How TRU Solutions cuts billing time by 98% with ZoneBilling and ZoneReporting

TRU Solutions, an industrial software company, was losing three days every month to billing. Every invoice built from scratch. Every line item manually calculated across 200+ clients. Aged receivables hit six figures.

Once they moved billing into NetSuite with ZoneBilling and layered in ZoneReporting to track churn and revenue retention, the shift was immediate. Billing shrank from three days to 1.5 hours. Six-figure aged AR dropped to $30,000. And for the first time, finance had the bandwidth to focus on what mattered: better reporting for execs and their PE firm, smarter payment workflows and well-earned advancements for the finance leadership team.

The Challenge: Billing delays, AR bottlenecks and blind spots in churn and revenue trends

TRU Solutions builds asset monitoring, compliance tracking and field operations software for infrastructure customers. Born from the merger of TruQC and Spot Tracker in mid-2022, they'd spent 2023 wrestling with manual billing while merging two customer bases onto a single platform and integrating distinct product lines.

That meant:

• 200+ clients, all calculated by hand: Each line item required manual checks to apply the right contract rates, flag overages and account for special pricing exceptions.
• Invoicing built from scratch: Every invoice was manually created, reviewed and tied back to spreadsheets – one by one.
• Complex approvals chains: Annual deals converting to monthly, early billing arrangements and handshake overage agreements all required multiple stakeholder sign-offs.
• Cash flow problems: Cash delays pushed aged receivables over $100,000.
• Derailed close process: Billing stretched the close to 15+ days, leaving no bandwidth for reconciliations or strategic work.
• Executive distractions: CEO and CFO had to field requests to personally reach out to business contacts for collections.

“Billing used to eat up three full days – right in the middle of close. It wasn’t just the time. It took up so much mental space that we couldn’t focus on reconciliations, checklists or anything else. Billing had to get done first.” – Emma Gruver, Controller at TRU Solutions

At the same time, the team lacked insight into client churn and usage behavior – especially for customers on variable pricing models. They couldn’t easily answer:

• Who increased or decreased usage month to month?
• Which clients churned, and from which industry verticals?
• Was churn tied to product fit, timing or pricing issues?

“We wanted to know when long-time customers dropped off or when usage spiked unexpectedly. If we’re seeing all of our churn from a specific vertical, that’s something product and sales need to act on.” – Emma Gruver, Controller at TRU Solutions

As a Jones Capital portfolio company, TRU’s finance team faced higher stakes. Manual processes couldn’t deliver the reliable metrics board meetings demanded – and every delay risked eroding investor confidence.

How can you provide strategic insights to executives and investors when basic billing consumes your month?

The Solution: Automated billing, churn visibility and scalable O2C process in NetSuite

In early 2024, TRU Solutions partnered with Zone to modernize billing and reporting directly within NetSuite. They chose ZoneBilling to automate project billing and ZoneReporting to track revenue churn and usage trends – two areas where manual work and blind spots were slowing growth.

Their billing complexity demanded it. TRU supports multiple models that a NetSuite-native billing engine had to handle automatically:

• Annual upfront billing for clients with five or fewer users
• Monthly usage-based billing for larger accounts with variable user counts and different overage pricing than contracted rates
• Per-site pricing for materials management clients – a flat rate per site regardless of user volume

When Emma joined TRU as Accounting Manager, she inherited a ZoneBilling implementation already in motion and worked closely with a consultant from The Vested Group to tailor the setup to TRU's NetSuite architecture and project billing structure.

Through detailed testing and a phased rollout, Emma stabilized billing, streamlined reporting and started chipping away at the bigger problems she saw beneath the surface.

TRU also implemented ZoneReporting to visualize NetSuite data in Power BI and track churn metrics that finance can easily pull for board presentations and internal reporting:

• Logo churn and revenue churn trends
• Client usage fluctuations
• Churn patterns by industry and customer segment

"ZoneReporting gave us a way to spot churn patterns and make changes. If a long-time client drops off or usage suddenly spikes, we know it – and we know who should follow up. It's kind of a set-it-and-forget-it tool. It just works. Sales and operation teams can focus on what the data's saying, not how to get to it." – Emma Gruver, Controller at TRU Solutions

The Results: 98% time savings, $70K+ in AR recovery and a faster, more agile finance org

ZoneBilling and ZoneReporting turned TRU’s NetSuite into a true growth engine. Finance went from chasing billing to driving strategy – enabling 15+% YoY growth, faster close, cleaner reporting and more time for process improvements they’d been putting off for months.

