Tips and Tricks #16: How to charge your subscribers a late fee in Zoho Subscriptions

Tips and Tricks #16: How to charge your subscribers a late fee in Zoho Subscriptions

Charging late fees to your subscribers can be hard to digest, but sometimes late fees are necessary to run a healthy business. In this post, we'll be looking at how and why you might need to charge late fees for your customers in Zoho Subscriptions. 

This post is part of a series of tips and tricks that we post every week. If you missed last week's post about bulk-updating your data in Zoho Subscriptions, go ahead and check it out.

Should your business impose late fees?

Imposing late fees on your subscribers is completely based upon your business practices. However, if you are faced with consistently late paying customers, then a late fee could be a good idea as it can help persuade your customers to pay their invoices on time. This, in turn, will allow you to maintain a healthy cashflow where you can focus on growing your business instead of worrying over missed payments.

If you do decide to go ahead with late fees, then here are a few pointers before you set them up:
  • Let your customers know about your newly introduced late fee system well in advance--no one likes an unpleasant surprise.
  • Send payment reminders with details regarding the late fee before their invoice is due. 
  • Don't overcharge the late fee and make sure to give your customers a sufficient grace period to pay off the invoice; this will help retain your customers' goodwill.
  • Ensure that the late fee complies with your local taxation laws. 

Setting up late fees in Zoho Subscriptions

Like many of our previous tips, we'll be using a custom function to achieve this. Here's how:
  • Go to Zoho Subscriptions > Settings > Automation > Custom Function.
  • Click + New Custom Function in the top right.
  • Enter a name for the custom function and select the module as Invoice.
  • Click Create Custom Events.
         
  • Select the workflow type as Date Based. 
  • Set the execution date of the custom function as a particular number of days after the invoice's due date. Also, set the execution time, which specifies the exact time that the custom function would be triggered. 
         
  • Click Apply Advanced Filter.
         
  • Add criteria to execute the custom function when the Status of the invoice is Overdue. 
         
  • Copy the script for this custom function, which can be found on GitHub, and paste it in the Deluge script editor.
  • Click Save.
Now, whenever an overdue invoice is 3 days past its due date, this custom function will be triggered and add a one-time charge to your customer, which will be sent in a separate invoice. You can customize the late fee amount and the grace period to suit your needs by making small changes to the script.

Try it out and let us know how it goes. Have any other business scenarios you'd like to see us cover? Leave a comment below and we'll try our best to address them in future posts.

Cheers,
Varun Steven
The Zoho Subscriptions Team

    • Sticky Posts

    • Tip #4 : Refer and Earn Workflow system for your Subscription Business

      Hello everyone, We've been coming up with a tip every week to address specific business scenarios which can be implemented for your business. In continuation to the previous post, this week we will be seeing about how you can implement the Refer and Earn Workflow system to acquire more customers. Why are Referrals important? Customer Acquisition is crucial for any business to sustain itself in a constantly evolving market. It involves persuading new consumers to purchase your products. Customers

    • Tip #2 - Cancellation of Offline Subscriptions based on the Expected Payment Date

      Hello everyone, As you all know, we are coming up with a custom function workflow every week to address specific business scenarios. In continuation of this previous blog, this week we will be seeing about Cancellation of Offline Subscriptions based on the Expected Payment Date. Business Scenario: In general, for any business, the customers make payments via online as well as offline. In case of subscription where the automatic collection of charge is enabled (aka online subscription), the customer's

    • Tip #3 : Send SMS Reminders for your Subscription Business

      Hello everyone, As you all know, we are coming up with a tip every week to address specific business scenarios. In continuation to the previous blog, this week we will be seeing how you can use SMS reminders for your Subscription Business. Using SMS messages for your Subscription Business: While managing your subscription business, more often than not, you need to keep your customers informed about upcoming renewals, payment reminders and cancellations. By keeping them informed in advance, you can

    • Tips And Tricks - Announcement

      Hello everyone, Every business is unique and each of them follows a specific workflow. While managing your customers' subscriptions with Zoho, you might have some needs unique to your business. Custom Functions helps you address such needs. This is a start to a series of posts, where we will be coming up with a custom function workflow every week that addresses specific business scenarios. Watch this space for further updates! Also, if you have any specific business scenario which needs to be addressed,

    • Tip #6 : Accessing external URLs from Zoho Subscriptions

      Hello everyone, We have been sharing a tip every week to address specific business scenarios which you can implement for your subscription business. Last week, we shared a tip about implementing the Approval Workflow system. This week, let's look at how you can access external URLs with the help of Custom Link. Business Scenario: Every business functions differently and has its unique requirements. At times, businesses might want to access other websites or applications by appending specific information

    • Recent Topics

    • Sent mail sort by date disappeared

      Hello, We used to be able to sort the emails by date in the sent folder, but this feature has recently disappeared. Can we bring it back?

    • I cannot check out to Zoho People.

