Credit Management: #6 Tackling Common Mistakes in Credit Based Billing

Credit Management: #6 Tackling Common Mistakes in Credit Based Billing

Businesses extend credit to build relationships, make buying easy, and drive more sales. But somewhere between extending and collecting, things begin to slip. A few late payments here and there, an overlooked invoice, and a backlog make cash flow feel tighter than it should.

It's not that businesses don't care about credit control. They often underestimate how quickly it can spiral when left unmanaged.

Let's explore some of the companies' most common mistakes when managing credits and how they can be handled effectively.

1. Extending Credits without Defined Limits 
We've always trusted them; they'll pay when ready." That's a familiar phrase when you're working with loyal customers. At first, it works fine, but without defined credit boundaries, even dependable customers may intentionally hold up value beyond what your business can safely play with. Soon enough, you're wondering whether you should accept a new order or wait for the earlier one to clear.


Idea
With Zoho Billing, you can assign a personalised credit limit per customer. The system tracks their outstanding balance in real time and flags when the limit is nearing or exceeded. That means you keep giving credits within a safe, measured, controlled limit.

2. Relying on Memory for Follow-up 
"I'll remind them next week," someone says. But next week becomes two weeks, and the customer's invoice quietly drifts into overdue territory. Without timely reminders, credit becomes ageing receivables, and good customers become bad debt risks.

IdeaZoho Billing sends automated scheduled reminders before, on, and after the due date. You don't need to rely on someone to manually remember and do a follow-up. The system does it for you. Payments get nudges, outstanding balances stay visible, and nothing gets buried in the "we'll deal with it later".

3. Not Tracking Partial or Split Payments 
Does a customer split their payments into several parts or pay partially because one department reimburses later? It often happens. The problem is when these payments aren't linked and tracked properly. "I paid half last month, why is it showing as overdue?" a customer might ask. That kind of ambiguity damages your firm's reputation.

IdeaZoho Billing is a robust billing system that lets you record and reconcile partial payments under each invoice and customer account. You see exactly what's still owed and what's been applied. Your team stops answering "Where is my payment?" questions and starts driving growth.

4. Letting Credit Overuse Go Unchecked 
A growing business might hesitate to push back on a long-time client over the credit limit. "They've been with us for years, we'll send the invoice anyway". But that's the moment risk creeps in. Before you know it, overdue balances multiply and cash flow tightens.


Idea
Zoho Billing lets you automatically block or restrict new invoice creation once a customer exceeds their threshold limit. This isn't about pushing the customer, it's about transparent collaboration. You avoid the issue, encourage timely payment, and reduce risk without awkward conversations.

5. Using Common Terms for All 
Using the same credit policy for every customer is tempting because it's simple. However, flexibility suffers when your most reliable clients feel restricted and your new ones are treated the same way as seasoned ones. One client might deserve more leniency, another less.
Idea

In Zoho Billing, you can configure different payment terms per customer, including limits, due dates, and payment conditions based on history. This keeps your relationship fair and acknowledged and adjusts risk appropriately.

6. Missing out on Available  Credits
When you owe credits to your customers, keeping them visible and ready to redeem is essential. However, several businesses miss the available credit and attempt to charge the customer the full amount against the invoice raised.
Idea

With Zoho Billing, you can view the available credits and apply them before sending the invoice to your customers in case of offline payments. For invoices that are paid online, it provides a more seamless process of automatic credit redemption when available, which makes the process even more hassle-free.

Credit Risk to Credit Offering 
Credit management isn't often discussed in boardrooms, but it underpins business health. Extending credit thoughtfully, following up reliably, tracking payment precisely, enforcing limits proactively, and customising when needed will keep your cash flow alive.

Zoho Billing supports all of that with real-time visibility, configured limits, automated communication, and personalised terms. Use it to manage credit and "
manage credit wisely."


