RecVue Asset Billing: Know the Essential Details of your Critical Resources

Are you asset-rich? Better yet, how do you know?

An asset can mean many different things, of course, but for our purposes, an asset is a resource with specific economic value owned or controlled by a corporation with an expectation of potential future benefit. Bought or created to increase a firm’s value or for the benefit of its operations, assets can generate cash flow, reduce expenses or improve sales.

The range of companies choosing to live or die by these sizable, pricey and often remote assets now extends beyond construction and car rental agencies to include everything from agriculture, medical equipment, hardware/software, people staffing, entertainment, storage, security and Internet-of-Things-enabled (IoT) devices.

Given both the importance and growing level of sophistication sought to track the performance and retention of these assets, businesses today are seeking more analytical tools for this purpose.

Why not an ERP, which typically offers an asset management module, you ask?

• The end result of asset management requires specific billing rules and terms applied to each asset, beyond the capabilities of these modules
• Let’s not forget flexible pricing considerations, another imposing challenge
• Inability to handle recurring billing tied to an asset or the level of detail necessary

Given this, more companies today have clued in on specialized asset billing for the critical operational functionality it has become. Significant investment has been made toward these assets. Properly evaluating the value of those investments with long-term growth potential in mind requires the right mesh of considerations and detailed calculations.

Adding heft to this emerging need, KPMG called out middle- and back-office processing, automation and emerging technologies as key trends in its COVID-19-fueled industry examination, “New Reality for Asset Management.”

Describing the industry as slower to adopt new technologies than other sectors, KPMG’s piece noted the pandemic didn’t change the importance of that need “but rather it quickly sharpened minds and added urgency to the technology agenda.

“Those without efficient and effective digital data platforms quickly realized their ability to operate was being constrained.”

- KPMG 

There’s a reason RecVue’s asset billing and payments capability was so thoughtfully designed as an essential piece of its powerful billing engine. This coupling allows an organization to maximize the value of its invested resource stock and its decision making for future growth, with these considerations:

• Bill at the equipment serial number level of detail for any asset leased or rented to your customers on a recurring basis
• Receive valuable visibility into your future billing schedules, whether a month, quarter or beyond
• Cater to a wide variety of industry-specific assets for billing purposes with ease
• Integrate asset data details with any ERP and import orders via API from any outside system
• Handle payment processing through payment contracts via asset serial number for use of vendor services and external locations to store assets
• Enable granular visibility into asset booking, movement and fulfillment reporting
• Incorporate necessary calculations and adjustment schedules for activities with a billing impact, including repair, cancellation, termination and loss

Consider how RecVue asset billing helped Textainer, one of the world’s largest lessors of intermodal containers, with a fleet of more than 3.5 million 20-foot containers owned or managed.

With an outdated billing system last updated for Y2K, contract complexity shedding little insight into the whereabouts of its global container fleet and a cumbersome billing process of 40 unique reports and queries, the company had more than its share of must-fix issues to address. RecVue was up for the challenge.

Brought in to solve billing requirements Oracle and Microsoft products could not, RecVue applied multidimensional pricing factors including size, location and length of term and unique booking details per asset to bill for recurring charges of multi-year contracts for Textainer’s container fleet as well as one-time handling charges, damage collection and other assorted fees. Additionally, RecVue handled payment agreements for storage warehouse needs for unused containers. 

With RecVue’s help, Textainer is able to automate its entire order-to-cash process, enable pricing and contract flexibility and eliminate revenue leakage.

To learn how RecVue’s capabilities helped others, Contact us to discuss our role as global car rental leader Hertz integrated its billing and partner payment processes across 43k franchise offices, in total handling over 4.5M rental agreements each month.