Billing Management: #3 Billing Unbilled Charges Periodically
We had a smooth sail into Prorated Billing, a practice that ensures fairness when customers join, upgrade, or downgrade a service at any point during the billing cycle. But what happens when a customer requests additional limits or features during the cycle? Sending out a new invoice for each change would disrupt the billing cycle and create unnecessary confusion.
This is where unbilled charges become a deal breaker. Unbilled charges record the value of service consumed or upgrades applied during the cycle without immediately invoicing the customer. Instead, these charges are a running balance that will be added to the customer's next scheduled invoice. This allows businesses to keep a clean and consistent billing cycle while ensuring all customer amendments are adequately captured.
As many industries rely on recurring or consumption-based billing models, unbilled charges are a vital mechanism for tracking ongoing usage. Let's explore how they play out across different sectors.
Telecom
In telecommunication, services are consumed continuously, but billing happens over time. Most postpaid service bills follow this method of billing. For instance, a customer with a plan that includes 10 GB of data may exceed their allowance. If they use an additional 2GB at $5 per GB, that customer generates $10 in unbilled charges. These charges accumulate invisibly during the cycle and appear on the next invoice, alongside their monthly subscription. Similarly, charges like roaming, pay-per-view and international calls are all tracked as unbilled until the cycle closes.
Utilities
Electricity, water, and gas are in a similar situation due to the lag between consumption and billing. These utilities are charged based on their consumption rate and the slab they belong to. Consider a household with an electricity rate of $0.12 per kWh. By mid-month, the household has consumed 250kWh, equating to $30 in unbilled charges, even though the official invoice won't arrive until the end of the month. The service provider records the consumption internally as unbilled revenue, ensuring no usage goes unaccounted for.
SaaS
Unbilled charges often arise in Saas for usage-based or hybrid pricing models. The usage is tracked and added as unbilled charges periodically. A customer on a $100 per month base plan decides to upgrade to the $200 plan halfway through the billing cycle. The system calculates a prorated charge of $100 for the remainder of the cycle. Instead of sending out a separate invoice right away, the service provider decides to record this as unbilled. It remains pending until the end of the billing cycle, when it will be added to the customer's regular monthly invoices. By doing this, the company ensures the billing cycle remains intact, avoids confusing customers with multiple mid-cycle invoices, and protects its revenue.
Transportation & Logistics
Transport companies, especially those serving large shipments, both in terms of quantity and quality, often consolidate usage into a single invoice. Imagine a company making 50 travel bookings monthly, each costing $20. The total $1000 in unbilled charges accumulates as the trips are completed. Instead of invoicing after each ride, the travel agency waits until the billing period ends, offering convenience for the customers and administrative efficiency for the company.
Advertising Platform
Marketing agencies and Digital ads rely heavily on unbilled charges because campaigns run continuously. Suppose an advertiser runs a pay-per-click campaign at $1 per click, generating 500 clicks in a week, which equates to $500. These charges accrue daily but won't be billed until the advertiser hits a billing threshold, say $2000, or the monthly billing date arrives. This approach ensures uninterrupted campaign performance while keeping billing predictable.
Stretch Across with Zoho
With the volume of transactions each of these businesses handles, manually tracking unbilled charges will be challenging. This is where a modern billing system like Zoho Billing adds value. Zoho Billing automatically computes unbilled charges based on the data provided, whether it's extra data, additional API calls or incremental ad spend. Businesses can decide whether to,
- Invoice immediately by charging customers for accumulated unbilled charges at any point during the billing cycle.
- Consolidate automatically by letting Zoho Billing roll all unbilled charges into the customer's next billing date.
For instance, if a SaaS customer exceeds their plan by generating $300 in API consumption, the service provider can either issue a one-off invoice on any given day or allow Zoho Billing to add the charge seamlessly to the upcoming monthly bill. This flexibility reduces revenue leakage, improves cash flow, and enhances transparency to the customers.
