How Tellescope Eliminated 10+ Hours of Manual Billing Every Month
“I'd probably have to hire somebody. I can't go back at this point.” — Derek Strauss, COO, Tellescope
10+ hrs/mo
Manual billing eliminated
100+
Customers auto-invoiced
1 endpoint
Setup to get started
0
Manual invoice reviews needed
The Problem
Before LedgerUp, Derek Strauss personally managed billing for every single Tellescope customer. The process consumed over 10 hours per month and demanded constant vigilance to maintain accuracy.
Every billing cycle, Derek had to:
- Reference a master spreadsheet tracking each customer's billing date, type, and contract terms
- Log into Tellescope's admin panel to calculate usage for each customer
- Cross-reference contracts for seat-based vs. contact-based pricing
- Manually update each customer's Stripe subscription with the correct amounts
- Pull Twilio usage data and add it as a separate line item
- Check off each customer and repeat for over 100 accounts
To ensure customers were billed correctly I had to spend hours meticulously calculating usage and entering in line items. It was honestly the thing that I hated the most about my job.
— Derek Strauss, COO, Tellescope
Customers with legacy pricing or unusual contract terms required extra care. Derek spent significant time verifying every invoice was accurate. Even taking a day off required advance planning to make sure every account was handled first.
Why LedgerUp Over the Alternatives
Derek evaluated other tools, including Maple. While the product seemed solid, it would have required significant engineering effort to stand up.
It almost came to the point where we could honestly just build a lot of it ourselves — but that would be a bad use of our time.
— Derek Strauss, COO, Tellescope
LedgerUp stood out for one reason: getting started was easy. Tellescope's setup was minimal — LedgerUp handled the migration and took it from there.
We barely had to do anything on our end and then you guys kind of did the rest. That was the most attractive part.
— Derek Strauss, COO, Tellescope
Derek was candid that the AI angle wasn't what sold him. Solving the problem was.
I didn't really care if it was AI. You guys solved the pain point I was looking for: you can automatically generate invoices and I don't have to do that anymore.
— Derek Strauss, COO, Tellescope
The Results
Billing time: virtually eliminated
What once consumed 10+ hours per month now takes a few minutes per week. That time is spent monitoring, not doing.
I don't have to generate stuff anymore. It's mostly just monitoring — going into Stripe or LedgerUp to look at the dashboards.
— Derek Strauss, COO, Tellescope
Collections on autopilot
The moment that surprised Derek most wasn't invoice automation. It was collections.
The ‘aha’ moment was the email follow-ups. I just say ‘Hey Ari, go follow up with all my delinquent customers,’ press send in Slack, and it just does it. That saved a lot of time.
— Derek Strauss, COO, Tellescope
New pricing flexibility
With billing automated, Derek is no longer afraid to offer more complex pricing. Tellescope now offers seat types that would have been a headache to track manually.
It's something I'm not afraid to offer now because I don't have to go figure it out myself each month.
— Derek Strauss, COO, Tellescope
Before & After
| Before LedgerUp | After LedgerUp |
|---|---|
| 10+ hours/month on invoice generation | A few minutes/week monitoring dashboards |
| Manual collections follow-ups | One command in Slack |
| Spreadsheet tracking 100+ customers | Fully automated billing cycles |
| Hours verifying every invoice manually | Accurate invoices, zero manual review |
| Couldn't step away without pre-planning | Zero-touch operations |
| Afraid to offer complex pricing tiers | Confidently offers new seat types |
You guys have been super responsive and a great partner. If people want to feel like it's more of a partnership than a customer and vendor, that's a good reason to work with you guys.
Derek Strauss, COO, Tellescope