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Billing & Invoicing

Sequence

UK / wider Europe Report an error

Panel rating · 6 judges · How to read the stars

Category median

Sovereignty: 1 of 4 dimensions proven

0–5 in half steps. 5 means the rubric's top anchor is met on the evidence.

by Sequence HQ Ltd · www.sequencehq.com

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Sequence: AI-assisted analysis on whats-best.ai Sequence: AI-assisted analysis on whats-best.ai (dark)

Add ?theme=dark to the image address for dark backgrounds. The badge shows the category and the month of the latest evaluation, and EU-Made where that is the product’s provenance. It never shows a score.

Sequence at a glance

Vendor
Sequence HQ Ltd
Headquarters
Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 26 Oct 2026
Data hosting
Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 26 Oct 2026
Free plan
Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 26 Oct 2026
Panel verdict
The AI panel rates Sequence 3/5, the mean of 6 judges. Sequence, a billing and revenue platform from Sequence HQ Ltd of England and Wales, scores highest on the subscription engine and revenue and handoff: usage, seat, hybrid and credit pricing with proration and amendments, quotes that become contracts, and revenue recognition to ASC 606 and IFRS 15 with journals exportable to Xero, QuickBooks, NetSuite or a generic ledger. how scores are made
As of
Vendor pages captured 26 Oct 2026; evaluated by the panel 28 Oct 2026. all sources

Sequence alternatives, European ones first →

Read this page as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.

The Finance Lead

Weighted verdict

Closes the month for a software company with eight million euros of recurring revenue. Wants MRR that reconciles with the ledger, deferred revenue scheduled rather than estimated in a spreadsheet, a journal or DATEV export the accountants can book without retyping, and dunning that stops before it reaches a key account.

Same scores as the panel view — this lens weights them the way this judge cares.

Scored by The Finance Lead

Panel median The Finance Lead This judge’s scores over the panel median. Each label opens its reasoning below.
Scores per criterion, in stars out of 5
Criterion Panel median The Finance Lead
Plans, pricing models & subscription lifecycle 4 of 5 4.5 of 5
Invoices & e-invoicing compliance 2 of 5 2 of 5
Cross-border VAT & tax handling 3.5 of 5 3.5 of 5
Payment collection, dunning & portability 3 of 5 3 of 5
Revenue reporting & accounting handoff 4 of 5 4.5 of 5
European sovereignty 2 of 5 2.5 of 5
Pricing transparency 2 of 5 2 of 5

Plans, pricing models & subscription lifecycle

How this is scored

How the product models what is sold and to whom: plans, add-ons and price points, trials, upgrades and downgrades with proration, usage-based and seat-based pricing, contract terms and renewals, quotes, and a self-service portal where the customer changes or cancels their own subscription.

0 — No subscription model; recurring charges are set up by hand per customer or per invoice.

3 — A recurring invoice or a fixed plan that repeats on a schedule, but no proration, no trials, no add-ons and no usage component.

5 — Plans with add-ons and trials, upgrades and downgrades with proration, renewals and cancellations handled by the system, and a customer portal for viewing and changing the subscription.

8 — Usage-based, tiered, volume and seat-based pricing with metering through an API, contracts with minimum terms, ramps and notice periods, quotes that convert into subscriptions, multiple currencies and price books, and the subscription history kept per customer.

10 — The commercial model lives in the product: hybrid pricing (commitments, prepaid credits, overage) without custom code, price changes rolled out to existing customers with grandfathering, entitlements exposed to the selling application, and every change to a subscription versioned and attributed.

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The Finance Lead

The commercial model genuinely lives in the platform: usage, seats, hybrid and minimum commitments, credit grants that burn down monthly with roll-over and overage after burn-down, and documented pricing models from linear to percentage-based graduated and volume tiers, all with proration and amendments handled and real-time metering rolled into the invoice. Quotes turn into contracts through the built-in CPQ and customers get a branded portal with invoice history, live usage and credit balances. I found no public information on grandfathered price changes or entitlements exposed to the selling application. 1 2 5 6

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Invoices & e-invoicing compliance

How this is scored

Whether the invoices the product issues are legally valid where the customer is: mandatory invoice content, sequential numbering, credit notes and cancellations instead of edits, retention and archiving to GoBD, and structured e-invoices (XRechnung, ZUGFeRD/Factur-X, Peppol) for business customers and public bodies.

