How SafelyYou automated usage-based billing and AP portal submissions with Tabs

About SafelyYou

SafelyYou serves senior living operators through a hardware-as-a-service model that combines installed hardware with AI-powered software and related consulting services. As the company has grown, its commercial model has continued to evolve. Customers may purchase different products across individual communities or care settings, with billing requirements that vary by account. That complexity makes the finance operation behind SafelyYou an important part of its ability to scale.

The Challenge: Personalized Billing Became Impossible to Scale Manually

• Customized billing at scale: SafelyYou invoices a large customer base, and many customers have billing requirements specific to their organization.
• Manual usage calculations: Usage data had to be calculated outside the revenue platform before billing data could be imported.
• Labor-intensive AP portal submission: For customers with procurement portals, the team had to upload invoices and manually key information already contained in the PDF.
• Spreadsheet-driven collections: The team tracked overdue accounts and previous follow-ups manually, making collections a time-consuming periodic exercise.

SafelyYou’s billing environment does not fit neatly into a standard subscription model. Individual customer contracts can include different billing structures and presentation requirements. Hannah Cole-Butler, SafelyYou’s Senior Manager of Accounting Operations, manages that complexity across a large base of individually invoiced customers.

As that complexity grew, SafelyYou’s previous revenue platform became increasingly difficult to work around. It could not accommodate the company’s billing requirements without heavy reliance on manual imports.

Much of the work required to translate that complexity into an invoice fell to Hannah and her team. Contract data had to be manually extracted from signed contracts and formatted for import into the company’s previous revenue platform. Usage-based charges required their own calculations before the data could be loaded. Even after invoices were generated, the team frequently needed to edit them to meet specific customer requirements.

“Before Tabs, I was manually extracting the contract data, building the imports, and then still editing the invoices. It was a beast to manage ”

— Hannah Cole-Butler, Senior Manager of Accounting Operations, SafelyYou

As SafelyYou scaled, the workload extended beyond invoice creation. Many customers required invoices submitted through their own procurement portals. These systems accepted the PDF, but SafelyYou’s team still had to manually re-enter the invoice information for each submission, multiplying the manual work across many communities.

Why Tabs: One Revenue Platform That Can Adapt to SafelyYou’s Complexity

When SafelyYou began evaluating alternatives, Hannah found plenty of point solutions. Some handled usage-based billing while others focused on AR or revenue recognition. What stood out about Tabs was its ability to support the broader revenue workflow, beginning with the contract and extending through receivables.

“Tabs was one of the very few full-stack revenue software solutions I found. It takes us from the contract all the way through the AR and receivables side.” — Hannah Cole-Butler, Senior Manager of Accounting Operations, SafelyYou

SafelyYou needed a system flexible enough to accommodate billing requirements that vary by customer. Throughout implementation, the Tabs team has worked closely with SafelyYou to support billing structures that were not fully represented in the platform when the partnership began. For Hannah, that willingness to adapt has become one of the biggest differences from SafelyYou’s previous platform.

Automating usage-based billing

SafelyYou’s usage calculations previously required Hannah to work directly with usage data, apply formulas, verify the results, and import the finished billing data into the revenue platform. “Automating the usage-based calculations was the most immediate thing Tabs came in with the functionality to do,” explained Hannah.

Tabs now ingests the relevant usage data and applies the billing logic inside the system. SafelyYou can define which data applies to a particular product or customer grouping, allowing Tabs to handle billing structures that vary across customers.

Automating AP portal submissions

AP portal submission has been another major source of manual work. In the heaviest week of the monthly billing cycle, one staff member could spend roughly eight hours uploading PDFs and entering invoice information into customer portals. A full day’s worth of work, lost to an administrative task.

“I can’t say enough about the AP portal submission. Many of our customers have custom requirements for paying our bills, so having that automated is a heavy lift off of us.” — Hannah Cole-Butler, Senior Manager of Accounting Operations, SafelyYou

Instead of requiring accounting staff to take information from an invoice and manually re-enter it into each customer’s system, Tabs is automating that submission workflow for the team.

Keeping collections moving throughout the month

Previously, the accounting team exported its AR aging data and maintained a spreadsheet of overdue accounts. Team members then reviewed email chains to reconstruct previous conversations before deciding on the next follow-up. “Leafing through those email chains was manual work,” said Hannah. “The Collections Agent is automating that and suggesting the next action to take.”

Tabs is beginning to move that workflow into the revenue platform. Automated dunning keeps outreach running throughout the month, while the Collections Agent surfaces the history of communication and recommends the next action.

Building around the way SafelyYou operates

Hannah credits the Tabs team’s hands-on support with helping SafelyYou navigate the complexity of bringing its communities into Tabs while its business evolved.

“We didn’t have to adapt to fit what Tabs had built. Tabs adapts to fit how we’re built. The biggest point is the adaptability and the ability to be nimble.” — Hannah Cole-Butler, Senior Manager of Accounting Operations, SafelyYou

That partnership also gives SafelyYou a voice in how capabilities develop. When the team identifies a workflow the platform needs to support, Hannah can work directly with Tabs on how it should function for SafelyYou’s use case.

Life With Tabs: Scaling RevOps Without Scaling Manual Work

The operational impact is visible across SafelyYou’s highest-effort workflows:

• Individually invoiced customers supported at scale, even as billing requirements vary substantially across the customer base.
• Usage calculations automated from usage data through invoicing, removing a major manual workflow from Hannah’s team.
• Roughly eight hours of manual portal submission work addressed during a peak week each month for one accounting team member through the Tabs AP portal automation.

For Hannah, the larger impact is what that automation means for SafelyYou’s ability to grow. Tabs gives the team a way to absorb growing billing complexity within the revenue operation they already have.

“There’s no way we could have scaled to the point we’re at if we were still on our previous platform. I would have had to throw so much more headcount at it. Tabs being able to handle the ingestion of the usage data for usage-based calculations was a huge workflow that our previous platform wasn’t going to do.” — Hannah Cole-Butler, Senior Manager of Accounting Operations, SafelyYou

SafelyYou is working to bring more of its reporting workflow into Tabs. For a finance team supporting an increasingly complex revenue model, the goal is to keep more of the revenue workflow inside one adaptable system, reducing the manual work required to support the next stage of growth.