Pricing Strategies: #6 Common Mistakes while Configuring Pricing

"Why does this month's billing feel messy again?"

That was the exact line Priya muttered while staring at the spreadsheet full of edited pricing, one-off discounts and mismatched subscription details. 

Her business was growing, but the pricing machine wasn't going anywhere. Instead, it looked like a complex cockpit.

Customers asked for new currencies.

Some needed recurring services, while others requested one-time work.

A few wanted add-ons.

Many asked for discounts.

All she did was manually adjust everything.

Priya wasn't making mistakes; she was doing what most growing businesses do: making pricing decisions relatively instead of structurally.

In this final post on pricing, let's understand the most common mistakes that businesses make, along with the solution that could give you more control and consistency.

Using One Pricing Method for Every Offering 

"Let's just put everything under one flat price..... for now." 

Priya priced products, one-time work, and recurring services all the same way, which made billing inconsistent and unpredictable. It was easy when offerings were limited, but as offerings diversify, so does the pricing approach.

Zoho Billing lets you price each offering using the correct billing method.

• Items for physical goods.

• One-time charges for standalone services.

• Subscription plans for recurring services.

• Project/Time logs for services tracked by hours or expenses.

 This ensures pricing reflects how value is delivered, not how convenient it is to invoice.

Using Recurring Invoice Instead of Proper Plans 

"We'll send the same invoice every month. Easy." 

Recurring invoices work well when customers' needs rarely change. But in reality, customers request more hours, fewer hours, temporary pause, mid-cycle upgrades or downgrades, etc. Each request will lead to a manual edit.

Zoho Billing handles recurring value through subscription plans, not repeated or recurring invoices. It is built to handle,

• Offering a trial.

• Auto-renewals.

• Proration for mid-cycle changes.

• Usage/quantity changes.

• Plan upgrades & downgrades.

The system updates billing dynamically, eliminating the need for manual adjustments.

Cramming Everything into a Plan Instead of Using Addons 

"Let's just modify the plan for this customer, as we always do." 

Every time a customer needs an extra hour or seasonal enhancement, businesses edit the plan. This quickly led to a bloated catalog full of slightly different plans no one could track.

Zoho Billing offers add-ons that can blend with plans to provide flexibility in providing it as a service

• Standalone addon for optional extras.

• Recurring addons for permanent upgrades.

• One-time addons for temporary boots.

• Quantity-based addons for "I need more" scenarios.

• Usage-based addons for metered services.

• Addon groups for organised selection.

Plans stay simple. Addons handle customisation.

Offering Discount Without Structure 

"Sure, we can discount this once... and maybe next time too..." 

Manual case-by-case discounts seem harmless at first, but quickly become inconsistent and financially risky. Customers expect them, and margins erode silently.

Zoho Billing turns discounts into controlled, trackable Coupons. You can define coupons with

• Percentage or fixed amount.

• Applies to plans, add-ons, or the entire invoice.

• Expiry dates.

• Maximum redemption limits

• Per customer redemption limit.

• Eligibility based on customer or item.

• Multiple coupon codes under one rule.

 Discounts become strategic and not spontaneous.

Using the Same Price for Every Market or Customer 

"Let's just convert the price manually for all overseas customers." 

Selling globally means dealing with different currencies, purchasing power, and expectations. Manually converting them causes confusion, errors and loss of trust.

Zoho Billing allows localised and segment-based pricing through Pricelist. It can be configured to,

• Markup/Markdown for broad adjustments.

• Individual item pricelist for multi-currency control.

• Pricelist for subscription plans & addons.

• Bulk import for an extensive catalog.

• Customer-specific price list assignment.

• Pricelist selection during checkout.

 Your pricing remains consistent, competitive and accurate worldwide.

Assuming Pricing Doesn't Need to Evolve 

"Our plans have worked for 3 years. No need to change it." 

As customers grow, their needs change, but most businesses forget to adapt their pricing. This leads to mismatched expectations, reduced revenue, and churn.

With Zoho Billing, pricing evolves effortlessly.

• Plans can be upgraded or downgraded.

• Addons allow scalable customisation.

• Coupons support retention campaigns.

• Pricelist adapts pricing for new markets.

• Billing models can be mixed and matched.

 Your pricing system becomes future-ready, even if you are offering changes tomorrow.

