Can anyone describe the process of setting up a billing system from the ground up for their hosts?

Since I'm totaly unfamiliar with that, it would be extremely interesting to hear you stories, and of course gain experience :)

thnx.

That would take all day, an accounting system needs to fit your needs, what works for one of us wont work for you and vice versus.

Were you wanting more along the lines of how we bill people, or what software we use, or how to actualy write a billing system.

no... just the process itself... you could of course mention what software/servioces you use that as well :)

You can sign up with an automatic charging service or you can run a pc based charging scheduler package (assuming you have a merchant account).

We use quickbooks 2001 to keep track of everything then use revecom.com to do the actual credit card processing.

The traditional way you need:
-merchant account
-signup form
-ssl
-database for you customer information

I would advice you to sign up to instabill.com like I did. The whole thing is simple and good features. Just get the site up and working I thought to myself, and then I can make it better.