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

• Detailed Account Reports - Add Running Balance

  When one clicks into an account from a report (say P/L or Balance Sheet), the default reports have the Debit, Credit, and then the Amount. The Amount column (last one) is duplicate information. It would be far better and fit more peoples' use cases if

• How to Billed from two different GST Numbers

  How to Billed from two different GST Numbers. Suppose ABC & Co had GST registration in Delhi and Haryana and Zoho account is created with Delhi GST Registration number. Now i also want to issue invoice from Haryana GST Registration number. How can i proceed ?

• Payment system for donations management

  I manage an organization where we receive donations from payers. Hence, there is no need to first create invoices and then create payments received against the invoices. What are the recommended best practices to do this in ZohoBooks?

• Zoho IP blocked by SpamHaus

  ERROR CODE :550 - 5.7.0 Your server IP address is in the SpamHaus SBL-XBL database, bye

• IMAP Communication Problems - IMAP Down Again

  We are experiencing the same problems over the last week or so that were supposedly 'solved' according to this thread. Zoho Imap Down Again This is affecting attempts to use IMAP on multiple ISPs and users so is definitely narrowed down to Zoho problems.

• Can't login to Zoho mail

  I'm logged into Zoho but when I try to go in zoho mail I get: Invalid request! The input passed is invalid or the URL is invoked without valid parameters. Please check your input and try again. I just set up my mx records and stuff with namecheap a few

• Hotmail is STILL blocking the zoho mail IP

  Greetings, as I already mentioned in my last message, my Zoho IP has been blocked by Hotmail for more than 15 days. Although someone said that the issue was "solved," it still isn't, and this amount of time seems neither normal for a "serious" company,

• Keyboard shortcut M key

  I'm trying to customize my keyboard shortcuts and assign the "m" key. But it says the key is already assigned. I've looked through all my shortcuts and can't see any assigned "m". When I select an email and press the M key, nothing happens. What is the

• Manage customer access across multi-brand help centers

  Hello everyone! Managing customer's access across multiple brands has been streamlined with the ability to invite, reinvite, approve, reject, and deactivate contacts individually for each help center brand . This enhancement gives administrators precise

• White Label certificate

  Hi all, About 72 hours ago, we fulfilled all steps for white labeling (CNAME to point to mail.cs.zohohost.eu), but since then the configuration page is now stuck at "generating certificate" since 3 days. When I execute an NSLOOKUP mail.webfoundry.be it

• Unusual activity detected from this IP. Please try again after some time

  When i try to create new addresses on my account i am getting this error, it has been 24 hours now and i am still getting this error can anyone help

• How to add a new domain in my account?

  Probably zoho has the worst UI in the market. Cannot add a new domain to manage a new email address.

• Ability for admin to access or make changes in zoho form without asking for ownership

  Currently in zoho form only form owner can make the changes in the form and if someone else has to make changes then we have to transfer the ownership to them and even admin also cant access it . So i think admin must have the ability or option to access

• Report sorting not working

  I make extensive use of Summary reports and Pivot Tables. Most of these reports are structured such that I have several columns of "information" data that I want displayed, followed by one or more "Data" summarizations. For example, I have the following

• New Enhancements in Wizards

  Dear All, Wizards help you break a long form into a series of smaller forms on different screens, making it less overwhelming. We are thrilled to introduce a couple of enhancements to wizards in Zoho CRM: Enhancements for conditional rules in Wizards

• Microsoft Teams now available as an online meeting provider

  Hello everyone, We're pleased to announce that Zoho CRM now supports Microsoft Teams as an online meeting provider—alongside the other providers already available. Admins can enable Microsoft Teams directly from the Preferences tab under the Meetings

• Find and Merge Duplicates to trigger webhook

  My sales team uses the Find and Merge Duplicates feature often to cleanup records in the CRM. We use webhooks to signal to our internal tools database when new Contacts are created, updated, or deleted, in order to keep our DB in sync with Zoho CRM. However,

• Charting the 2025 Voyage: Zoho Invoice's Year in Review

  2025 has been a year of progress, productivity, and purposeful growth for Zoho Invoice. From expanding into new regions to refining everyday workflows, each update was designed to help businesses stay compliant, get paid faster, and work with confidence.

• How to Hide System-DefinedTemplates in Service Report

  Is there any option available to hide system-defined templates? these templates are causing confusion for field users.

• WhatsApp Report in Bigin CRM

  Reporting feature for Bigin CRM’s integrated WhatsApp that provides insights such as: Number of WhatsApp conversations closed Number of messages sent and received Number of conversations replied to Response and closure metrics for WhatsApp chats More

• Issue with Azure DevOps Integration in Zoho Flow

  Hello, All workflows between Zoho Flow and Azure DevOps have stopped working for several days now. Upon further investigation, it seems that the connection to Azure DevOps is no longer directly supported. Indeed, Microsoft has deprecated the Azure DevOps

• Narrative 16: Simplify with workflows

  Behind the scenes of a successful ticketing system: BTS Series Narrative 16: Simplify with workflows What is a workflow? A workflow organizes business tasks in a defined sequence that makes each step clear to all participants. This ensures work is completed

• Zoho Invoice Customer Login Portal

  Are there any plans for a customer portal to Zoho Invoice, ala Freshbooks?  I would like customers that I invoice to be able to login to review invoices and invoice history.  I have not switched from Freshbooks for this very reason.