Letting Billing Drive Pricing Instead of Strategy Driving Pricing 

"We price based on what's easy to bill; taking customer expectations into account will put us into a lot of complexity." 

Many businesses set pricing based on operational convenience rather than value, market demand, or growth strategy.

Zoho Billing becomes the infrastructure that supports strategic pricing:

• Flexible pricing models.

• Structured plans.

• Scalable add-ons.

• Rule-based discounts.

• Localised pricelist.

You no longer price based on what the billing tool can handle; instead, the billing tool adapts to your pricing strategy.

Stop Being Reactive to Pricing Changes, Stay Proactive 

Businesses evolve every day, and it has become hard to manage them with spreadsheets or a tool that is too rigid to adapt to these changes.

​
One can grow by stopping reacting to pricing problems and building a pricing system with ample room to customise.

​
Zoho Billing provides that system. It helps you deliver value cleanly, price confidently, sell globally, retain customers intelligently and scale without breaking your billing process.

​
Now and in the years to come, Pricing isn't just about maths. It's more strategic, and Zoho Billing helps you execute it flawlessly. 

• Topic Participants

• Hari Hara Sudhan. S

  

• Sticky Posts

• Community Learning Series | Digest #5 — September 2020

  Dear customers, We're happy to bring you the September edition of our #CommunityDigest! Keep track of your subscription KPIs right from your smartphone: Last month, we enhanced our Android mobile app to help our customers get daily updates on their business health. We got to know from a lot of customers that this has made their job much more easier because they no longer have to keep a reminder to manually check on the previous day's revenue or activations. If you have not downloaded it yet, here's

• Community Learning Series | Digest #4 - August 2020

  Dear customers, We hope you're staying safe and healthy. I'm happy to bring you the fourth edition of our #CommunityDigest with some brand-new updates from us. 1. Daily Business Updates (for Android users) The Zoho Subscriptions Android app has got a cool new update: You can now get a push notification to your smartphone that lets you know how many activations and cancellations have taken place, and what's the net revenue for the previous day. The best part is, you can tell the app when exactly you

• Community Learning Series | Digest #3 - July 2020

  Dear customers, We hope you're staying safe and healthy. We're glad to bring you the July edition of our #CommunityDigest. New community members can view our previous newsletters here. This time, we have two major updates and three interesting topics for you: 1. Zoho Subscriptions Developer Community Since the inception of Zoho Subscriptions, our team believed that the recurring billing platform we provide should be able to offer an extensive API library that empowers businesses to automate most

• Introducing: Community Learning Series | Digest #1 - May 2020

  Dear customers, We hope you are staying safe and healthy. Helping businesses manage their customer subscriptions more efficiently has always been, and always will be, our goal at Zoho Subscriptions. We strongly believe this is possible if we grow together as a community and share what we know with each other. To nurture this shared learning experience, here is our brand-new Community Learning Series! ​ Welcome to the first edition of our digest! Each edition of our community digest includes guides

• Recent Topics

• Zoho mail account ownership transfer

  We recently took over another company and have assumed responsibility for its Zoho account, including Zoho Mail and all related services. We would like to formally transfer ownership of this account to our organization. Could you please outline the complete

• Email Authentication is Failing

  I'm trying to setup gitlab with email authentication. I used the following configs picked up from: https://docs.gitlab.com/omnibus/settings/smtp/ gitlab_rails['smtp_enable'] = true gitlab_rails['smtp_address'] = "smtp.zoho.com" gitlab_rails['smtp_port']

• DMARC reports for mail I didn't send: how to deal with?

  I know the enthusiastic amateur's bare minimum about e-mail; am able to set up a Thunderbird account and know the basic acronyms. I have a Zoho Mail account connected to my domain, and have set up SPF, DMARC and DKIM successfully according to Zoho's instruction

• ms

  Email set up for communication

• Fix the speed

  It takes ages to load on every step even though my dataset is quite small.

• Capture Bank Charges for Invoice Payments

  We've added the Bank Charges field in the "Add Payments" page both in Zoho Invoice & Zoho Books. So all you need to do is to enter the bank charges when you record a payment for the invoices. This bank charge will be included to the amount paid for that invoice. Steps to add the bank charges while you record the payment:       1. Click the "Invoices" sub-tab under the "Money-In" tab.       2. Click the 'add payment' link for the invoice that you wish to record the payment for.       3. On the add

• Conditional Layouts On Multi Select Field

  How we can use Conditional Layouts On Multi Select Field field? Please help.