“With ZoneBilling embedded in NetSuite, billing management now takes us about an hour and a half – that's 98% time savings. It's like a blip on my radar, and it’s a really nice feeling.” – Emma Gruver, Controller at TRU Solutions

The impact went well beyond time savings:

• Billing time dropped 98% – from three days to 1.5 hours: With billing now managed directly in NetSuite through ZoneBilling, TRU runs invoices 16x faster. That time goes back into monthly reconciliations, close checklists and tackling Emma's wish list – like restructuring the income statement, restating the chart of accounts and simplifying cancellation workflows with future-dated logic. Now, executives like their CTO can pull departmental financial statements and compare them against the budget.
• Aged AR dropped from six figures to $30,000: With accurate invoices hitting the right contacts automatically, TRU cut down on billing errors and follow-up chaos. Reminder emails go out on the 15th and again once overdue – no manual chasing. Payments come in faster. DSO is lower. Cash flow got more predictable. And finance finally got out of collections mode.
• 50% faster month-end close: With ZoneBilling embedded directly in NetSuite, billing updates post in real time – eliminating batch delays that used to drag the close out to 15+ days. Now the team closes books in 7–8 days. They can drill into billing records at the transaction level, right from the ERP, streamlining audits, reconciliations and variance checks. Close runs smoother, with fewer surprises.

“The cancellation process in ZoneBilling has made things way easier. I can enter everything in advance and trust that billing will still be correct. If I forget in October, it’s fine – I already put it in the system, and it’s going to remember for me.” – Emma Gruver, Controller at TRU Solutions

• Strategic insights for business and PE reporting: With clean billing and revenue data from ZoneBilling and churn insights from ZoneReporting, TRU delivers reliable numbers a PE firm, Jones Capital, can trust. Emma pulls ZoneReporting data from Power BI to create presentations for different teams and board meetings – a "set it and forget it" approach that lets her focus on analyzing trends, growth patterns and customer retention instead of chasing down billing tasks.
• Enabled 15+% YoY revenue growth without adding headcount: With ZoneBilling’s automated invoicing and error-free billing, TRU scaled customer onboarding without piling on manual work. Invoices hit the right contacts on time. Cash comes in faster. Clean billing data flows into NetSuite, giving finance and leadership a clear view of churn, expansion and growth levers through ZoneReporting.
• Project success that led to a promotion: Leading the ZoneBilling and ZoneReporting rollout gave Emma a platform to show her impact. With billing management automated and churn insights flowing, leadership saw she could handle more – and promoted her from Accounting Manager to Controller.

“With ZoneBilling's automation and ZoneReporting's churn insights, we can also use extra time to actually evaluate the income statement and help run the business for the executives. Now our CTO can pull a statement for his teams and compare actuals to budget without finance needing to step in. That’s a huge shift.” – Emma Gruver, Controller at TRU Solutions

NetSuite-embedded billing automation and reporting for industrial software companies

TRU Solutions shows how native NetSuite automation can reshape order-to-cash for growing software businesses. ZoneBilling replaced three full days of manual invoicing with a real-time billing engine. ZoneReporting unlocked usage and churn insights the team had never had before.

What began as a billing cleanup turned into a broader finance transformation – tighter cash control, cleaner reporting and deeper cross-functional visibility that gives executives and their PE firm confidence in the numbers.

And for Emma? The implementation became the platform that launched her into leadership, earning her a well-deserved seat at the helm as TRU Solution’s controller.

“There was a lot that needed to get cleaned up, and ZoneBilling and ZoneReporting became the jumping board. Leading this change at TRU gave me the confidence to step into the Controller role and the momentum to tackle the rest of my wish list.” – Emma Gruver, Controller at TRU Solutions