Customer Management: #2 Organize Customers to Enhance Efficiency

When Ankit started his digital services firm, things felt simple. A client would call, ask for a website or a one-time consultation, Ankit would send an invoice, get paid, and move on.

"Just one client, one invoice. Easy.", he thought.

Fast forward a year, and the business looked very different. Some clients paid one-time for projects. Some were on monthly maintenance retainers.

A few large clients had multiple teams, each raising requests and invoices separately. Some partners and resellers also required special pricing.

One afternoon, while reviewing outstanding payments, Ankit caught himself asking,

"Wait.. which invoice belongs to which team?"

"Did the head office already pay for this?"

"Why does this customer have three different records?"

That's when it hit him: onboarding customers was only the first step.

To scale smoothly, he needed a better way to organise customers rather than add them.

Zoho Billing addresses this exact challenge by helping businesses structure and segment customers in ways that match how they operate.

Organising Customers in Zoho Billing 

Once customers are onboarded, the next step is organising them effectively to support growth, improve visibility, and maintain strong customer relationships. As businesses expand, managing customer data, transactions and financial workflows can quickly become complex.

Zoho Billing simplifies this with two powerful features:

• Customer Hierarchy

• Customer Groups

These features help businesses clarify customer relationships while keeping billing operations flexible and scalable.

Customer Hierarchy 

Many businesses work with customers who operate across multiple locations, departments, or business units. In such cases, a hierarchical structure becomes essential.

Typically, a parent company oversees the financial obligations of one or more child companies.

Zoho Billing's Customer Hierarchy feature allows you to organise customers into a clear parent-child structure, providing centralised visibility and control over transactions.

In this setup:

• The parent customer represents the central organisation or head office.

• Child customers represent branches, departments or sub-entities. 

Transactions created for a child customer can be made visible to the parent customer. This ensures transparency and avoids confusion when multiple teams or locations are involved.

Additionally, Zoho Billing allows payments and credits from the parent customer to be applied to the child customer's invoices, providing additional flexibility.

Imagine a company offering network infrastructure to corporate clients with offices in four cities. Each office raises separate service requests and receives individual invoices.

Instead of treating each office as a distinct customer, Zoho Billing allows you to:

• Create the corporate entity as the parent customer.

• Add each branch as a child customer.

 

This way, the head office can view all outstanding balances, track invoices across locations, and make consolidated payments when needed. The billing team gains clarity, and the customer gets a smoother billing experience.

Customer Groups 

While Customer Hierarchy focuses on structural relationships, Customer Groups help businesses organise customers based on shared characteristics.

As a business grows, it often serves customers with similar pricing needs, payment terms, or discount structures. Managing these preferences individually can be time-consuming and error-prone.

Customer Groups in Zoho Billing let you segment customers by common attributes and manage them together. With Customer Groups, you can:

• Assign a common pricelist

• Apply discounts

• Set payment terms

• Make bulk updates across multiple customers.

Changes made at the group level can be allowed to apply automatically, or you can choose how it can be used by customers within that group, ensuring consistency.

Picture this, a SaaS company offers its product to:

• Direct customers

• Resellers

• Enterprise clients 

Each category requires different pricing and payment terms. Using Customer Groups, the business can create groups such as Resellers, Enterprise Customers and Direct Customers.

Special pricing and terms can be defined for each group. Whenever a new reseller is onboarded, they are added to the Resellers group and automatically receive the suitable pricing and conditions, without manual adjustments.

Customer Hierarchy Vs Customer Groups 

While both features help organise customers and have similarities to an extent, they serve different purposes.

Features	Customer Hierarchy	Customer Groups
Structure	Parent-child relationship.	Grouped by common attributes.
Transaction Visibility	A parent can view/manage their child's transactions (with permission).	No transaction sharing.
Reporting	Consolidated financial reporting is possible.	Group-based insights can be obtained.
Best Fit for	Businesses with branches, subsidiaries or departments.	Businesses need segmented pricing or terms.

 

Understanding the difference helps businesses choose the proper structure or even use both together for optimal organisation.

What does Organising Customer offer to businesses? 

An effective customer organisation goes beyond clearer records. It directly impacts how efficiently a business operates.

When customers are structured correctly:

• The billing team spend less time resolving confusion

• Payments are tracked more accurately

• Pricing and terms remain consistent

• Customer relationships feel more professional and reliable

By leveraging Customer Hierarchy and Customer Groups, Zoho Billing helps businesses shift from reactive billing management to proactive financial control, laying a strong foundation for long-term growth. 