• Image field in custom module

  Hi guy, Is there any hope of adding a custom image field in the custom module? We created a custom module to keep track of assets, and it would be helpful if we could attach an image to the record. Thanks Rudy

• Deluge Function to Update Custom Field

  I'm trying to get a Deluge function (which will run as part of a Schedule in Desk) that retrieves all tickets with the status "Recurring" and updates the custom field checkbox "cf_recurring" to "true". Here's what I have, which doesn't work: searchValue

• "View ticket" link is broken

  The "View ticket" link in our Zoho ticketing system confirmation emails is broken (please see attached). Impacts ability to update/review details, and, refresh recollection at a later date. Any help would be much appreciated.

• import data from Apollo.ai into zoho crm via zoho flow

  I might be asking this question in the wrong forum. We use Apollo.ai to find potential new leads for our business, there are around 10000 leads that we have initially found. We have an Apollo.ai account but just to do searches, we dont use it as a crm.

• Woocommerce Line Item Information

  I'd like to add each line item from a Woocommerce order to a zoho creator form record. The line items are found within the line items array, but I'm not sure how to get each item out of the array? Any help would be much appreciated.

• Synching changes to Stripe when changes are made in Zoho Billing

  We have a situation where we have merged customers in Zoho BIlling and then found out later that the payment in Stripe was not updated and still associated with the old customer record. The card gets updated and billed, but that payment is still associated

• How do I fix this? Unable to send message; Reason:554 5.1.8 Email Outgoing Blocked.

  How do I fix this? Unable to send message; Reason:554 5.1.8 Email Outgoing Blocked.

• Disable Smart Filters By Default

  The smart filters "feature" is causing confusion for Zoho Mail users. New emails should be delivered to the inbox unless they have specifically opted to redirect them somewhere else. People don't understand that new emails might be waiting in a random

• ME SALE ESTE ERROR: No fue posible enviar el mensaje;Motivo:554 5.1.8 Email Outgoing Blocked

  Ayuda!! Me sale este error al intentar enviar mensajes desde mi correo electronico de Zoho! Tampoco recibo correos pues cuando me envia rebotan. Ayuda, Me urge enviar unos correo importantes!! Quedo atenta MAGDA HERNANDEZ +5731120888408

• Client Script | Update - Client Script Support For Custom Buttons

  Hello everyone! We are excited to announce one of the most requested features - Client Script support for Custom Buttons. This enhancement lets you run custom logic on button actions, giving you greater flexibility and control over your user interactions.

• Zoho Mail not working

  Zoho Mail not working

• Queries on Project-Based Inventory Consumption and Proforma Invoice in Zoho ERP

  We would appreciate your clarification on how Zoho ERP plans to handle the following: Project-based inventory consumption without itemized sales orders Accurate project cost tracking along with inventory reduction Proforma Invoice usage We look forward

• I can't add a new customer in Zoho invoice? Anyone had this issue before?

  Ive been using Zoho invoice for over 6 years. Today I wanted to add a new customer to send an invoice to but it doesn't save when I try to access it from the pulldown menu when you go to send a new invoice.

• Spreadsheet View click & focus issue in Arabic (RTL) localization

  Hello Zoho Support Team, I am facing an issue in Zoho Creator Spreadsheet View when using Arabic localization (RTL). Scenario: My app supports English (LTR) and Arabic (RTL). I created a Spreadsheet View for a form. In English, everything works correctly.

• Customer address in Zoho Bookings

  Hello,  Is it possible to add customer address information to the Zoho bookings appointment screen? Or have it pull that information automatically from the CRM? We are wanting to use this as a field management software but it is difficult to pull the address from multiple sources when it would be ideal to have a clickable address on the appointment screen that opens up the user's maps.  It would also be advantageous for the "list view" to show appointment times instead of just duration and booking

• Ghost email notification on a form

  Hello, We have recently encountered an error where I can not see a email notification set up for a form which I am currently the owner, although neither the form nor the notification were created by me. However, neither can the Super Admin access the

• bulk edit records and run internal logic

  hi there is few logics in manner "it this than that" logics work well when i edit entry openning it one by one (via workflow "on add/edit - on success" , for custom field "on update/on user input") but when i try bulk edit records - logic does not work.  how can i turn on logic to work as programmed - for mass editing records via bulk edit?

