Hi Billwerk tribe, 

We are thrilled to introduce our latest feature: B2B Reverse Charge! This enhancement is designed to make selling your services across the EU smoother and more compliant with tax regulations. Reverse charging is a tax mechanism where the recipient of the goods or services is liable to pay the tax instead of you, the supplier. This is only applicable for B2B transactions involving cross-border services or goods in the EU. The Reverse Charge mechanism does not apply to B2C transactions.    

What does this mean for you?

Reverse Charge functionality empowers B2B finance teams to navigate complex international tax scenarios effortlessly. By automating the identification, calculation, and reporting of reverse charges, we help you maintain compliance, reduce risk, and free up valuable time for strategic financial planning.

• Tax handling: Our system now applies the tax rates configured in the Tax Policy, ensuring compliance without any extra effort from you. When the Reverse Charge setting is enabled, the system will handle the application of reverse charge where ever applicable.
• Simplified operations: No need to manage complex tax rules or keep track of different tax rates for various countries. We’ve got it covered, freeing up your time to focus on growing your business.
• Accurate invoicing: Rest assured that your invoices will reflect the appropriate tax information, reducing the risk of errors and potential penalties.

How to Enable: To take advantage of this feature, simply create a new Tax Policy or edit an existing under Configurations and turn on the Reverse Charge setting.

When is Reverse Charge Applied?

• Countries: The reverse charge is applied when the customer’s country is different from your account’s country.
• VAT ID: The customer's record in the system should have a valid VAT ID configured
• Tax Policy: The tax policy associated with the Plan, Add-On and Usage-based billing has reverse charge enabled for it

Invoice and credit note update: When the Reverse Charge setting is enabled, your invoices and credit notes will include the text "Reverse Charge" in all the available EU languages in Billwerk+ Optimize as determined by Article 226 paragraph 11a of the VAT Directive 2006/112/EC (amending Directive 2010/45/EU of 13 July 2010)

Why is this Important?  Implementing reverse charges on B2B invoices and subscriptions can significantly impact your tax management processes, offering financial and operational advantages. 

Need Help? If you have any questions or need assistance with setting up the new feature, our support team is here to help. Raise a support ticket in the portal under the ? Help section.

We are excited to announce the introduction of Usage-based billing within the platform. With Usage-based billing, your customers can now enjoy tailored billing that scales with their actual consumption, ensuring they only pay for what they use. This feature allows you to test, measure and scale your pricing strategy with flexibility and reduce churn by offering tailored plans that grow with your customers.

Why We Introduced It:

In response to customer feedback and evolving market demands, we recognized the need for a billing model that adapts to variable usage. Whether it’s SaaS, utilities, or any consumption-based service, Usage-based billing offers:

• Flexible billing: Customers are billed based on actual usage, leading to fairer and more accurate charges.
• Scalability: As usage grows, billing scales automatically, removing the guesswork for businesses.
• Cost efficiency: This model eliminates the need for expensive fixed-rate plans, ensuring customers only pay for what they consume, building trust.

Learn more from our documentation

Explore detailed instructions on how to set up a Usage-based billing model in our support documentation here:

• Step-by-step guides on creating and configuring a Usage-based billing product.
• The various pricing models available for usage-based billing:

1. Per unit (flat pricing)
2. Per unit – Step (graduated pricing)
3. Per tier (volume pricing)
4. Per tier – Step (graduated volume pricing)
5. Percentage (revenue share pricing)
6. Percentage – Step (graduated rev share pricing)

• API integration details and tips for configuring billing for your customers.
• Information on calculating usage using different strategies, such as Sum of All Usages, Maximum of All Usages, and The Latest Usage.

For any questions or feedback to improve or validate the new product feel free to reach out to our support team support@billwerk.com

Contact our sales team for a personalized demo or to discuss how the solution might work for your business.

Billwerk+ will deprecate support for insecure cipher suites. Affected merchants will need to upgrade their TLS library.

DEADLINE: January 6, 2025

If you are using an insecure cipher suite and do not make this update, you’ll no longer be able to use the Billwerk+ API from the deprecation date onward. Notice that is is quite unlikely that you are affected by this change, as only old HTTP client libraries does not support newer more secure ciphers.

Which cipher suites are being deprecated

On or after December 3, 2024, we will be deprecating the following two cipher suites: 

TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA256 (0xc027)
TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA384 (0xc028)

This means that any client with a TLS library that uses one of these cipher suites, and does not support any of the cipher suites that will continue to be supported, will no longer be able to connect to the Billwerk+ API.