• Random Leads are being created

  Hi, Every few days I am getting random leads that are being created with no form interactions at all. The email addresses are from obvious spam, such as 'Easymerchantsx'. When I look at the timeline, there is a Visit record and then a Lead Created record,

• Print a price list or price book

  Hi Community. Am I right in concluding that Zoho has no functionality to print a price list from either Zoho CRM, Zoho Inventory or Zoho Books? I won't get stuck on the fact that Zoho doesn't sync price books between Zoho CRM and Books/Inventory (more

• Bar Chart -- sort X-axis

  Hi! I created a bar chart ("Top 10 Products by Revenue") X-axis: Product Name Y-axis: Revenue Filter: Revenue - Top 10 Here's a picture: http://screencast.com/t/ZTJlZTdkNz The x-axis is sorted alphabetically by Product Name. How can I force it to sort numerically by Revenue?

• ZoHo Flow Custom Function not Processing JSON

  JSON is being escaped and converting all the quotes in the JSON to '"' Here's the Code: void InsertRowInE123EligibitySheet(map input) { rawData = get("data",""); decodedData = rawData.htmlDecode(); data = decodedData.toMap(); sheet_id = "ID GOES

• Managing functions

  Can someone let me know if there are any plans to improve the features for managing functions in CRM? I have lots of functions and finding them is hard. The search only works on the function name and the filter only works on function type. I have created

• Zoho FSM - Service Appointment Trouble Adding Field Agent

  Hello, I just started using Zoho FSM and I'm currently adding older work orders from prior Field Service application I use. The work order that im trying to add is from an earlier date, and when I try to add a field agent to a service appointment it does

• Shifts in Zoho People vs Zoho Shifts?

  Hello Zoho People Team, We hope you are doing well. We are evaluating the Shifts functionality within Zoho People and comparing it to the standalone Zoho Shifts product. We’ve encountered comments and discussions suggesting that the Shifts feature inside

• 年内最後のユーザー向けイベント：5名限定！ 課題解決型ワークショップイベント Zoho ワークアウト開催のお知らせ (12/18)

  ユーザーの皆さま、こんにちは。コミュニティチームの中野です。 12月開催のZoho ワークアウトについてお知らせします。 今回はZoomにて、オンライン開催します。 参加登録はこちら（無料） https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/QHn6kJAcRs-znJ1l5jk0ww ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Zoho ワークアウトとは？ Zoho ユーザー同士で交流しながら、サービスに関する疑問や不明点の解消を目的とした「Zoho ワークアウト」を開催します。

• How do I get my account id?

  Hello, I followed the instructions to get a list of accounts of the currently authenticated user (which is me, and I am logged in). But when I follow the below instructions I get the following error: ERROR: {"data":{"errorCode":"INVALID_TICKET","moreInfo":"Invalid ticket"},"status":{"code":400,"description":"Invalid Input"}} Instructions that I am following: GET - User account details Purpose The API retrieves the list of accounts of the currently authenticated user.  Request URL  http://mail.zoho.com/api/accounts

• This domain is not allowed to add. Please contact support-as@zohocorp.com for further details

  I am trying to setup the free version of Zoho Mail. When I tried to add my domain, theselfreunion.com I got the error message that is the subject of this Topic. I've read your other community forum topics, and this is NOT a free domain. So what is the

• Zoho Quartz Screen Recording

  Hello, can we get access to Quartz, please, as a standalone solution? It would be great for creating training videos for current and future staff on how to use Zoho software according to our company requirements. Thank you

• auto close automated alert tickets which are similar

  Hello ZOHO Community, we are using ZOHO Desk to process automated monitoring alerts. Scenario: Our monitoring system creates a ticket when a threshold is exceeded, e.g. Subject: Computer 1 – CPU usage 100% – Error A few minutes later, once the issue resolves

• Maintain knowledge base integrity by moderating article comments

  Hello everyone, A knowledge base provides a self-service platform where customers can refer to articles, user manuals, and other resources to learn about the company's products or services and troubleshoot problems. Often, readers leave a comment on the

• Making another calendar your default calendar

  I am trying to make another calendar my default calendar when I add events to it. It keep going to a single calendar, I need it to go to my google calendar by default, as this is linked to other services / websites. I cannot find an option to make it

• Option to Delete Chats in IM

  Currently, there is no option to delete any chats in IM, regardless of their source.

• Referencing a cell from another sheet

  My workbook has multiple sheets. Each sheet has some calcluated totals in certain cells. The front master sheet has a list of everything that is detailed on the other sheets, with the totals. These could change at any time, so the totals need to be references to the other cell's value, not a fixed number. So on the master sheet, I put in =, then go the other sheet and choose the cell and hit Enter. In regular Excel, this works. But in the Zoho sheet, it doesn't work. I have to edit the result by

• Group mail for external email addresses

  Hello, I was just wondering if the Group mail feature works with external email addresses - e.g. gmail.com or a completely different domain? it seems only internal addresses (hosted with Zoho) receive the mail. Thanks, Oliver

• Next Page