0 — No invoices; the product charges cards or sends payment requests and the seller writes invoices elsewhere.

3 — PDF invoices from a template, but numbering, mandatory content, corrections and retention are not described.

5 — Invoices with sequential numbering and the mandatory content stated, credit notes and cancellations instead of edits, invoices in several languages and currencies, and a documented archive.

8 — Structured e-invoices to EN 16931 issued as XRechnung or ZUGFeRD/Factur-X and sent through Peppol, GoBD-compliant numbering and unalterable archiving stated, invoice data exportable for a tax audit, and the e-invoicing mandates in named EU countries addressed.

10 — Invoicing that stands up in any audit it may face: e-invoicing to public bodies and businesses in several EU countries with the channels named, clearance and reporting models (France, Italy, Poland) supported where they apply, a Verfahrensdokumentation or equivalent offered, and every invoice traceable to the subscription event that produced it.

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The Finance Lead

Credit notes are handled the way an auditor wants: created against issued invoices or from scratch, editable until finalized, voidable, tracked with a ledger balance, and carrying the related invoice number and amount. Beyond that I found no public information on sequential numbering, mandatory invoice content, retention or archiving, or structured e-invoices such as XRechnung, ZUGFeRD or Peppol. 1 7 8

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Cross-border VAT & tax handling

How this is scored

How the product gets tax right when the seller sells across borders: VAT rates per country and product type, reverse charge for business customers with VAT ID validation (VIES), the EU One-Stop-Shop, US sales tax — or, for a merchant of record, which tax liability it takes on in its contract and which it leaves with the seller.

0 — No tax handling; the seller types the rate on every invoice.

3 — One configurable VAT rate or a manual rate table, with no customer-location logic and no VAT ID check.

5 — Tax rates applied by customer country and status, reverse charge for business customers with a VAT ID field, and tax shown correctly on invoices and in reports.

8 — Automatic VAT per country and product type, VIES validation of VAT IDs, OSS reporting data, evidence of customer location kept, US sales tax through a named engine — or a merchant-of-record contract that states the tax liability it assumes and in which countries.

10 — Tax is discharged and evidenced: filings or filing data for OSS and the countries sold into, rate changes maintained by the vendor with a stated process, tax decisions per invoice explainable, and the division of liability between seller and vendor written into the terms.

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The Finance Lead

Tax is applied to each invoice line from the product's tax category, the customer's region and tax status, with regions down to individual US states, and reverse-charge invoices are marked as such, carry no tax rate, and include the customer's VAT number taken from the Tax ID field. Four named engines — Avalara, Anrok, Numeral, Sphere — extend calculation to ZIP level and to automated return filing. I found no public information on VIES validation of VAT IDs or OSS reporting data. 9 10

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Payment collection, dunning & portability

How this is scored

How invoices turn into money: which payment providers and methods the product works with, SEPA direct-debit mandates, automatic retries and dunning sequences, payment reconciliation, collections handover — and whether the seller can move subscriptions and stored payment details to another provider.

0 — No collection; invoices are sent and payment is chased by hand.

3 — One built-in payment provider with card payments, and failed payments reported but not retried or chased.

5 — Several payment providers or methods including SEPA direct debit with mandates, automatic retries of failed payments, dunning emails with configurable steps, and payments matched to invoices.

8 — Gateway-agnostic collection across named providers, smart retries and card updaters, dunning with escalation and service suspension rules, bank-transfer reconciliation, a handover to a collection agency, and recovery reported.

10 — Collection is portable and measurable: subscriptions and payment tokens importable and exportable with a documented migration path, routing across providers per country or method, recovered revenue reported per dunning step, and no lock-in to the vendor's own payment service stated in the terms.

