Migrating SaaS subscriptions using Bunny CLI
What is this madness?! A blog post entirely written by a human...
Well lock in folks and get ready for walk through of the new Bunny Command Line Interface (CLI) tool and learn how we use it to help companies migrate their subscription mess into the green pastures of Bunny.
Unravelling the SaaS subscription mess
Before we get started on the nerdy part of the CLI, let's give you some context on why we created it in the first place.
At Bunny we speak with a lot of SaaS companies that share a similar problem. They all start out with a "it will do for now" attitude towards subscription management and billing that eventually becomes a painful mess as they start to scale.
As with most things in life, unless you build from a solid foundation then at some point you will fail spectacularly. Fortunately for the world of subscription software Bunny has been laser focussed on creating an opinionated platform that supports best practices and ensures companies can scale from startup to IPO.
As it turns out the first challenge we face with new customers is understanding the mess they have found themselves in and working out a plan to get them migrated to Bunny.
We have several tools that help us extract customer and subscription data from the services or platforms that our customers are currently using. The tools are part of a pipeline that first extracts data, then presents it in a way that can be reviewed by humans and then finally imports into Bunny.
Our CLI is a productized version of this tooling pipeline and currently supports the final stage which is importing the data into Bunny.
How to install and use the Bunny CLI
The Bunny CLI is currently available for download via Github at https://github.com/bunnyapp/bunny-cli and has installation instructions included.
Once you have the CLI installed you will be able to type `bunny --help` to get a list of the available commands.
Currently you can do the following (with more to come):
Import products, plans and pricing
Import accounts, contacts and subscriptions
Import legacy MRR data for historical subscriptions
Import historical invoices and PDFs to maintain a complete invoice history for customers.
Watch this video to learn how to setup authentication and start using the CLI.
Be honest...
Let's face it, migration projects are always difficult but with tools like the Bunny CLI and our experience in making sense of the mess, migrations have just got that little bit easier.
If you're running up again subscription billing and revenue recognition problems but are too scared to take on migrating to a new billing solution then get in touch with the team at Bunny. We'll give you an honest appraisal of how much time and effort we think it will take to get your revenue operations department running like a well oiled machine.