• Bulk bank rule creatioin

  Hi team, I am exploring Option to create a multiple bank rule. Could please suggest the option to implement this?

• Limitations on editing a message in Cliq

  Hi I've checked the documentations and there's no mention of how many times a message can be edited. When trying with code, I get various numbers such as ~1000 edits or so. Please mention if there's a limit on how many times one can change a message via

• email address autocomplete

  Is there a way to eliminate certain addresses from showing up in auto complete when entering an address? Many old and unused addresses currently show up, many of which I would like to get rid of. Thanks

• How to use MAIL without Dashboard?

  Whenever I open Mail, it opens Dashboard. This makes Mail area very small and also I cannot manage Folders (like delete/rename) etc. I want to know if there is any way to open only Mail apps and not the Dashboard.

• Introducing Radio Buttons and Numeric Range Sliders in Zoho CRM

  Release update: Currently out for CN, JP, AU and CA DCs (Free and standard editions). For other DCs, this will be released by mid-March. Hello everyone, We are pleased to share with you that Zoho CRM's Layout Editor now includes two new field formats—

• How can i download and secure all my mails from the archive folders?

  Hi, i would like to download all my mails from my archive folders and secure it on my external HDD. Is this possible? Thx. amir

• How to open filtered report in popup using Zoho Creator Deluge?

  First report: There is so many records in Report, If I click one record, pop up is occur. Second report (Pop up): there is also so many record data, and this pop up is also Report, not Form. First report: It has got "Sales Order" field. when I click any

• Can you default reports/charts to report the current week?

  Our data table maintains two years of data. Management wants certain report to automatically filter the report to the latest calendar week. I know I can do this manually with filters but I want the report to automatically default to the latest calendar

• Rendering PDF to view on page

  My company upload lots of PDF files onto Zoho. But every time we open it, it downloads the file instead of viewing it on the web page. Does Zoho allow uploaded PDF files to be rendered to view on web page yet? I've been trying to use <embed> or <object> but it cannot be loaded.  (similar thread: https://help.zoho.com/portal/community/topic/how-to-open-a-pdf-file-of-a-view-in-preview-mode)

• Overlapping Reports in Dashboards

  It's rare, but occasionally it would be a good feature if I were able to overlap reports, either fully or partially in the Dashboards. Also, then having the ability to move objects to the front or rear, or make them transparent/translucent would be good

• Feature request - pin or flag note

  Hi, It would be great if you could either pin or flag one or more notes so that they remain visible when there are a bunch of notes and some get hidden in the list. Sometimes you are looking for a particular name that gets lost in a bunch of less important

• Admin guide: Handling Mailbox Settings for better user management

  Managing day-to-day email scenarios, such as supporting users with multiple email addresses, ensuring uninterrupted email access during employee absences, enabling secure mailbox sharing, and enforcing organizational security and compliance, can be challenging

• Cisco Webex Calling Intergration

  Hi Guys, Our organisation is looking at a move from Salesforce to Zoho. We have found there is no support for Cisco Webex Calling however? Is there a way to enable this or are there any apps which can provide this? Thanks!

• Designing a practical Zoho setup for a small business: lessons from a real implementation

  I recently finished setting up a Zoho-based operating system for a small but growing consumer beauty business (GlowAtHomeBeauty), and I wanted to share a practical takeaway for other founders and implementers. The business wasn’t failing because of lack

• DKIM (Marketing emails) UNVERIFIED (Zoho One)

  I'm having a problem with Zoho One verifying my Marketing Email DKIM Record for MYFINISHERPHOTOS.COM. I have removed and re-entered the ownership, DKIM (Transactional emails), SPF and Marketing DKIM and all of them come back verified except the DKIM (Marketing

• Zoho Recruit Community Meet-up - India

  Namaste, India. 🙏🏼 The Zoho Recruit team is hitting the road—and we 're absolutely excited behind the scenes. Join us for the Zoho Recruit India Meet-up 2026, a morning designed to make your recruiting life easier (and a lot more effective). Date City

• Next Page