      When I tried to check out today, there's prompt that inhibits me to check out: To add entry in Attendance, log time for any of your jobs

    • Pricing Strategies: #2 Plan your Service Offerings using Plans

      Meet Harvey & Mia, hailing from the same Tech school, carrying the dream of setting up their own IT maintenance firm in their location. They drew up a clear business plan and put their business in motion on New Year's Eve. They had great reception right

    • Open a record to edit based on another form being edited

      Hi all, I am trying to edit a record based on another record being edited. It works out like this: When I create a Monthly_Update and then submit I open the Monthly_Levels form and pass the ID from the Monthly_Update to a field called mu. I want it to

    • Problem with signature on zoho survey

      Hello, I'm trying to export individual responses with signatures on zoho survey. But the signatures on some of my surveys are not exported as the original image, but as a generic image, same for all (screen joins). Is there a solution to have the signatures

    • Change in Zoho CRM API?

      Hello, I am using the Zoho API trough the PHP SDK v2.1 Since few days, I noticed that I have to change the way I pass the data to the API when I create, update, or upsert a record. Dates Before I was passing a PHP date object to "$record->addKeyValue(...)",

    • MTA - BAD IP reputation by outlook/hotmail

      Messages to Microsoft email servers are bouncing back due to poor reputation. Message: 4.7.650 The mail server [136.143.188.206] has been temporarily rate limited due to IP reputation. For e-mail delivery information see https://postmaster.live.com (S775)

    • QuickBooks Extension for Zoho CRM - Advanced Features -2025

      Hello Everyone, We’re happy to announce the latest version of our QuickBooks Extension for Zoho CRM, now officially live on the Zoho Marketplace! This release introduces one-click data sync, a user-friendly UI, enhanced performance, and a powerful set

    • Changing Department often causes the Firefox tab to freeze

      Title, it doesn't seem to happen with neither Opera nor Chrome. And even in Firefox, sometimes it just lets me change the department I'm in no problem, even to All Departments which is probably the most, like, resource heavy? But most of the time, the

    • Need to integrate Zoho Mail Mobile app with Zoho Meeting Mobile App for Android and Apple

      Hello Zoho Team, Please bring integration of Zoho Mail Mobile app with Zoho Meeting for Android and Apple Thanks

    • ¡Muchas gracias por participar a los Meetups de Usuarios de Zoho! Y Novedades del ecosistema Zoho

      ¡Hola Comunidad de Zoho en Español! 👋 Después de un breve lapso de tiempo, volvemos con una nueva edición de nuestro Community Digest, donde te contamos las novedades de los productos de Zoho en los últimos meses. Estas mejoras se centran en nuestros

    • Anyway to move mail from one account to another yet?

      Hello, Is there any way to move email from one mailbox account to another mailbox account in zoho yet? Thanks, Ryan.

    • Using a CRM Client Script Button to create a Books Invoice

      Hello, I need help handling error messages returned to my client script from a function. The scenario I have setup a client script button which is available from each Deal. This CS executes a crm function, which in turn creates an invoice based on the

    • Building Toppings #2 - Learn how to use Bigin's Developer Console to build toppings

      Hey Biginners, In our last post, we discussed what toppings are, why they're essential to extending Bigin's capabilities, and how the Bigin Developer Center serves as the starting point for building them. As a cloud platform, the Developer Center empowers

    • Proposal for Creating a Unique "Address" Entity in Zoho FSM

      The "Address" entity is one of the most critical components for a service-oriented company. While homeowners may change and servicing companies may vary, the address itself remains constant. This constancy is essential for subsequent services, as it provides

    • Links are incorrect when sent out

      I'm adding in hyperlinks into my eDM. When I send a test email, it's all correct. However, when I send out the eDM, all the hyperlinks jump up one space so none of the links are opening to the correct page. Why is this happening and how can I fix it?

    • Tip of the week #16 - Search and filter threads based on criteria

      Zoho TeamInbox lets you search and filter threads with any information that you have about the thread. You just have to input the criteria and Zoho TeamInbox will list all the threads that match the condition.   Firstly, there is a global search you can

    • Introducing recipient authentication via Stripe Identity in Zoho Sign

      Hi everyone! It's important to authenticate your recipient's identity before they access and sign important documents to ensure the highest level of compliance. Zoho Sign already helps businesses do this with various authentication methods: SMS OTP Email

    • Introducing Multi-Asset Support in Work Orders, Estimates, and Service Appointments

      We’re excited to announce a highly requested enhancement in Zoho FSM — you can now associate multiple assets with Work Orders, Estimates, and Service Appointments. This update brings more clarity, flexibility, and control to your field service operations,

    • CRM: hosting a single html file in Zoho and displaying it as a widget

      I have seen that CRM offers the option of uploading a web project to Zoho itself and displaying it as a widget in CRM. The instructions then talk about setting a development environment with Node and developing an application to upload to Zoho. But I

    • Keep Converted Leads

      How do I keep the converted leads in the Leads Module after conversion (converting it to account, contact, deal). I want to add it in a converted stage in the leads module in order to get a report or dashboard and see all converted leads from my pip