    Access your files securely from anywhere









                          Zoho Developer Community




                                                • Desk Community Learning Series


                                                • Digest


                                                • Functions


                                                • Meetups


                                                • Kbase


                                                • Resources


                                                • Glossary


                                                • Desk Marketplace


                                                • MVP Corner


                                                • Word of the Day


                                                • Ask the Experts



                                                          • 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


                                                          Manage your brands on social media



                                                                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

                                                                                    • CRM Community Learning Series

                                                                                      CRM Community Learning Series


                                                                                    • Kaizen

                                                                                      Kaizen

                                                                                    • Functions

                                                                                      Functions

                                                                                    • Meetups

                                                                                      Meetups

                                                                                    • Kbase

                                                                                      Kbase

                                                                                    • Resources

                                                                                      Resources

                                                                                    • Digest

                                                                                      Digest

                                                                                    • CRM Marketplace

                                                                                      CRM Marketplace

                                                                                    • MVP Corner

                                                                                      MVP Corner







                                                                                        Design. Discuss. Deliver.

                                                                                        Create visually engaging stories with Zoho Show.

                                                                                        Get Started Now


                                                                                          Zoho Show Resources

                                                                                            Zoho Writer

                                                                                            Get Started. Write Away!

                                                                                            Writer is a powerful online word processor, designed for collaborative work.

                                                                                              Zoho CRM コンテンツ






                                                                                                Nederlandse Hulpbronnen


                                                                                                    ご検討中の方




                                                                                                          • Recent Topics

                                                                                                          • I have error AS101 when I try to add paypal@mydomain.com to Zoho

                                                                                                            Please help me with this. I tried to call the help line 4 times but don't get any response.
                                                                                                          • VAT on Multiple Expenses

                                                                                                            Firstly, might I say I am based in Ireland, and I'm not an accountant, and therefore my understanding of procedures could be somewhat limited. Scenario. An employee pays for items throughout a month, and therefore their claim for expenses includes multiple items - some of the items are VAT deductible (eg, an IT product) and some are not (eg, a client lunch). Discovery The odd thing in ZBooks, is that whilst it seems possible to add a VAT rate to a one-off item of expense, it is not possible to add
                                                                                                          • Workflow Creation with Zia gets stuck

                                                                                                            It gets stuck here:
                                                                                                          • Marketing Tip #5: Improve store speed with optimized images

                                                                                                            Slow-loading websites can turn visitors away. One of the biggest culprits? Large, uncompressed images. By optimizing your images, your store loads faster and creates a smoother shopping experience leading to higher sales. It also indirectly improves SEO.
                                                                                                          • CRM for email in Outlook: how to ignore addresses?

                                                                                                            We’re using the "Zoho CRM for email" add-in for Outlook. When opening an email, the add-in displays all email addresses from the message and allows me to add them to the CRM or shows if they’re already contacts. However, sometimes people listed in To
                                                                                                          • Detect and ignore bots in visitors

                                                                                                            The SalesIQ visitor numbers are basically useless to us because there is no bot detection. We get the same bots coming in from the same countries looking at the same pages every day. It can't be that difficult to tell the difference between an actual
                                                                                                          • Agent assignment filter?

                                                                                                            Godo day, We are starting to play with FSM to see if it's going to work for our needs. Now so far we have found that it's very restrcitve in the field department you you have layout rules or can't even hide fields depending on the users roles. We can't
                                                                                                          • Default tax type for mileage?

                                                                                                            Where we are, mileage includes a government tax. Is there any way to set a default tax for the Personal Car Mileage category of expense? (Or any other way?)
                                                                                                          • DKIM Now Mandatory - Changes to Zoho Forms Email Policies

                                                                                                            Hello Zoho Forms Users, This post is to inform you about an important update regarding the authentication of all email domains in your Zoho Forms account. This year, we are doubling down on our commitment to deliver a secure, seamless, and empowering
                                                                                                          • All new Address Field in Zoho CRM: maintain structured and accurate address inputs

                                                                                                            The address field will be available exclusively for IN DC users. We'll keep you updated on the DC-specific rollout soon. It's currently available for all new sign-ups and for existing Zoho CRM orgs which are in the Professional edition. Managing addresses
                                                                                                          • Content Security Policy

                                                                                                            Is there a place in ZOHO CRM to add a Content Security Policy to allow for a call to a google.com map, from inside our current app? Or, how do I resolve the issue below?? jquery.js:1 Refused to load the script 'https://maps.google.com/maps/api/js?v=3.41&libraries=places&sensor=true&key=AIzaSyAyQzKeKSbLci4LwZhn9oXvtCkbUo1Ae4g&callback=map_loader'
                                                                                                          • In arattai received message can't be deleted

                                                                                                            The issue has been noticed in following: arattai app (Android) arattai app (Window) arattai web While the message posted by me may be deleted, the ones received from others can't be. The item <Delete> change to <Report> when the message is a received
                                                                                                          • is it possible to add more than one Whatsapp Phone Number to be integrated to Zoho CRM?

