Method’s complex usage-based billing made it hard to get accurate usage data and invoice customers, and the manual billing process often took hours to complete. They needed a solution that would require no ongoing effort from engineering.

Orb provides Method with an event-based billing architecture. Now, Method can evolve its pricing without any technical ramifications, and the billing process is automated. The engineering team stays focused on innovation and can launch new features without worrying about the impact on billing.

• A sophisticated pricing strategy meant a painful, manual billing process on the backend for Method
• They wanted engineers focused on innovation, not billing, so they turned to Orb to provide their event-based billing architecture
• Customers keep getting great service, and engineers can launch new features with no impact on the billing experience.

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Method relies on a sophisticated usage-based pricing strategy to support its growth and varied customer base. However, executing this strategy with a scalable billing system is no small feat because the company deals with real-world payments that can take several days to settle or be reversed, making it challenging to track usage accurately. With a large volume of events and many nuances to each billing dimension, their system has many moving pieces.

A need for precision, down to the penny

When Cailey Ryckman, Method’s finance consultant, joined to manage billing and accounting, getting accurate usage data into a format she could invoice customers for was a struggle. She relied on developers to pull reports for her and manually entered them into Quickbooks. The entire process often took her hours to complete.

To improve the process, the team could either build a solution in-house or have their accountant manually type in data, taking up to six hours per billing cycle. But such manual data entry comes with risks: wasting time, fat-fingering something, and triple-checking to ensure the total on an invoice equals the total anticipated.‍

Method’s decision to buy vs. build

When Co-Founder and CEO Jose Bethancourt and the team built Method, they weren’t thinking about it from a billing perspective—they were focused on their users. Adding billing would mean an immense amount of recoding. They needed an event-based system without having to build or maintain it.

Orb answered Method’s need for an event-based billing architecture and made implementation easy. Now, a webhook notification is triggered for every payment processed, sending a billable event into Orb.

Saving time and ensuring flexibility for growth

Orb gives Method the flexibility to continue evolving its pricing without needing to write code or re-integrate. Cailey no longer relies on the engineering team to pull data for her—it’s all there in Orb, it’s synced, and she doesn’t have to do any data entry—she can easily invoice customers via Quickbooks at the click of a button. And because Orb handles the full billing lifecycle accurately, the team doesn’t have to worry about double charges or inaccurate calculations. 

Orb also provides flexibility for Method’s customers. For example, if Method changes to a different payments rail or swaps banking partner, such internal changes can happen without impacting billing—customers keep getting Method’s superior services (and getting billed for them) uninterrupted. 

Staying focused on innovation

With Orb, Method’s engineering team doesn’t have to be involved so they can focus on innovation, not billing. Developers can launch new features and make changes to Method’s products faster without having to worry about the impact on billing.