Using KPIs and Reports to Grow Your Reseller Business

A billing platform holds the most complete record a reseller has of its customers: what each one takes, what they are charged, what they pay and when. SAFE’s KPIs and reports turn that record into figures you can track from month to month, such as customer growth and losses, revenue by dealer, collection results and services billing below cost.

This post sets out which KPI or report answers each of the common questions, and how they fit around the billing cycle. The figures are most useful compared with your own history, since public benchmarks rarely reflect a reseller’s mix of contracts, line counts and number porting.

Key Takeaways

• KPIs cover customers, invoices, numbers, features, payments, collections and debt ageing, each with breakdowns by status, dealer and period
• Customer growth and churn series show customers added and lost by period, so net movement is visible rather than hidden in a steady total
• Margin Watch finds live records billing below their carrier cost, and No Call Since finds dormant numbers
• Pre-billing and post-billing reports check each billing run before and after invoices are produced
• Your own trend is a better reference than generic churn or revenue benchmarks

Key terms in this article

What are KPIs in SAFE?

In SAFE, KPIs (key performance indicators) are summary figures drawn directly from billing records, such as active customers, invoice totals or collections by status, available by dealer and by period. They are also available through the KPI API for your own dashboards.

Customer KPIs

The customer KPIs show the size and movement of your base:

• Customer summary and customers by status, for the current position
• Customers by dealer, where you sell through dealers or a channel
• Customer growth and churn, showing customers added and lost in each day, week, month, quarter or year

The growth and churn series is the one to watch over time. A stable total can hide a business adding and losing customers at similar rates, and the separate added and lost figures show which side has changed. A customer who is dropped and later reinstated appears only in the period of their latest change.

Invoice, Payment and Collection KPIs

The invoice KPIs show invoiced totals by month and by dealer. Alongside them:

• Payment KPIs show amounts actually received, by payment method, dealer and period
• Collection KPIs show Direct Debit and card collections by status, including failed and retried collections
• Debt ageing KPIs group outstanding balances by days overdue

Invoiced and received figures can move differently, so look at both. A rise in invoicing with a flat payments line points to collection or credit-control work, and the Outstanding report combines each customer’s unpaid invoices into one balance for chasing. Our automated late-payment chasing guide covers how SAFE CRM organises that work.

Number and Feature KPIs

The number KPIs show numbers by status, dealer and type, and the feature KPIs show features and their charges by status.

Together they show the services behind the revenue figures. A customer whose number count falls over several months may be moving services elsewhere before the account itself is lost, and low take-up of a feature with a good margin may be worth raising with customers who would use it.

Finding Revenue You Are Not Collecting

Revenue leakage is income you are entitled to but are not billing or collecting. Several reports address its common causes:

• Unallocated and unrated calls: the pre-billing report lists calls that could not be matched to a customer or rated against a tariff before each run.
• Services billed below cost: Margin Watch finds live records billing below their carrier cost, with flags for below-cost, missing-cost and below-floor records.
• Charges that do not match what is provisioned: the service charges report shows the recurring and one-off charges across your base, to compare with what each customer actually has.
• Dormant numbers: the No Call Since report finds numbers with no calls since a given date, which may need disconnecting or a conversation with the customer.
• Unpaid invoices: debt ageing and the Outstanding report show balances still to collect.

If Margin Watch shows a pricing problem, our tariff and pricing guide covers how to correct it at source.

Reports Around Each Billing Run

Two reports bracket every billing run:

• Pre-billing report: shows the calls received from each carrier, lists unallocated and unrated calls, and highlights figures more than 15% away from the rolling average of recent months. Bills cannot be requested until it has been confirmed as checked.
• Post-billing report: lists accounts not produced, final bills and the invoices produced, with current and previous amounts for each customer so unusual changes stand out.

A Monthly Review

The figures are most useful when someone looks at them on a regular schedule. A review after each billing run might cover:

• the post-billing report, for accounts not produced and invoices that changed sharply
• customer growth and churn, and number counts for the larger accounts
• payments and collections against invoicing, with the debt ageing position
• Margin Watch and No Call Since, for pricing and dormant services

Whoever owns the review should be able to act on what it finds, whether that is correcting a tariff, contacting a customer or chasing a balance.

Getting Started

The reports overview describes each report and its filters. KPI and dashboard data feeds are included from the Premium package, and the How It Works page shows where reporting fits in the billing cycle. To see these reports against your own data, arrange a demonstration.