                                                                                                            so I have successfully added one Whatsapp number like this from this User Interface it seems I can't add a new Whatsapp Number. I need to add a new Whatsapp Number so I can control the lead assignment if a chat sent to Whatsapp Phone Number 1 then assign
                                                                                                          • Kiosk Page Refresh

                                                                                                            We have a Kiosk running from a button in contacts to update values and also add related lists, which works great, but when the kiosk is finished the page does not refresh to show the changes. Is there a way to force the contact to refresh/update when
                                                                                                          • Tips & tricks: Make SalesIQ automations work for you

                                                                                                            Every day, thousands of visitors land on your website. Some browse, some buy, and some leave without a word. But, wouldn’t it be great if you could automatically know who’s interested, engage them at the right moment, and never miss a lead, and all this
                                                                                                          • Add Custom Reports To Dashboard or Home Tab

                                                                                                            Hi there, I think it would be great to be able to add our custom reports to the Home Tab or Dashboards. Thanks! Chad
                                                                                                          • Finding missing records

                                                                                                            I have a challenge and I am not really sure where to start with it. I can't find any similar threads on here, can anyone help: I have two forms, FormA and FormB. Both forms have records that contain a field called Job_Number. What I am trying to achieve
                                                                                                          • Digest Octobre - Un résumé de ce qui s'est passé le mois dernier sur Community

                                                                                                            Chers utilisateurs, Faisons le point sur les temps forts du mois d'octobre au sein de notre Community Zoho France. Partager des informations sensibles, comme des mots de passe, peut vite devenir compliqué et risqué. Les données circulent par email ou
                                                                                                          • How do I fully delete a user account

                                                                                                            Hi, I have two old accounts on my CRM which are inactive and show as 'Closed' in the list of users. BUT they are basically still there. How do I fully delete these accounts? They appear in some parts of CRM still such as the on the contact record emails
                                                                                                          • Automatically Add Recurring Zoho Meeting Events to Zoho Calendar / Zoho Meeting Calendar

                                                                                                            Hello Zoho Meeting Team, Hope you are doing well. We would like to request an enhancement regarding recurring meetings created inside Zoho Meeting. At the moment, when we schedule a recurring meeting in Zoho Meeting, it does not appear in Zoho Calendar
                                                                                                          • Credit Management: #6 Tackling Common Mistakes in Credit Based Billing

                                                                                                            Businesses extend credit to build relationships, make buying easy, and drive more sales. But somewhere between extending and collecting, things begin to slip. A few late payments here and there, an overlooked invoice, and a backlog make cash flow feel
                                                                                                          • Insert Cookie Policy in Zoho Sites

                                                                                                            Hello, i need to insert a banner on my site because i'm in Italy so i have to respect EU laws for Cookie Policy and Privacy Policy. I see that i need to insert a code in <head> section of my site to show a banner/popup with cookie info. How i can do this? Thank you Luca
                                                                                                          • Tasks Statuses

                                                                                                            Hi, The task status "Completed" is a final status which closes the task. We need to have a status "Cancelled". However, when the status is set to "Cancelled", the task prompt still has a blue button to Close Task. When the customer clicks that and closes
                                                                                                          • Updating Blueprint stage from my Deluge function

                                                                                                            Hi all, I need to update the blueprint stage. Its almost working, but ONLY if the current Deal stage is 'Closed Lost'. On any of my custom stages that Ive specified in the pipeline it doesnt work! My code: dealmap = Map(); deal_stage = deal.get("Stage");
                                                                                                          • Good news! Calendar in Zoho CRM gets a face lift

                                                                                                            Dear Customers, We are delighted to unveil the revamped calendar UI in Zoho CRM. With a complete visual overhaul aligned with CRM for Everyone, the calendar now offers a more intuitive and flexible scheduling experience. What’s new? Distinguish activities
                                                                                                          • Canvas: is it possible to have a fixed header?

