from the start to the end of the process.
The figure above is a workflow diagram that illustrates the “PayPal Automatic Billing” workflow. The specific process flow is as follows
- Manual task: Enter the billing details (billing information, billing amount, payment due date, and other items predetermined when the workflow application was created).
- Automatic processing step (PayPal invoice generation item): A draft invoice is automatically generated on PayPal based on the information entered in 1.
- Automatic processing step (PayPal invoice sending item): The invoice generated in step 2 is automatically sent to the billing recipient.
- Automatic processing step (Timer item): Waits until the day after the payment due date entered in step 1. (It waits at the same step for the set period of time.)
- Automatic processing step (PayPal payment status check item): The payment status is automatically retrieved for the invoiced item.
Once a process is initiated in this manner, all that is required is to enter the billing information to automate the process from invoice creation to confirmation of invoice delivery and payment.
How to Automate Billing Operations
The simple workflow App described in the previous section can be applied to automate the actual billing process.
For example, billing tasks involving multiple departments and intradepartmental approvals can be automated by using PayPal’s automated processing items. An actual sample workflow App can be viewed at the following support site.
Thus, with Questetra BPM Suite, you can build business systems for various operations with no or low code and automatically process API-connected cloud services.
Electronic or automated business operations. Why not try it yourself?
