Rillet $70M: Kill Billing Friction, Protect Renewals
Quick take: Rillet just closed a $70M Series B (a16z + ICONIQ, with Sequoia and others) only 10 weeks after its $25M Series A. The company builds an AI-powered ERP that ties AR/AP, billing, bank data, invoices, and multi-currency/entity management into one flow. They’re using the cash to deepen AI, scale product, and hire across customer success, engineering, and go-to-market.
This is not “finance news” you can ignore. When ERP data becomes real-time and accessible, billing friction drops, DSO shrinks, and renewal risk falls. That’s squarely in CS territory.
Why this matters for CS leaders
Most churn looks like “product” on the surface and finance ops underneath: wrong invoices, slow credits, unclear usage tiers, missed purchase orders, and multi-entity mess. An AI-driven ERP that connects usage, contracts, and payments gives CS a way to:
Kill billing friction (fewer disputes, faster credits, cleaner renewals).
Spot risk earlier (overdues, credit notes, invoice errors) and act before QBRs.
Tell a CFO-ready story with hard numbers, not vague health scores.
If you need a clean way to turn these wins into retention math, use the model in my Net Revenue Retention Guide to show how fewer billing issues lift NRR and expansion odds.
The 30-60-90 CS playbook (ship this even if you’re not buying new software)
Days 0–30: Map the money friction
Create a shared view with Finance:
Invoice accuracy rate (% error-free first pass)
Dispute cycle time (open → resolved)
Credit note volume ($/month)
DSO for top 20 accounts
Refund time after product/contract changes
Build these into your Success Plans; my Customer Success Plan Template has a simple “Finance Signals” block you can copy.
Days 30–60: Wire finance signals into CS workflows
Add overdue/credit-note alerts to your CRM.
Tie contract changes to invoice updates automatically.
Standardize a Billing-Support-CS handshake for any invoice ticket >7 days.
For the mechanics, the hand-offs and automations are sketched in AI + CRM Integration for CS so you can run this with your current stack.
Days 60–90: Report like a CFO (and win budget)
Bring one slide to your exec review:
Before/After: invoice errors ↓, disputes resolved faster, DSO ↓
NRR effect: fewer billing blockers at renewal, faster expansions
Next step: scale to the next 50 accounts
For the narrative and slide flow, follow Strategic QBR Frameworks (Gong, Snowflake) and you’ll speak finance and product in the same breath.
Metrics to add to your dashboard
Invoice accuracy rate
Dispute cycle time (days)
Credit notes ($) per month
DSO (top accounts)
Billing-related tickets per 100 invoices
Renewals with $0 billing blockers (%)
If you want quick math to show impact, use the calculators hub in CS Calculators for NRR, LTV, and retention modeling.
Where CS gets the win
Fewer surprises at renewal. Clean invoices and clear usage tiers remove last-minute blockers.
Faster time-to-value. New entities and currencies stop being “IT projects” and become a same-day setup.
Better board reporting. You can roll operations into outcomes using the layouts in CS Reporting: Guides, Templates, Frameworks so every line item points to revenue. thecscafe sitemap 8 Aou…
If your QBRs still feel like status recaps, rework them with the checklist in Transform Quarterly Business Reviews to frame billing fixes as growth levers, not admin wins.
Copy-and-paste kickoff note (Email/Slack)
Subject: 60-day “billing friction” pilot to lift NRR
Body:
I’d like to run a 60-day pilot with Finance to reduce billing friction in our top 20 accounts.
Goals:
Increase invoice accuracy to 98%+
Cut dispute cycle time by 40%
Reduce DSO by 10 days in target accounts
We’ll track impact in QBRs and link results to NRR. If aligned, I’ll share a one-pager and a simple dashboard by Friday.
Want more like this?
—Hakan, Founder, The Customer Success Café Weekly Newsletter