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The Finance Lead

The dunning side is genuinely good: reminder sequences timed against the due date, branching on customer or invoice amount, a human approval stop before a reminder ever reaches a key account, reminders that stop themselves when an invoice is paid or written off, and an execution summary giving a full audit trail of what was sent. Collection runs through named providers including Stripe and GoCardless, with payments collectible from the customer portal and bank-transfer destinations in the UK, EU, US and Sweden. I found no public information on automatic retries of failed payments, card updaters, SEPA mandate management or a handover to a collection agency. 1 5 8 11 12

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Revenue reporting & accounting handoff

How this is scored

What finance gets out of billing: MRR, ARR, churn and cohort reporting, revenue recognition and deferred revenue, the export or sync to the accounting system and to DATEV, CRM and data-warehouse integrations, an API and webhooks, and a complete export of customer and subscription data.

0 — No reporting and no export beyond downloading individual invoices.

3 — A revenue overview and a CSV export of invoices, with no subscription metrics and no accounting integration.

5 — Subscription metrics (MRR, churn) on a dashboard, an export or sync to at least one named accounting tool, and a documented API with webhooks.

8 — Revenue recognition with deferred revenue schedules, a DATEV export or booking-ready journal for the ledger, native CRM and accounting integrations named, MRR movements explainable per customer, and a full data export documented.

10 — Billing is the system of record for revenue: recognition to IFRS 15 / ASC 606 stated, month-end close supported with reconciled reports, data-warehouse sync, audit trail of every financial event, and a complete export of customers, subscriptions and invoices that a successor system can import.

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The Finance Lead

This is what I close the month on: recognition to IFRS 15 and ASC 606 in a dedicated sub-ledger, journal reports in formats designed for direct import into Xero, QuickBooks, NetSuite or a generic ledger — or pushed straight to Xero — one journal per customer, product and invoice, and the deferred revenue and waterfall reports stated to reconcile to the journal report. Manual adjustments carry their own audit trail marked Standalone, and two-way connectors reach Salesforce, HubSpot, Snowflake, BigQuery and Redshift alongside a REST API and webhooks. I found no public information on a complete export of customers, subscriptions and invoices that a successor system could import. 1 8 13

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European sovereignty

How this is scored

Who the contracting entity and the parent company are, where customer, invoice and payment data are hosted, and who the subprocessors are (hosting, payment providers, tax engines, email delivery). Independently sourced by the sovereignty pipeline; billing data is personal and financial at once, so the whole chain counts, not only the database.

0 — Non-EU vendor and contracting entity, hosting unstated, subprocessors unnamed, and no data processing agreement offered.

3 — A privacy policy and a data processing agreement exist, but hosting location is unstated or non-EU and the subprocessors are not listed.

5 — EU hosting available and an EU contracting entity or EU representative, but parts of the chain (tax engine, email, analytics, support) run through non-EU providers without a stated safeguard.

8 — EU hosting on named infrastructure, EU contracting entity, subprocessors listed with their locations, a data processing agreement published, and security certifications (ISO 27001, SOC 2) stated.

10 — Sovereign end to end and evidenced: European ownership, entity, hosting and every subprocessor, data export and deletion documented, and certifications published with their scope rather than implied.

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The Finance Lead

The contracting entity is Sequence HQ Ltd, incorporated in England and Wales, with a published data processing agreement and a maintained subprocessor list, SOC 2 Type II stated, and processing limited to the EU and the US under standard contractual clauses — though the captured pages give different statuses for ISO 27001. I found no public information on the hosting infrastructure or the subprocessors' locations, and the company has signed an agreement to be acquired by Intuit. 1 2 3 4

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Pricing transparency

How this is scored

Whether a buyer can compute the real annual cost from public pages alone: platform fee, percentage of billed revenue or per-invoice fees, which modules (revenue recognition, e-invoicing, tax, extra gateways) cost extra, overage above a revenue band, setup and minimum term, and the merchant-of-record fee where it applies.

0 — No public prices at all; every customer is a sales call.

