Credit Management: #3 Setting Credit Limit for Customers

Think about that one familiar customer of yours who always buys on credit. They usually pay on time, maybe a little late here and there, but not alarming. So, you are fine saying, "Sure, pay later."

Then, one day, they place a significantly bigger order than usual. That's great news for you, until you notice their previous invoices were unpaid. Suddenly, you're wondering, "Should I accept this order or wait for earlier payments?"

This is a dilemma many business owners secretly face.

How much credit is too much credit?

It's not because customers are unreliable. Cash flow is the oxygen for the business, and too many unpaid invoices can unexpectedly suffocate operations.

That's precisely why credit limits exist.

They allow customers to buy on credit within a reasonable, predefined limit. They aren't about mistrust; they are about protecting the relationship, your cash flow, and the health of your business at the same time.

Just like speed limits keep drivers safe, credit limits keep finances balanced.

So, What Exactly is a Credit Limit? 

A credit limit is the maximum unpaid amount you'll allow a customer to owe your business. Think of it like a spending cap. It ensures your customer has breathing space to pay later and keeps your cash flow healthy.

Here is how it usually works:

• You allow your customers to buy up to $10,000 on credit.

• They can continue making new purchases if their unpaid invoices are below $10,000.

• Once they hit that limit, you pause new sales until some of their dues are cleared.

 It's pretty simple. Right? It's a small step that keeps your receivables from growing out of control.

​
Why is it Important? 

When you extend credit, you lead your product or service until the customer pays. That trust can pile up without limits into overdue invoices and unexpected cash crunches. Credit limits act like a speed breaker for running away receivables.

• It protects cash flow by keeping too much money from being tied up in unpaid invoices.

• It reduces the risk of delayed customer payments, and your losses stay within safe boundaries.

• It encourages quick payments as customers pay faster when they know their limit is close.

• It brings predictability, making forecasting the income and plan easier.

Managing Credit Limits in Zoho Billing 

Zoho Billing does the heavy lifting of managing your customer credits automatically with little to no manual intervention.

Some of the key aspects that are covered by using Customer Credit Limit are listed below.

Personalised Credit for Every Customer

Zoho Billing allows you to assign a maximum outstanding balance for each customer. Instead of treating all customers the same, you can tailor these limits based on their payment history, purchasing patterns, and the level of trust you've built with them over time. This creates a more personalised approach to credit rather than relying on assumptions or informal agreements.

Real-time Visibility on Outstanding Balances

Once credit limits are in place, Zoho Billing gives you real-time visibility into each customer's outstanding balance. At any point, you can review how much credit a customer has already used and how much room remains. This clarity helps you detect early signs of overextension before overdue invoices start piling up. It's the information that would otherwise require manual tracking.

Alerts When Credit Limits Are Exceeded

When a customer's unpaid invoices push them beyond their assigned limit, Zoho Billing highlights the situation immediately. Instead of discovering credit issues after they've already grown, you'll be notified when risk increases. This allows you to pause, have a timely conversation with the customer and ensure earlier invoices are settled before additional credits are offered.

Controlling New Invoices Based on Limits

For businesses that want firmer control, Zoho Billing can be configured to block the creation of new invoices once a customer surpasses their limit. This reinforces healthy payment behaviour by encouraging customers to clear pending dues sooner. It also protects your receivables from growing beyond your business's comfort level.

Adjusting Limits as Relationship Evolves

As customer relationships evolve, so can their credit limits. With Zoho Billing, you can easily adjust a customer's limit upwards when they consistently pay on time, rewarding reliability with increased flexibility. Likewise, in case payment patterns slow down, you can tighten their limit to shield your cash flow. This dynamic approach ensures that credit policies stay fair and adaptable rather than rigid or outdated.

Bringing Automation to Credit Control

Zoho Billing, on the whole, turns credit limit management into an integrated part of your billing process. Instead of manually flagging later payments or tracking balances in spreadsheets, the system automates it for you. It provides the visibility, alert, and enforcement needed to keep credit extensions safe, predictable and structured. By offering credit responsibly and monitoring it wisely, you can drive growth without risking your business's financial health.

Control Vs Stop 

Keeping Credit under control is not about restricting customers but protecting your business's health. With Zoho billing, you can manage your credits with flexibility and clarity. This is crucial because a smart business operation isn't about saying no to credit but knowing where to stop. 

Credit limits are sorted. Great!

Here is the twist. What happens when a customer suddenly hits "Pause" on their subscription? Do their credits freeze?

In the next post, we will explore Pause Period Credits, a feature that makes your billing feel trustworthy and reliable.