Why we are doing this

The cipher suites that we’re deprecating have a historical track record of security weaknesses. They're still vulnerable to attacks that may enable a bad actor to decrypt data. We consider this to be an unacceptable security risk, especially given our commitment to keeping our customers’ data secure.

What happens if a deprecated cipher suite is continued to be used?

If you continue to use one of the cipher suites we’re deprecating, you won’t be able to access the API. HTTP client libraries will fail to establish a TLS connection to our API. 

What cipher suites will be supported after deprecation?

We will continue to support the following cipher suites after deprecation:

• TLS 1.3 (suites in server-preferred order)
  TLS_AES_128_GCM_SHA256 (0x1301)
TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 (0x1302)
TLS_CHACHA20_POLY1305_SHA256 (0x1303)
• TLS 1.2 (suites in server-preferred order)
  TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256 (0xc02f)
TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 (0xc030)

What action should I take so that I’m not affected?

If you have a direct API integration with the Billwerk+ API:

• Ensure the TLS library you’re using supports one of the ciphers listed above

How can I test to ensure I’m using a supported cipher suite?

You can test by making a GET request to the following endpoint that only supports the cipher suites that will still be available after the deprecation of insecure suites:

https://staging-api.reepay.com/info/

If you receive a 200 OK response with JSON content, your client library is not affected by the change.

Example request with Curl

$ curl https://staging-api.reepay.com/info/
{"app.name": "CoreApiApp", ...}

Dear Valued Customer

In order to enhance security and comply with updated industry regulations, we are introducing a password expiration policy. Gradually introduced over the next three months, all user passwords will expire every 90 days, if two-factor authentication is not enabled for the user.

This change is being implemented to ensure the continued safety and security of your account. Prior to the 90-day expiration, users will receive reminder notifications to update their password when logging in. If logging in after password expiration, the user will be prompted for existing and a new password.

Notice that the password expiration policy is only in effect for users without two-factor authentication enabled.

If you have any questions or need assistance, please don’t hesitate to contact our support team.

Thank you for your understanding and cooperation in helping us maintain a secure environment.

Best regards, Billwerk+

We are excited to announce a small but powerful new feature for your hosted checkout pages - Custom Fields! In addition to controlling our standard fields (visibility, mandatory, or optional), you now have the ability to create your own custom fields tailored to your needs.

Product Page

With Custom Fields, you can:

• Create custom sections (e.g., "Car") and name them according to your requirements.
• Add various field types under each section, including text fields, number fields, and checkboxes.

For example, you could create a section called "Car" with fields like "Registration Number," "Brand," "Model," and a checkbox for "Do you want insurance?".

Custom fields will appear on your hosted sign-up page and can be tailored to individual products. Additionally, we've made a small enhancement by refining the header and adding merchant information, such as company name, address, email, and phone number, to the footer. The hosted sign-up page now also shares the same design as the customer portal.

Once a customer completes a purchase, the data entered in these custom fields will be stored as metadata linked to the customer.

Enhance your checkout experience by tailoring it to your customers' specific needs with Custom Fields!

• We're thrilled to announce a powerful new feature in Billwerk that enhances your flexibility: Offline Payment Methods! This new "Custom" payment method empowers you, as a merchant, to create and manage payment options that may not be natively supported by Billwerk. Whether it's bank transfers, checks, or even cash payments, you now have the tools to offer your customers these alternative methods with ease.

Key Features:

• Custom Payment Methods: If Billwerk doesn’t support a specific payment method you want to offer, you can now create it yourself. Customize everything from payment instructions to logos and currencies.
• Flexible Payment Handling: Choose whether Billwerk should automatically mark the invoice as settled upon generation, or set it to pending, allowing you to manually confirm payment once received. This flexibility ensures that you can tailor the payment process to your business needs.
• Enhanced Visibility: The payment instructions you configure will be clearly visible to your customers in both the payment window and on the PDF invoices. Additionally, the logos and payment method names will be displayed in the payment window, ensuring a seamless and professional presentation of your payment options.
• Seamless Integration: The Offline Payment Method feature is API-first, like the rest of the Optimize platform. Automate your payment confirmation process by integrating with your existing payment systems. For instance, if you receive payment data through a webhook or batch file, you can set up middleware to automatically update the invoice status in Billwerk.
  

How to Offer Offline Payment Methods to Your Customers

Once you've configured and enabled your Offline Payment Method, there are two ways to offer it to your customers:

• Enable it in the Payment Window: You can allow your customers to choose the offline payment method themselves directly in the payment window. Simply enable the option, and it will appear alongside other payment methods.
  
