Automating Microsoft licence billing
One 2C developer built the platform that turned Crimson Line’s manual Microsoft licence billing into a verified monthly bill run - and into a product other MSPs can use.
1developer
built the whole platform, front end and back end
7steps
from licence data to client invoices, in one flow
Monthly
bill runs, checked against the last one
The client
About Crimson Line
Crimson Line was founded in 1998 and has branches in Cape Town and Johannesburg. It has built software for clients including OneDayOnly, Digimune, Hertex and redPanda Software, and since 2017 it has focused on the Microsoft product suite as a Microsoft Gold partner.
The challenge
What needed solving
Part of what Crimson Line offers its clients is licences, including Microsoft Azure and Microsoft 365. The whole process ran by hand: a lot of time went into sending invoices for every product sold each month, and there was no effective way to analyse the data or catch problems in it.
They needed one system that runs from buying the licences to their clients receiving invoices. And because people log in only a few times a month, for the monthly bill run, it had to be simple enough to make sense every time.
Built for a screen people open a few times a month - so it has to make sense every time.
The solution
What we built
One 2C developer built the whole platform, front end and back end. It pulls licence data from a third-party service, links each licence to the right entity in QuickBooks Online, checks the data against previous bill runs and pushes every client’s invoice to the accounting system.
Users connect their accounting account once, through OAuth2, and the app handles the rest.
- Licence data pulled from a third-party service
- Onboarding for new MSPs, each with its own list of clients
- A multi-tenant system where every user sees only their own data
- A one-time OAuth2 connection to QuickBooks Online
- Checks against previous bill runs before anything is invoiced
- Invoices for every client pushed to QuickBooks in a monthly bill run
- OTP login to protect sensitive billing data
- Redis caching and optimised SQL to keep data quick to display
The result
What changed
A manual monthly chore turned into a structured, verified bill run
Problems in the data caught before invoices go out
A deliberately simple interface for people who use it a few times a month
One system built to serve multiple MSPs, each with its own clients
A new approach to selling Microsoft licences, brought to market
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