By automating unbilled charge invoicing, Zoho Billing ensures that no consumption unit is lost. At the same time, businesses retain the freedom to charge customers in real time or on their preferred billing schedule.
Up Next
With prorated billing ensuring fairness and unbilled charges providing completeness, the next billing in line is Advance Billing. Unlike unbilled charges, where usage is billed after the fact, advance billing collects payment upfront before services are rendered, ensuring cash flow and reduced payment risk.
This model has advantages and challenges. Our upcoming post will examine how advanced billing works and the businesses that can adopt it.
Access your files securely from anywhere
New to Zoho Recruit?
Zoho Developer Community
New to Zoho LandingPage?
Zoho LandingPage Resources
New to Zoho Survey?
New to Zoho CRM Plus?
Deliver unforgettable customer experiences
New to Zoho CRM Plus?
Deliver unforgettable customer experiences
New to Zoho Marketing Plus?
Everything you need to run your marketing
New to Zoho Marketing Plus?
Everything you need to run your marketing
New to Bigin?
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'sCommunity 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 youCommunity 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 mostIntroducing: 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
New to Zoho TeamInbox?
Zoho TeamInbox Resources
Zoho CRM Plus Resources
Zoho Books Resources
Zoho Subscriptions Resources
Zoho Projects Resources
Zoho Sprints Resources
Qntrl Resources
Zoho Creator Resources
Zoho CRM Resources
Design. Discuss. Deliver.
Zoho Show Resources
Get Started. Write Away!
Writer is a powerful online word processor, designed for collaborative work.
Zoho CRM コンテンツ
-
オンラインヘルプ
-
Webセミナー
-
機能活用動画
-
よくある質問
-
Ebook
-
-
Zoho Campaigns
- Zoho サービスのWebセミナー
その他のサービス コンテンツ
Nederlandse Hulpbronnen
ご検討中の方
Recent Topics
Zoho ToDo in Cliq
Our organization utilizes Zoho ToDo in the Zoho Mail Desktop app. Is there a way for these to show up in Cliq Desktop app as well?【Zoho CRM】サンドボックス機能のアップデート：カスタムビューが利用可能になりました。
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。 今回は「Zoho CRM アップデート情報」の中から、サンドボックス機能のアップデートをご紹介します。 目次 1. カスタムビューとは 2. 今回の機能アップデートについて 1. カスタムビューとは カスタムビューは、ユーザーが設定した条件に基づいてデータをフィルタリング・整理し、 重要な情報へ効率的にアクセスできるようにする機能です。 「過去15日間の見込み客」や「受注間近の商談」、「特定の優先度レベルが設定された案件」など 条件を指定してわずか数クリックで設定できます。Changing an agents email address
How do you change an agent's email address? I keep getting a red circle even though I am an admin. And on one of my agents he has two email addresses? How is that possible?Zoho CRM - Potentials Tab
Hi! When I create a Deal (Potentials tab) the header looks like this: After a refresh on the page it looks like this: What should I do so that it is displayed like in the second pic without refresh? Also I have a user that as of recently, cannot see thisIs there a way to automatically add Secondary Contacts (CCs) when creating a new ticket for specific customers?
Some of our customers want multiple contacts to receive all notifications from our support team. Is there a way to automatically add secondary contacts to a ticket when our support team opens a new ticket and associates it with an account? This wouldUnable to create embed code for resource of workdrive using API
Hello Team, I am trying to create embed code for a resource using workdrive api in powershell, however facing some issues with injecting data in body. Followed Doc: https://workdrive.zoho.com/apidocs/v1/filefoldersharing/shareeveryone Please help, belowFeature Request - Insert URL Links in Folders
I would love to see the ability to create simple URL links with titles in WorkDrive. or perhaps a WorkDrive extension to allow it. Example use case: A team is working on a project and there is project folder in WordDrive. The team uses LucidChart to createnot able to convert pdf to jpg and other forms and vice versa.