Up Next: Offering Customers different privileges

• 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

• Finding text within a ticket: Expand All or Search this Ticket

  The auto-collapse feature within a ticket is nice for screen scrolling, however it makes it difficult to find text within the ticket if the email is collapsed. In fact you cannot find text if it is collapsed. I would like to propose a feature that allows

• Books & Desk. Client mapping

  Hi, I’ve been using Zoho Books for several years and am now looking to improve my customer service. I'm experimenting with Zoho Desk and want to sync and map my client data from Zoho Books. However, it seems that mapping requires both contacts to have

• Bulk update Profile Permissions

  Dears, What should we do if we add new forms or reports and need to update more than 20 permissions? Updating them one by one feels pretty harsh, doesn’t it?

• adding several team members to an Opportunity

  How can we add several team members to one opportunity for collaboration? I have researched and only found something called Deal Team which I cannot find in my CRM to configure.

• String handling

  If I cut a currency string from a quote and try and paste it into the Deal "Amount", it will fail unless I manually delete any commas. Dollar signs are no problem, but comma's seem to fail. Please correct this Input Validation error.

• text length in list report mobile/tablet

  Is there a way to make the full text of a text field appear in the list report on mobile and tablet? With custom layouts, the text is always truncated after a certain number of characters.

• email address somehow still not verified (?!)

  L.S. After creating a new email template in CRM I was about to send a group email to my clients, then Zoho CRM announced that they would change the sender address to some kind of Zoho-e-ddress because my email address "has not been verified". Not only

• WebDAV / FTP / SFTP protocols for syncing

  I believe the Zoho for Desktop app is built using a proprietary protocol. For the growing number of people using services such as odrive to sync multiple accounts from various providers (Google, Dropbox, Box, OneDrive, etc.) it would be really helpful

• Consolidated report for multi-organisation

  I'm hoping to see this feature to be available but couldn't locate in anywhere in the trial version. Is this supported? The main aim to go to ERP is to have visibility of the multi-organisation in once place. I'm hopeful for this.

• Using MPN across multiple SKUs and inventory tracking

  I have several different SKU's that share a common MPN and would like to track inventory by MPN. SKU1 has MPN1 assigned SKU2 has MPN1 assigned Here is an example If I start with 5 of MPN 1 in stock I want each SKU1 and SKU2 to show as 5 in stock, If I

• Unable to Access Application:

  Whenever I try to access my application from the desktop, say I am editing it and want to test something in the desktop environment I get: An error has occurred. An internal error has occurred. Please check the URL , or try refreshing the page I can edit

• Feature Request - Allow Customers To Pick Meeting Duration

  Hi Bookings Team, It would be great if there was an option to allow customers to pick a duration based on a max and minimum amount of time defined by me and in increments defined by me. For example, I have some slots which are available for customers

• Error Logs / Failure logs for Client Scripts Functions

  Hi Team, While we are implementing client scripts for the automation, it is working fine in few accounts but not working for others. So, it would be great if we can have error Logs for client scripts also just like custom functions. Is there any way that

• Welcome to the Zoho ERP Community Forum

  Hello everyone, We are thrilled to launch Zoho ERP (India edition), a software to manage your business operations from end to end. We’ve created this community forum as a space for you to ask questions, comment answers, provide feedback, and share your

• Google Fonts Integration in Pagesense Popup Editor

  Hello Zoho Pagesense Team, We hope you're doing well. We’d like to submit a feature request to enhance Zoho Pagesense’s popup editor with Google Fonts support. Current Limitation: Currently, Pagesense offers a limited set of default fonts. Google Fonts

• Add Popup Rejection Metrics to Reports

  Hello Zoho PageSense Team, We would like to request improved reporting for popup interactions. Current Limitation: PageSense currently provides conversion data, but there is no clear visibility into: Popup rejections Popup closes (✕ button clicks) Dismissals

• Ability to Reset / Reinitialize Popup Cookies

  Hello Zoho PageSense Team, We would like to request the ability to manually reset popup cookies. Current Limitation: At the moment, it is not possible to initiate a new popup cookie from the our side. Visitors who rejected or closed a popup will not see

• Control Popup Cookie Expiration Duration

  Hello Zoho PageSense Team, We would like to request an enhancement related to popup cookie management. Current Limitation: Currently, PageSense popup cookies remain active for 365 days, and this duration cannot be modified by us. If a visitor closes or

• Support for Custom Fonts in Zoho Recruit Career Site and Candidate Portal

  Dear Zoho Recruit Team, I hope you're doing well. We would like to request the ability to use custom fonts in the Zoho Recruit Career Site and Candidate Portal. Currently only the default fonts (Roboto, Lato, and Montserrat) are available. While these

• YouTube Live streaming? how to? Zoom has this feature, built-in. Can't find it on zoho meetings.

  YouTube Live streaming? how to? Zoom has this feature, built-in. Can't find it on zoho meetings.

• Feature Request - A Way To Search Item Groups

  Hi Inventory Team, I can't find any way to filter or search by fields of Item Groups. It would be great to see that functionality added. I have a use case where a single product might come from 5 or more suppliers and each supplier's item is an Item in

• Feature Reqeust - Include MPN In Selectable FIelds

  I have noticed that the MPN is not available to show in the list view of Items. Please consider adding it as EAN, UPC and ISBN are all available, so it doesn't make much sense to exclude this similar option. Thanks for considering my feedback.