                                                                                                            Hello. Does Canvas provide the option to have a fixed header, similar to the standard view? It would also be interesting for other parts of the interface, like the header or sidebar of the tab section. Thanks!
                                                                                                          • Replacing email ID,

                                                                                                            In zoho sheets If I am sending it as an email attachments can I replace sender email ID from notifications to my email ID.
                                                                                                          • Empowered Custom Views: Cross-Module Criteria Now Supported in Zoho CRM

                                                                                                            Hello everyone, We’re excited to introduce cross-module criteria support in custom views! Custom views provide personalized perspectives on your data and that you can save for future use. You can share these views with all users or specific individuals
                                                                                                          • Limited layout rules in a module

                                                                                                            There is a limit of 10 layout rules per module. Is there a way to get that functionality through different customization or workflow + custom function (easily accessible), etc. Having just 10 is limiting especially if module contains a lot of data. Are
                                                                                                          • Introducing Lead Capture: Empower exhibitors to capture leads effortlessly

                                                                                                            Events provide a great opportunity for exhibitors to generate awareness and engage with potential customers. Efficiently distributing attendee information to exhibitors through a seamless and secure way is of paramount importance. Introducing Lead Capture
                                                                                                          • dealing with post dated cheques

                                                                                                            Hi, can you help me please the best way to deal with this We sell an item of three months duration that is paid for with post dated cheques in monthly stages example - item is sold £3000 Cheque 1 is for £1000 due at time of sale (say Sept) cheque 2 is dated 25th of next month (Oct) cheque 3 is dated 25th of next month +1 (Nov) Now, with invoice number one it's simple - i send a standard invoice as usual But with the other two here's what i want zoho to do next month i want it to send an invoice on
                                                                                                          • Using Contains as a filter

                                                                                                            We are using Zoho Reports, ServiceDesk Plus analytics. I do not see how to create a report filter using Contains comparison of a string values, is one string contained in another. For example, Task Title contains the word Monitor. Is this possible in Zoho Reports?  This reporting feature is available in SDP reporting. Thanks in advance, Craig Rice
                                                                                                          • Mass import of documents into Zoho Writer

                                                                                                            I'm using Google's word processor at the moment but feel that Zoho does a better job (on the online apps market). Iwant to move my documents (about 50-70) to Zoho but it seems to me that I have to import them seperately. Is it already possible to upload several documents at a time or is this a forthcoming feature? Cheers Rolli :?:
                                                                                                          • Set off Unearned Revenue

                                                                                                            Hi, I would like to get a clarification on the below. I have an opening balance of BD.725/- in my Unearned Revenue A/c which includes the overpayments of 6 clients. No One of my clients settled his invoices by paying the value of the invoice less the
                                                                                                          • How Zoho Desk contributes to the art of savings

                                                                                                            Remember the first time your grandmother gave you cash for a birthday or New Year's gift, Christmas gift, or any special day? You probably tucked that money safely into a piggy bank, waiting for the day you could buy something precious or something you
                                                                                                          • Zoho Connect Module in Zoho Trident

                                                                                                            Hi I really like where Zoho Trident is going. Having Mail and Cliq in one place is especially powerful. However, Zoho Connect really needs to be included to make this a true communication and collaboration hub. I would like to request that Zoho Connect
                                                                                                          • Add Webhook Response Module to Zoho Flow

                                                                                                            Hi Zoho Flow Team, We’d like to request a Webhook Response capability for Zoho Flow that can return a dynamic, computed reply to the original webhook caller after / during the flow runs. What exists today Zoho Flow’s webhook trigger can send custom acknowledgements
                                                                                                          • Zoho Inventory - Managing Items With Multiple Suppliers

                                                                                                            Hi community, I'm working on a project at the moment for a car parts wholesale business. Each Item (part) has its own original manufacturer part number (sometimes more than one part number for the same item). When purchasing parts from 3rd party suppliers,
                                                                                                          • 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
                                                                                                          • Can I add Conditional merge tags on my Templates?

                                                                                                            Hi I was wondering if I can use Conditional Mail Merge tags inside my Email templates/Quotes etc within the CRM? In spanish and in our business we use gender and academic degree salutations , ie: Dr., Dra., Sr., Srta., so the beginning of an email / letter
                                                                                                          • Next Page