i want to change my pdf to jpg, word, etc and some times jpg to pdf. i don't know how to do in this.Enable / show scroll bar when Mega Menu is opened
Hey there I am using the mega menu add-on and experience a "flicker" whenever the mega menu opens. The reason is, that the scrollbar, which has a width of a few pixels, stops showing when the mega menu opens. As the scrollbar disappears the whole pageReports: Custom Search Function Fields
Hi Zoho, Hope you'll add this into your roadmap. Issue: For the past 2yrs our global team been complaining and was brought to our attention recently that it's a time consuming process looking/scrolling down. Use-case: This form is a service report withZoho Inventory - Composite Items - Assembly - Single Line Item Quantity of One
Hi Zoho Inventory Team, Please consider relaxing the system rules which prevent an assembly items from consisting of a single line item and outputting a quantity of 1. A client I'm currently working with sells cosmetics and offers testers of their productsHow can I transfer data from Production to Development environment?
Hi, I am using Creator V6 and would like to bring all the data in production to the Development and Testing environments? Is there an easy way of doing that or I have to export and import each table?New portal SAML authentication error: User not found
Dears, Has anyone else been experiencing this lately? I am creating a new portal authenticated by SAML (Entra ID). I followed the same process as I did with other portals, but any new portal created after this always encounters this error. I’ve been reportingDevis et facture multi page
Bonjour, je suis sur Zoho invoice et je rencontre un problème sur mes devis et factures lorsqu'ils dépassent 1 page. je me retrouve souvent avec des lignes coupées ou le sous total page 1 et le total page 2. j'aimerai savoir s'il existe une possibilitéAlias Email Id already exists
Hi, I just verified my domain sesque (dot) com and now I am trying to create the admin account using admin (at) sesque (dot) com, but I am getting an error saying "Alias Email Id already exists". I used to have another Zoho account with this email address, which I have closed down and deleted earlier. There was a similar dicussion here https://help.zoho.com/portal/community/topic/alias-email-id-already-exists-5-6-2019, if it helps you sort out this issue. Thanks, RaoulHelp with Filtering Records, HTML Pages, and Automatic File Uploads in Zoho Creator
Hi Zoho Creator Community, I’m building a Zoho Creator application and need guidance on a few features I’ve been struggling with. I want to implement them safely and efficiently, and I’d appreciate any examples, tips, or best practices. I want users toConvert invoice from zoho to xml with all details
How to convert an Invoice to XML format with all detailsFeature Suggestion for Zoho Websites – Inspired by Squarespace Systems
Dear Zoho Team, I’m a Zoho user and also a Squarespace Platinum Circle member, and I recently noticed the launch of Zoho Websites in India. I wanted to share some ideas for features that could enhance the platform for professional users and agencies.Custom View - Sort by Custom Field
I created a custom field for our Engineering team to know which tickets to work first by numbering them. I created a custom view to general data which includes the Engineering Priority. However, I cannot sort the Engineering Priority column ascendingZoho Indeed Intergation not pulling candidate details
We have recently integrated zoho with indeed. Prior to this our candidates came into the candidates tab via the zoho.resumes email address from indeed and it pulled through the candidates mobile number, and majority of the time a postcode. However sinceCustom View of tickets created today
How can I create a custom view that list all my ticked created in the current date? Currently, if I select the "Created Time" criteria, the "Current Time" option does not work as today. Actually, I don't know how it works this "Current Time".Lifecycle Reports
From data to decisions: A deep dive into ticketing system reports A lifecycle report captures and visualises the sequential states that a ticket undergoes across its lifespan. For instance, when a customer submits a support ticket for a faulty product,Zoho Forms - Print Button on Forms
Hi Forms team, I'm replicating a form for a client which is currently based on JotForm. I noticed that at the end of the form there is a button to print the completed form. I thought this would be something worth sharing and a nice to have in Zoho Forms.Putting Watermark on Zoho Sheet
Can this be done?Validation function not preventing candidates under 18 or over 30 from submitting the web form
Hello everyone, I’m trying to create a validation rule for the Candidate Webform in Zoho Recruit. I added a custom field called “Date of Birth”, and I want to make sure that candidates cannot submit the form unless their age is between 18 and 30 years.Report to know the history of certain Tickets on Desk
Hi there guys, As the title implies we're wondering if there's any way to get some kind of Report that allows us to check the History of various Tickets at the same time since as of today if we want to know that we have to check them 1 by 1 which is notAdvanced Usage Billing: Prepaid with Drawdown
Picture yourself at your favourite coffee shop, Bean & Brew. You come by every morning for your usual cappuccino, and occasionally you get an extra cold brew and a muffin or two in the afternoon. Interestingly, Bean & Brew has a new idea of offering aZoho Commerce in multiple languages
When will you be able to offer Zoho Commerce in more languages? We sell in multiple markets and want to be able to offer a local version of our webshop. What does the roadmap look like?Urgent Zoho Creator down!!!???