3 — A starting price or a free tier exists, but how cost scales with billed revenue, invoices or modules is unclear.

5 — Tiers are public with their main inclusions and revenue bands, but at least one commonly needed piece (e-invoicing, revenue recognition, extra gateways, overage) is unpriced or "on request".

8 — Every tier priced publicly with its scaling rule (revenue percentage, per invoice, per subscriber), overage and add-ons listed, minimum term and VAT treatment stated.

10 — Complete price computability: annual cost derivable for a given billed revenue, invoice volume and module set, with every add-on, setup, support and payment or merchant-of-record fee and the cancellation and data-return terms published.

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The Finance Lead

Growth is published at $799 per month for startups with less than $1m in annual revenue, add-ons start at $499 per month, and fees are exclusive of taxes with payment due within 30 days and late interest of 1% per month. But the Core and Scale tiers are 'Bespoke pricing', and the platform fee is assessed on projected billed revenue and the features required without published rates — so I cannot compute an annual cost for eight million euros of recurring revenue from these pages. 2 4

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European sovereignty — proven facts

1 of 4 dimensions proven

Built only from facts shown on the vendor's own pages. A dimension we could not prove is left open, not scored as zero.

Ownership Foreign-controlled ⚠ unverified 0/2 pts 1 Report an error
Data residency Not determined — uncited Report an error
Subprocessors Not determined — uncited Report an error

Questions about Sequence

Is Sequence European?

Yes, though not from the EU. whats-best.ai classifies Sequence as UK / wider Europe.

Where does Sequence store data?

Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 26 Oct 2026.

Does Sequence have a free plan?

Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 26 Oct 2026.

What are the best alternatives to Sequence?

As of 28 Oct 2026, the panel rates Chargebee (3.5/5), Younium (3.5/5) and Stripe Billing (3.5/5) highest among the other 12 Billing & Invoicing products evaluated. Ratings that look equal are rounded to half stars; the order uses the unrounded rating, then the name. The highest-rated European alternative is Younium (EU-Made). Ratings are the AI panel’s opinion, formed from public evidence: how scores are made. The full list, with European products first: Sequence alternatives.

Where this could be wrong

What we left out

A claim that does not survive our checks costs us the claim, not the page. This is what was taken off this one.

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Sources (14)

The pages every claim on this page was read from — each one checked, dated, and kept verifiable.

  1. 1 Vendor homepage www.sequencehq.com Checked 26 Oct 2026 Details →
  2. 2 Pricing page www.sequencehq.com Checked 26 Oct 2026 Details →
  3. 3 Privacy policy docs.sequencehq.com Checked 26 Oct 2026 Details →
  4. 4 Terms of service docs.sequencehq.com Checked 26 Oct 2026 Details →
  5. 5 Plans, pricing models & subscription lifecycle — found from sitemap docs.sequencehq.com Checked 26 Oct 2026 Details →
  6. 6 Plans, pricing models & subscription lifecycle — found from sitemap docs.sequencehq.com Checked 26 Oct 2026 Details →
  7. 7 Invoices & e-invoicing compliance — found from sitemap docs.sequencehq.com Checked 26 Oct 2026 Details →
  8. 8 Invoices & e-invoicing compliance — found from sitemap docs.sequencehq.com Checked 26 Oct 2026 Details →
  9. 9 Cross-border VAT & tax handling — found from sitemap docs.sequencehq.com Checked 26 Oct 2026 Details →
  10. 10 Cross-border VAT & tax handling — found from sitemap docs.sequencehq.com Checked 26 Oct 2026 Details →
  11. 11 Payment collection, dunning & portability — found from sitemap docs.sequencehq.com Checked 26 Oct 2026 Details →
  12. 12 Payment collection, dunning & portability — found from sitemap docs.sequencehq.com Checked 26 Oct 2026 Details →
  13. 13 Revenue reporting & accounting handoff — found from sitemap docs.sequencehq.com Checked 26 Oct 2026 Details →
  14. 14 Revenue reporting & accounting handoff — found from sitemap docs.sequencehq.com Checked 26 Oct 2026 Details →