  
  
• Manually Add the Payment Method: Alternatively, you can manually assign an offline payment method to a customer in the Optimize Admin. This gives you the control to select the payment method that best fits the customer's needs on a case-by-case basis.
  

Important Reminder:

Remember that transactions processed through offline payment methods require manual verification, as they are not tracked by our system. This feature gives you the control to manage these transactions, whether it's for a bank transfer, check, or any other method you choose to support.

We believe this new feature will significantly enhance your payment flexibility, making it easier than ever to meet your customers’ needs.

Start exploring Offline Payment Methods today and enjoy greater control over how you manage transactions!

feature 

We are excited to announce a new feature: the DATEV export, integrated with Germany's leading accounting software. Understanding that accounting can be a time-consuming task, particularly when reconciling your cash-to-accounting process, we developed the DATEV export to streamline this entire process and enhance your efficiency.

With the new DATEV export, you can seamlessly transfer your financial data from Billwerk+ Optimize to DATEV. This means no more manual data entry or double-checking, saving you valuable time and effort.

The cash-to-accounting process involves recording all financial transactions in your accounting software, including invoices, payments, and credit notes. With the new DATEV export, all this information is automatically transferred, eliminating the risk of errors and ensuring accuracy.

Please reach out to our Customer Care team at, ree-support@billwerk.com if you would like to become a pilot user for this new feature, providing us with the following information to get you set up:

• Datev consultant number
• Datev account number
• SKR 03 or SKR 04
• account length 
• Export interval (monthly, weekly, daily)

You can read more guidance about the feature here.

feature improvement 

We are excited to announce our latest feature that will make your invoicing process even more efficient – e-mail attachments for PDF invoices. 

With this new feature, you can now attach PDF invoices and credit notes to your e-mails automatically. This will save your accounts team time and effort, allowing you to focus on other important aspects of your business.

How does it work?

It's simple! All you need to do is enable "Send invoices and credit notes as e-mail attachments" in your Invoice and Credit Note-settings from the configurations tab - this is a universal setting. 

Remember you can also:  

• Customize the invoice and credit note PDFs with your company logo, legal information, additional invoice fields and personalized message. 
• Once the feature is enabled, the PDF attachments will be automatically included in all relevant e-mails sent to your customers.

This feature is especially useful for businesses that have a large number of recurring invoices. You no longer have to worry about sending the invoice or credit note as an additional step outside of the Billwerk+ Optimize platform – it will be done automatically 😘 

Hello Billwerk tribe,

We are thrilled to announce the release of our latest feature – Entitlements – sometimes known as plan-based rights, this new addition is designed to enable you to define and manage the benefits associated with the product plans or add on’s customers have as part of their subscription. Sounds simple but this powerful feature ensures precise control over feature access, eliminates errors, enhances customer satisfaction, and significantly reduces administrative overhead.

For merchants who:

• Struggle with managing different feature sets/products for various subscription plans.
• Want to reduce confusion and manual errors in provisioning.
• Want to avoid customer confusion with paid features being inaccessible or being mistakenly granted access to unauthorised features.
• Reduce labour – no more manually tracking and updating entitlements, give the gift of time back to your support and development teams.

Key outcomes with Entitlements:

• Rapidly scale your pricing models and billing needs
• Agility to experiment with new pricing strategies
• Adapt quickly to changing market conditions and customer demand
• Stay ahead of competitors, increase retention and reduce churn
• No more in house custom code to interpret entitlements, make your codebase simpler and more efficient with our API integration too.

How to Use:

Visit ‘Configurations’  --- Under Product Catalogue --- Select ‘Entitlements’

To get started in the platform read our documentation here

Developer documentation to setup the Entitlements API integration here

If you need advice on entitlements ‘Submit a ticket’ from the ‘Help’ section.

We value your feedback! Let us know below what you think of Entitlements so we can enhance the feature further to make life easier for you.

Thank you for being a valued part of the Billwerk community.

Hello Billwerk+ users!

We are excited to announce a new feature that will help you define the benefits associated with your plans, add-ons, and subscriptions - Entitlements!

So, what exactly are Entitlements? Simply put, they define the perks and privileges that are associated with your products and services.

This feature is perfect for businesses that offer different tiers of plans or add-ons, as you can now easily control which customers have access to which aspects of the product. It also allows for a more personalized approach to your offerings, giving your customers a tailored experience based on their needs.

As of now Entitlements can be added to your Plans, Add-Ons and Subscriptions via APIs. The ability to configure them from the front-end will be available shortly. For more information, checkout the API documentation here https://optimize-docs.billwerk.com/reference/entitlement