• Advanced Payment for Inventory Items with serial numbers

  Hello, We sell equipment that we track the unique serial numbers on using Sales Orders. We can charge the customers an advanced payment, then the balance on delivery. We cannot figure out a way to do this in Books/Inventory: - Cannot part invoice a SO

• Feature Request - Option To Hide Default System Fields on Items

  Hi Zoho Inventory Team, As far as I know it is not possible to hid some of the defult system fields on Items, such as UPC, MPN, EAN, ISBN. A good use case is that in many cases ISBN is not relevant and it would be an improved user experience if we could

• Making an email campaign into a Template

  I used a Zoho Campaign Template to create an email. Now I want to use this email and make it a new template, but this seems to be not possible. Am I missing something?

• Campaigns does not work!

  I am running into so many problems trying to use Zoho Campaigns, that I am seriously considering dropping the app from my (shrinking) list of Zoho applications I actually use. Apart from having to fight the software trying to create a design and email,

• Feature Request - Make Available "Alias Name" Field In Item List View

  Hi Zoho Inventory Team, I have noticed that the "Alias Name" field does not appear on the list of selectable columns in the Customise Columns feature in the Items module. This would be very useful to see for businesses who are using the Alias Name field

• Marketing Automation

  L.S. Marketing Automation is and has always been part of the Zoho One bundle - according to the information provided on the Zoho Website. Why when I open Marketing Automation do I get the following message?: "Your trial has expired. We hope you enjoyed

• Cliq iOS can't see shared screen

  Hello, I had this morning a video call with a colleague. She is using Cliq Desktop MacOS and wanted to share her screen with me. I'm on iPad. I noticed, while she shared her screen, I could only see her video, but not the shared screen... Does Cliq iOS is able to display shared screen, or is it somewhere else to be found ? Regards

• Bigin, more powerful than ever on iOS 26, iPadOS 26, macOS Tahoe, and watchOS 26.

  Hot on the heels of Apple’s latest OS updates, we’ve rolled out several enhancements and features designed to help you get the most from your Apple devices. Enjoy a refined user experience with smoother navigation and a more content-focused Liquid Glass

• Notes badge as a quick action in the list view

  Hello all, We are introducing the Notes badge in the list view of all modules as a quick action you can perform for each record, in addition to the existing Activity badge. With this enhancement, users will have quick visibility into the notes associated

• Claude + MCP Server + Zoho CRM Integration – AI-Powered Sales Automation

  Hello Zoho Community 👋 I’m excited to share a recent integration we’ve worked on at OfficehubTech: ✅ Claude + MCP Server + Zoho CRM This integration connects Zoho CRM with Claude AI through our custom MCP Server, enabling intelligent AI-driven responses

• Automatic Matching from Bank Statements / Feeds

  Is it possible to have transactions from a feed or bank statement automatically match when certain criteria are met? My use case, which is pretty broadly applicable, is e-commerce transactions for merchant services accounts (clearing accounts). In these

• How to filter Packages in zoho inventory api

  Hi Team, I want to perform some tasks in a schedular on the packages which are in "Shipped" state. I tried to use filter_by in my api call but in return I get response as {"code":-1,"message":"Given filter is not configured"} My Api request is as follows

• CRM

  Is anyone else experiencing this issue? Our company is not moving out of using Gmail's web app. It just has more features and is a better email program than Zoho Mail. Gmail has an extension (Zoho CRM for Gmail) that we're using but we've found some serious

• Automate pushing Zoho CRM backups into Zoho WorkDrive

  Through our Zoho One subscription we have both Zoho CRM and Zoho WorkDrive. We have regular backups setup in Zoho CRM. Once the backup is created, we are notified. Since we want to keep these backups for more than 7 days, we manually download them. They

• Syncing with Google calendar, Tasks and Events

  Is it possible to sync Zoho CRM calendar, task and events with Google Calendar's tasks and events. With the increasing adoption by many major tool suppliers to sync seamlessly with Google's offerings (for instance I use the excellent Any.do task planning

• IMAP mail after specify date

  Hi My customer's mail server is on premise and mail storage is very huge. So It never finish sync. and finally stop sync. Cloud CRM have a option like zoho mail sync mail after some date.

• How can i view "Child" Accounts?

  It can be very useful in our field of business to know the parent-child account relationship. However, there seems to be a shortcoming in the parent account view: no child account list. How can we view the child accounts per each account?

• Ability to assign Invoice Ownership through Deluge in FSM

  Hi, As part of our process, when a service appointment is completed, we automated the creation of the invoice based on a specific business logic using Deluge. When we do that, the "Owner" of the invoice in Zoho FSM is defaulted to the SuperAdmin. This

• Next Page