 

• 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

• Lead Blueprint transition in custom list view

  Hi, Is It possible to insert the Blueprint transition label in a custom Canvas list view? I am using Lead module. I see the status, but it would be great if our users could execute the Blueprint right from the list view without having to enter the detailed

• Announcing new features in Trident for Mac (1.30.0)

  Hello everyone! We’re excited to introduce the latest updates to Trident, bringing you a more seamless, intuitive, and secure communication experience. Let’s take a quick look at what’s new. Work with PST/EML files more efficiently. You can now do more

• Open Form in Same window as Page from embedded Report

  I have a page that has an embedded report, as shown below. When I click the + sign to add a new record, the form shows up inside the page where the report was embedded. I know that I can add a custom action to the report grid or report detail view and

• Weekly Sales Summary

  Is it possible to generate a weekly report in Zoho Books to show -$$ amount of estimates generated -# of estimates generated by Salesperson -$$ amount of Sales Orders created -$$ amount of Invoices generated

• Systematic SPF alignment issues with Zoho subdomains

  Analysis Period: August 19 - September 1, 2025 PROBLEM SUMMARY Multiple Zoho services are causing systematic SPF authentication failures in DMARC reports from major email providers (Google, Microsoft, Zoho). While emails are successfully delivered due

• Pricing Strategies: #4 Counting on Discounts

  "Is there any chance I can get a little discount on this month's service?" Maya hears this almost every time at her fitness studio. She offers monthly subscription plans for various services, including yoga, strength training, wellness sessions, and personal

• Do Unpublished Products in Shopify Sync to Zoho POS?

  Will an unpublished product in Shopify sync to Zoho POS? I would like to know how Zoho POS handles products that are in draft/unpublished status in Shopify.

• Introducing Query Workbench in Zoho CRM

  Hello everyone! We’re excited to announce the Query Workbench, a brand-new interface designed to improve developer experience of building Queries in Zoho CRM faster, simpler, and more intuitive. In the past, constructing queries required navigating across

• Limitation with Dynamic Email Attachment Capture

  I've discovered a flaw in how Zoho Creator handles email attachments when using the Email-to-Form feature, and I'm hoping the Zoho team can address this in a future update. The Issue According to the official documentation, capturing email attachments

• Add Customer in Books on Creator Form Submit Params

  Hi guys, Were integrating a creator app with books however what were doing is adding a books customer on submit of creator form.  We have some parameters but some fields aren't coping, All were seeing is the contact name in books,.  Any help of the params for this would be great. below is a sample of the script... response = zoho.books.createRecord("contacts", "XXXXXXXXX", { "contact_name" : input.Name, "address" : input.Email }); 

• Admin asked me for Backend Details when I wanted to verify my ZeptoMail Account

  Please provide the backend details where you will be adding the SMTP/API information of ZeptoMail Who knows what this means?

• Suggestion : link KB with Accounts

  Hi Zoho teams.  I think it could be good to link KB articles with  : accounts in order to easily  find articles dedicated to some account specificities. I tried to use tags , but tags are free text with not easy way  to retrieve it directly from ticket or list article for one tag. Tickets : It would be a good way to measure usage of KB directly from ticket when we don't need to copy/paste KB in solution. And : Great Tool , keep going ! 

• Drag and Drop in Creator Application

  Hi, I am in the planning phase of a new application and I would like to use 'Drag and Drop' in the user interface of my new Creator application that I am sketching out, but I don't seem to be able to find any reference that this is available to developers. In my instance I have table of entries and I would like to be able to allow users to move an entry to another table (much like you do in your own interface when creating a Pivot Table report. In addition, I would like the user to be able to re-order

• Is there any way to integrate Zoho with Zapier?

  Is there any way to integrate Zoho with Zapier? I'd like to use it to create a workflow, sharing posts from our Wordpress website to all our channels.

• Popular Articles Report

  From data to decisions: A deep dive into ticketing system reports Content management teams can use various metrics to assess the effectiveness of knowledge base articles, improve content quality, and ensure articles are regularly updated. Predefined article

• Invoice Ref. Field

  Hello Team, Currently, the Invoice Ref. field is set to a Number type with a maximum limit of 9 digits. However, we often receive customer invoices that contain up to 12 digits. In some cases, the invoice reference includes not only numbers but also letters

• 60 Days Into Zoho - Tiktok Branding Startup -7 Questions?!

  Wsp Everybody I co-own a TikTok Branding / Consulting Startup & have been using Zoho for the past 60 days - Am now looking to make our overall operations & processes more Efficient & Effective! Curious to know how others are using the platform & what's

• Turning off the new UI

  Tried the new 'enhanced' UI and actively dislike it. Anyone know how to revert back?

• XML format to import knowledgebase into Zoho Desk

  Hi, We just started to use Zoho Desk and want to import our knowledgebase from our old support system (Freshdesk) to Zoho Desk. Can anyone give us information about the format of xml file to import? There is no explanation on the related page.

• Pushing Zoho People leave into Microsoft calendar: how to chose how "event" is shown (busy, free etc)

  Hi, how can I select how a "leave" event is pushed into Microsoft calendar? I want for leave "working elsewhere" to show as working elsewhere and NOT as busy.

