About Aquant

Aquant is an AI platform for field service organizations. Its agentic AI product helps technicians and service teams diagnose equipment issues, resolve problems faster, and apply expert knowledge across the service workflow.

Before Vayu

Before Vayu, Aquant relied on Maxio for subscription billing, but the system was not built to support the company’s new consumption-based AI pricing model.
The process still involved manual transaction creation, product selection, and adjustments for more complex invoices. As Aquant prepared to monetize AI usage through Answers and Minutes Used, Finance needed a way to meter usage, apply the right pricing model, generate billing outputs, and support downstream revenue recognition without adding manual work around Maxio.

“Maxio worked for our earlier SaaS model, but it wasn’t built for the consumption-based AI model we were moving toward.”

Joel Jeselsohn
Joel Jeselsohn CFO @ Aquant

Challenges

  1. Maxio could not support the new consumption model – Maxio worked for a simpler SaaS billing motion, but Aquant’s AI revenue model required more than fixed subscription billing. Usage-based revenue needed to be captured, priced, billed, and recognized based on actual consumption.
  2. Usage needed to be metered by real AI consumption units – Aquant’s usage model is based on Answers and Minutes Used — AI answers and minutes spent in chat with AI. These units needed to be tracked as billable consumption, not treated as generic activity or flat subscription usage.
  3. Billing had to support fixed + prepaid + pay-as-you-go pricing – Aquant’s commercial model combines a fixed AI Platform subscription with prepaid usage and pay-as-you-go consumption. That creates a more dynamic billing workflow than a standard SaaS plan.
  4. Revenue data had to flow into downstream finance systems – Aquant needed Vayu to sit between Salesforce and downstream systems, sending billing and accounting outputs to QuickBooks Online and supporting sales tax workflows through Anrok.Manual Invoice Generation: Every billing cycle involved reviewing contracts, updating spreadsheets, and manually issuing invoices – introducing delays and risk.
  5. NetSuite Integration Gaps – Key invoice details didn’t sync properly, causing confusion across teams and complicating customer-facing reporting.‍
  6. Growing Need for Contract Flexibility – VI Labs manages a variety of contract structures — some usage-based, some with mid-year changes, and others with variable billing cycles. They needed a system that could adapt to this complexity without requiring constant reconfiguration.

Solutions

  1. Vayu became Aquant’s revenue execution layer for AI usage – Aquant needed more than a replacement billing tool. It needed a system that could connect product usage, pricing logic, billing, and revenue recognition into one operational workflow. The original case draft frames Vayu as the execution layer between product usage, pricing logic, invoices, and revenue recognition.
  2. Salesforce contracts flow into Vayu – Salesforce remains the upstream source of contract and commercial terms. Vayu uses that contract context to determine how usage should be priced, billed, and passed downstream.
  3. Vayu meters Answers and Minutes Used – Vayu ingests Aquant’s AI usage data and evaluates it based on the relevant customer, contract, usage unit, and pricing rule. The source draft describes this as usage events being evaluated by customer, model type, contract, usage unit, and pricing rule.
  4. Pricing logic supports fixed, prepaid, and pay-as-you-go models – Vayu applies the logic needed to support Aquant’s AI Platform subscription alongside prepaid usage and pay-as-you-go consumption. This gives Finance a way to operationalize the model without rebuilding billing logic manually.
  5. Billing output flows to QuickBooks Online and Anrok – Vayu sits between Salesforce and Aquant’s downstream finance stack, sending billing/accounting outputs to QuickBooks Online and supporting tax workflows through Anrok.
  6. Revenue recognition becomes part of the workflow – Instead of treating usage, billing, and revenue recognition as disconnected steps, Vayu helps structure the data so Finance can support recognition from the same usage-matched billing workflow. The draft already

Results

Building the foundation for AI-era revenue operations

  1. Aquant can move beyond fixed SaaS billing – Vayu gives Aquant the infrastructure to support a revenue model that combines platform subscription, prepaid consumption, and pay-as-you-go AI usage.
  2. Usage can become billable revenue – Answers and Minutes Used can be captured as real billing units, connected to customer contracts, pricing logic, invoice outputs, and revenue recognition.
  3. Finance gets a cleaner operating model – Instead of forcing new AI pricing into Maxio workarounds, Finance gets a system designed to manage usage-based billing logic directly.
  4. The revenue stack becomes connected – Salesforce, Vayu, QuickBooks Online, and Anrok become part of one clearer workflow from contract to usage to billing and downstream finance operations.