Now my zoho creator faced this issue. Anyone has idea? Urgent!!!The Social Wall: September 2025
Hello everyone, As we step into the fall season, some major updates are on the horizon. Meanwhile, here are the exciting updates we rolled out this September. Approvals in iOS Managing approvals just got more seamless on mobile. With this update, theIntroducing Detailed View for Candidates in Vendor Portal
We’ve added a new Details sub-tab inside the Vendor Portal to help vendors easily view complete candidate information after submission. With this update, vendors can now access all candidate details, from personal information to associated job openings,Zoho One Down
Zoho Team, Checking if when the services up - currently Zoho One is downHow can I track which zoho users are actively using Zoho CRM
I have several licenses of Zoho CRM. We now need to add a new user. I could purchase a new license, but before I do, I would like to see if any of our existing users are not actively using the license assigned to them. How can I determine the activityAccess to Detail View From HTML Snippet
Zoho Creator displays a detail view that slides out from the right onClick of a record in a report. Am I able to access that detail view from an html snippet, e.g. click a record in a list and display the detail view? The zc_LoadIn dialog is a bit clunky,Billing Management: #10 Solving Common Mistakes in Billing
Over the past few weeks, we have explored different facets of billing, from the simplicity of traditional one-time billing to the evolving landscape of subscriptions, retainers, and usage-based models. We've unpacked how billing isn't just about sending【開催間近 - 10/17】東京 ユーザー交流会 Vol.3 参加登録 受付中！(参加無料)
ユーザーの皆さま、こんにちは。コミュニティチームの藤澤です。 10/17(金)に、東京・新橋で「東京 ユーザー交流会 Vol.3」を開催します！ ZOHOLICSよりも小規模なイベントですので、「リアル開催はちょっと緊張する…」という方も、安心してご参加いただけます✨ 当日は、初公開の事例を2つご紹介予定です！ なお、セッション映像のアーカイブ配信は予定していないため、会場にお越しいただいた方だけが、登壇者へ直接質問したり、リアルな声を聞いたりできる貴重な機会となっています。 ーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーLoading CSS Stylesheets into HTML Snippet
Combining html/css into a single snippet can grow quite large for a UI that has a lot of functionality/styling. To keep things tidy, are we able to pull files into an html snippet using a <link> tag? If so, what are some best practices?Notes Attachments
Two things it would be nice to have the attachment size the same as the attachments sections and it would be nice to be able to attach links like you can in the attachments section. Thank youCanvas: empty images
Hello. If I add an image field like contact photo in a Canvas design, and the field is empty, there is an ugly placeholder in its place. This doesn't happen in the standard view. In the standard view, if the contact photo is empty, nothing appears inGoogle enhanced conversions not working
Hi guys, I've connected Zoho CRM through Google Ads interface with the goal to setup the enhanced conversion tracking in Google Ads. I have to Zoho related conversion goals which you can see in the images below: For the conversion goal above I've setupNext Page