• Duplicate Accounts

  Hi There, I am looking for a solution, script, workflow or anything to solve an issue we have - in our customers section we have a rule that doesn't allow duplicates, however Zoho will allow customers with xxxxx and xxxxx PLC or LTD so effectivley we

• Error with If formula

  I've got this super simple If formula, what is the reason for the error? If ( LEN(${Leads.Trial Slot Option}) == 3,'y','n') Syntax Error. Check the examples for any functions you're using to see if you formatted them correctly. Make sure your fields are

• Announcing Multi-language Support in Zoho FSM

  Zoho FSM now speaks your language. The much-awaited multi-language support is now available in Zoho FSM. The following languages are supported in Zoho FSM: Dutch (Nederlands) English - United Kingdom English - United States French (français) French -

• Creating multiple CRM leads from a Zoho Forms subform

  Hi all, We have a heavily used intake form that is used for new leads as a part of our intake. There is a subform that allows the lead to add additional team members, their titles and other basic info. That form submission creates a new Lead and the subform

• Free webinar! Build smarter apps with Zoho Sign and Zoho Creator

  Hello, Bring the power of digital signatures to the apps you build in Zoho Creator! Connect Zoho Sign as a microservice and enable seamless e-signature workflows in your applications. This integration allows you to automate signing tasks using Deluge.

• Restrict Addresses in Zoho Forms?

  In the address field, is there a way to restrict the addresses that auto populate (via Zoho Maps or Google Maps) to a specific state (I know it's possible with the country). Additionally, how often does the address in Zoho Maps get updated? Certain addresses

• Appraisals on Employee Information Profile

  Is it possible to show completed appraisals on each employee's "Employee Information" page? I would presume at the bottom - similar to the "Related Lists" concept in Zoho CRM. Obviously view access would be limited to employee and appropriate other roles

• Zoho Tracking Image location

  So we've been having an issue with tracking email opens. Specifically in Gmail. Our emails are not that long either, maybe 4 sections of image/250 characters of text/button per section.  But all my test accounts I used via Gmail we're showing opens. But then come to find out the tracking image is at the very bottom of the email. So If the message is clipped (It always just clips our social icons on the bottom) and the user doesn't click the show more button it never tracks the open.  Looking at other

• Weekly Tips: Secure your attachment downloads with Zoho Mail

  Safety is one of our main concerns, whether it’s about device security or online protection. We use tools like fingerprint scanners, facial recognition, and two-factor authentication to keep our devices and email accounts secure. We use methods like OTP

• Resume Harvester: New Enhancements for Faster Sourcing

  We’re excited to share a set of enhancements to Resume Harvester that make sourcing faster and more flexible. These updates help you cut down on repetitive steps, manage auto searches more efficiently, and review candidate profiles with ease. Why we built

• Looking for best practices to import data from SAP Business One (on-prem) into Zoho Analytics via Zoho DataPrep / Databridge — daily automated schedule

  Hi all, I’m using SAP Business One on-prem (SQL Server / or HANA — depending on DB backend) as our ERP. I want to build a pipeline that, every morning at 9:00 AM IST: pulls transactional data (invoices, customers, products, stock, etc.) from SAP B1, loads

• Zoho One Unified Portal - Applications

  Hello, It is great to see the work on the New Unified Customer Portal. Thanks for that. The number of applications is limited though. It is now only around the Zoho Books ecosystem (Books, Expense...) and Zoho Social. = Are other applications planned

• Marketing Tip #10: Start a customer loyalty program

  Winning a new customer is great, but keeping them coming back is even better. A loyalty program rewards repeat buyers with points, giving them more reasons to shop again. Over time, this builds trust and long-term relationships. Try this today: Set up

• Zia Actions: AI-powered Workflow Automation for Faster and Smarter Execution

  Hello everyone, Workflows got a notch better with AI-based actions. Actions such as field extraction, prediction, auto reply, and content generation facilitate quick execution with improved speed and accuracy. Zia can intercept useful details in newly

• Unable to access my Zoho forms account

  For some days now, I haven't had access to my Zoho Forms account. I keep getting an error that says, "You are an inactive user in your organization" via the mobile app and "You don't have permission to access this organization" via the web. I was removed

• Do Individual Forums within Categories, in Desk Community, Produce Their Own RSS Feed?

  Do Individual Forums within Categories, in Desk Community, Produce Their Own RSS Feed? If not, can anyone share a work-around that could help me get an RSS feed for individual category forums?

• Change Last Name to not required in Leads

  I would like to upload 500 target companies as leads but I don't yet have contact people for them. Can you enable the option for me to turn this requirement off to need a Second Name? Moderation update (10-Jun-23): As we explore potential solutions for

• Resend Client Portal Invitation + View Email Delivery Status

  Hi Zoho Team, We hope you are doing well. We would like to request two important enhancements related to the Zoho Creator Client Portal invitation process. At the moment, when we add a user to the Client Portal, Zoho Creator automatically sends an invitation

• Get user last login

  1. Is there a way to programmatically get the last user login to trigger certain workflows? 2. Is there a way to programmatically access the custom fields on a user's account?

• Seeking Zoho Creator Expert (Delivery Management App / Logistics Ops) — Built & Deployed Before

  Hi everyone, We’re building a Delivery Management App (focused on delivery operations for now) using Zoho Creator. We’re looking for a Zoho Creator expert who has already developed and deployed a similar delivery/workflow system and can assist us with

• Next Page