    • Customizing Global Search Settings for All Users

      Hi Our team use the brilliant global search functionality within CRM many many times daily. But, we struggle with the out-of-the box columns that CRM gives you. We are always telling users to customize this look to more suit our business, to show the

    • Introducing Formula Fields for performing dynamic calculations

      Greetings, With the Formula Field, you can generate numerical calculations using provided functions and available fields, enabling you to derive dynamic data. You can utilize mathematical formulas to populate results based on the provided inputs. This

    • From Zoho CRM to Paper : Design & Print Data Directly using Canvas Print View

      Hello Everyone, We are excited to announce a new addition to your Canvas in Zoho CRM - Print View. Canvas print view helps you transform your custom CRM layouts into print-ready documents, so you can bring your digital data to the physical world with

    • Tip of the Week #77– Stay informed of the activities happening in your organization

      Whenever a message is handled in Zoho TeamInbox, every action is recorded in the Activity Log. This ensures you always know what’s happening across your teams and inboxes. To access it, simply click the Audits icon on the left pane’s top bar after logging

    • Zoho Logs - Not seeing logs since 30 Nov

      Hi, we have a few functions running, I am testing some new ones and noticed that although I can see executions, I cannot see any logs, even when the first line on the functions is a log. I reviewed some existing functions, one of which is invoked on a

    • Workdrive MS Office integration

      Have installed subscribed version of Zoho WorkDrive VSTO runtime not found is the error when I try to install Zoho_WorkDrive_For_Office Unable to open work files in Excel and Word Urgent, since I have migrated all my OneDrive files to work drive already

    • How do I create an update to the Cost Price from landed costs?

      Hi fellow Zoho Inventory battlers, I am new to Zoho inventory and was completely baffled to find that the cost price of products does not update when a new purchase order is received. The cost price is just made up numbers I start with when the product

    • How to change Zoho Vault password

      I am searching where I can change the Vault Password after having changed the Zoho account password. I don't see this option anywhere in my account. It should be simple and accessible! Please help. Thanks!

    • Zoho Workdrive - Communication / Chat Bar

      Hi Team, Please consider adding an option to allow admins to turn on or off the Zoho Communication Bar. Example of what I mean by Communication Bar: It's such a pain sometimes when I'm in WorkDrive and I want to share a link to a file with a colleague

    • Prefered Bin Missing in android APP

      Andoroid app dosent show preferred bin in the picklist. The workaround support reccomend is to use the computre to create the picklist. it shuld be information to be shown aas basic for the pciker.

    • When Marking a Multiple Choice Answer Exclusive - Not Following My Survey Disqualification Logic

      Using a multiple choice (many answers) question and I created survey disqualification logic that was working as intended. My question: Disqualification page logic is: If (QUESTION) is "any one of the following" then (OPTIONS) - a custom message populates

    • Where to Add Machines as Products to Map with Assets in Zoho FSM?

      implementing Zoho FSM for a clinical equipment supply company. The business sells and installs clinical machines in hospitals and clinics, and they also handle service requests, scheduled maintenance, calibration visits, and general machine upkeep. In

    • Show Zoom Link in Recipient's Calendar

      We set up meetings within a record, selecting the "Make this an online meeting".  We use Zoom. Most of the recipients go to their calendar (usually Gmail or Outlook, corporate) to join the Zoom meeting, but there is no Zoom link in the calendar. Can this

    • Passing the CRM

      Hi, I am hoping someone can help. I have a zoho form that has a CRM lookup field. I was hoping to send this to my publicly to clients via a text message and the form then attaches the signed form back to the custom module. This work absolutely fine when

    • Zoho CRM for Everyone's NextGen UI Gets an Upgrade

      Hello Everyone We've made improvements to Zoho CRM for Everyone's Nextgen UI. These changes are the result of valuable feedback from you where we’ve focused on improving usability, providing wider screen space, and making navigation smoother so everything

    • Zoho Bigin - should be able to link a "contact" to multiple "companies"

      Hello Support, I called into telephone support and was told that a contact can only be linked to one company. We have situations were director are contacts of and directors of multiple companies so that seems a basic weakness in Bigin. When go to add

    • Does Thrive work with Zoho Billing (Subscriptions)?

      I would like to use Thrive with Zoho Billing Subscriptions but don't see a way to do so. Can someone point me in the right direction? Thank you

    • Radio button data won't update

      Wondering if anyone is experiencing the same problem. I tried bulk updating our data on Zoho Creator using API and noticed that the radio button field wasn't updated. I have tried updating it manually, it didn't work. When I tried updating a text field

    • Register the 'Contact Role' addition and change as a Potential edition so it can trigger Workflows

      We are trying to use "Contact Roles" in Potentials. Contact Roles are special and different than the other Related lists, so, it may have a special behavior. Something to keep in mind is that you will never have 100 Contact Roles as you can have 100 Tasks, Calls, or any other Related list. In our case we will have 2 in average and up to 4 or 5 maximum. The problem is that we need to bring information from 3 key Contact Roles to the Potential and adding a Contact to the Contacts Roles area never trigger

    • Next Page