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Decision one-pager
A decision one-pager template: the question, options with trade-offs, your recommendation, what got ruled out and why, and sign-off.
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# Decision: Should we build our own billing system or adopt a third-party platform?
**Owner:** Finance & Platform (joint) · **Date:** 2026-09-04
## Options
A. Build in-house - full control and no per-transaction fee, but 4-5 months of engineering time and ongoing maintenance.
B. Adopt Stripe Billing - live in 3 weeks, 0.7% transaction fee, but less flexibility on invoice customization.
C. Adopt Chargebee - a similar timeline to Stripe, higher fee, but better support for our multi-currency needs.
## Recommendation
Adopt Stripe Billing. The 0.7% fee is smaller than the fully-loaded cost of the engineering time Option A requires, and multi-currency is not yet a near-term need - if it becomes one, Chargebee stays on the table for a later migration.
## Ruled out
Building in-house was ruled out: the 4-5 month timeline delays the Q4 pricing changes that depend on it, and billing is not a differentiator worth owning. Chargebee was ruled out for now on cost, with the door left open if multi-currency becomes urgent.
## Sign-off
Approved by: ______________ (CFO) Date: ______________
How to use it well
- →List every option you seriously weighed, including the one you didn't pick, with its real trade-off - a memo that only shows the winning option reads as a decision already made, not one being reviewed.
- →Say what was ruled out and why in the same breath as the recommendation - it's usually the first question a stakeholder asks, and answering it up front heads off the memo becoming a re-litigation thread.
- →A sign-off line only works if someone's name actually goes on it. A recommendation nobody is asked to approve tends to sit as a nice document rather than become a decision.