Switching billing systems is a common business practice. Many of our customers have done it, and we’ve even done it ourselves. In this article, we outline what happens in Subscription Analytics during a billing system switch, how it impacts your data, and the steps to fix any imperfections in your metrics.

Here’s what we cover in this article:

• What happens in ChartMogul during a billing system switch
• Understanding the data
• Cleaning your metrics

Before you begin

Add an automation to merge duplicate customer records.

What happens in ChartMogul during a billing system switch

When you add your new billing system as a source and import subscription data, you’ll notice the following changes in ChartMogul:

• Duplicate customer records — For ChartMogul accounts created before May 21, 2024, ChartMogul imports customers from two billing systems and reports them in two sources — creating duplicate customer records (even when customers have the same email address or external ID). For ChartMogul accounts created on or after May 21, 2024, ChartMogul automatically merges customers. Learn more.
• Multiple sources — It’s recommended to keep your old billing system as a source to retain customer invoice and subscription history. For example, let’s say you have a customer who started a subscription in September 2019 in Stripe and your business migrates to Chargebee in June 2022. The customer will be reported as New Business from Chargebee in June 2022 and if the Stripe source is deleted, their subscription history will be lost.
• Inflated MRR and subscriber metrics — ChartMogul creates a large number of New Business and Churn movements when a new source is added.

Understanding the data

To visualize how a billing system switch impacts your metrics in ChartMogul, let’s look at the MRR chart and customer list.

MRR Chart

1. Navigate to Monthly Recurring Revenue.
2. Click Add Filter.
3. Select Source > is one of > select your old billing system > click Add.
4. Click New Segment and repeat step 3, selecting your new billing system.

Your chart will show a decrease in MRR from your old billing system, and an increase in MRR from your new billing system.

Customer List

1. Navigate to Customers.
2. Click the Customer column header to sort the list by name to easily view duplicate customer records.
   
3. Click Edit Columns and select Source Name:
   
4. Now, you can clearly see which source each customer is from and their current subscription status.
   

Cleaning your metrics

To have your customer and subscription metrics reported accurately in ChartMogul, merge duplicate customers and connect their subscriptions.

Merge duplicate customers

Follow the steps below to merge customers manually through the ChartMogul interface. Customers can also be merged with the API or using automation.

Merge duplicate customers so all of their subscriptions, attributes, and transactions are in the same record.

Let’s look at LaPiage Solutions as an example. LaPiage Solutions now have a record from the original source and the new source. They also contribute to churn events and new business events on the charts.

The following happens when merging customer records:

• The merged customer will have the UUID, email address, and location of the customer that they are being merged into.
• Both customers’ external IDs, tags, opportunities, tasks, emails, call logs, and notes will be preserved.
• Subscriptions, MRR movements, and transactions will be collated and ordered by date.
• If the same custom field exists on the customer record that you are merging into, the field value of the target customer will be preserved, and the one from the source customer will be lost.

This is LaPiage Solutions’ original record:

This is LaPiage Solutions’ new record:

LaPiage Solutions have more data in the second record, so we’ll merge the first record into the second record.

1. Navigate to the record with less data or older data that should be updated.
2. Click Merge.
3. Choose the customer you want to merge into. ChartMogul provides suggestions based on email or external ID. If you don’t find a match, you can also search.
4. Select the customer and click Next.
   
5. Check the details and then click Confirm and Merge.

We now have one record for LaPiage Solutions, with all of their details including:

• The external IDs from the old and new sources.
• A merged-customer tag.
• The Subscriber since date from their first subscription.
• A record of their net payments.

The record contains their entire subscription and transaction history from both records:

Connecting Subscriptions

When the old and new customer records have been merged, the customer will still have two subscriptions, one churn movement, and one reactivation movement.

With everything in one record, use the data editing tools to connect the two subscriptions and remove the false churn and reactivation movements.

You can only connect a canceled subscription to an active subscription and subscriptions paid for in the same currency. Make sure that all of the subscriptions are canceled in the old source to proceed.

1. In the customer record, scroll down to Monthly Recurring Revenue and click Connect Subscriptions.
   
2. Click both subscription lines.
   
3. Click Connect.
   

With the subscriptions connected, the false churn and reactivation events have been removed.

Before connecting subscriptions, LaPiage Solutions have two subscriptions: one Active and one Cancelled. Their MRR movements are reported as a New Business movement from the original billing system, an Expansion movement from the new billing system, and a Churn movement from the original billing system.

After connecting subscriptions, LaPiage Solutions have one subscription and one MRR movement.

Connecting subscriptions can be done in app or programmatically with the API. Learn more about connecting subscriptions programmatically.

Please contact support if you need further assistance.