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How Yelp Automated 90% of its Revenue Recognition
Data Engineering

How Yelp Automated 90% of its Revenue Recognition

Learn more about how Yelp pulled of a multi-year project impacting millions of users

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Data Tinkerer
Dec 17, 2024
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How Yelp Automated 90% of its Revenue Recognition
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The old billing system (Source: Yelp)

TL;DR


Situation

Yelp's decade-old billing system no longer met industry standards. It caused errors in handling invoices and payments. This hurt its ability to use third-party financial tools. It also hurt its revenue reporting accuracy.

Task

Yelp needed to modernize its billing system. It had to align with standard practices, fix legacy issues, and enable growth. It also had to avoid disrupting operations.

Action

The team took the following actions:

  1. Gather Requirements – Use Domain-Driven Design to align stakeholders with their goals.

  2. Define Target Architecture – Design a custom billing solution inspired by industry standards.

  3. Project Planning – Establish cross-functional "Tiger Teams" to handle interdependent workstreams.

  4. Deliver Incrementally – Roll out changes to small customer groups. This will ensure correctness before wider deployment.

  5. Single A/B Rollout - Roll out features to one user group in stages. This will simplify metrics measurement.

  6. User Acceptance Testing (UAT) – Verify the system's correctness. Conduct thorough UAT with stakeholders of affected teams using detailed test plans.

  7. System Observability – Use a multi-layered observability approach with alerts and integrity checkers.

Result

Yelp completed an overhaul of its billing system, ensuring alignment with industry standards. This improved revenue accuracy and automated 90% of it by strengthening the data.

Use Cases

Accurate Billing Management, Automated Financial Reporting, Third-Party Integration

Tech Stack/Framework

Domain-Driven Design


Explained Further


Understanding the Legacy Challenge

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