Revenue Management: #4 What if there are uncertainties in project or service delivery?
Our previous post taught us how Zoho Billing makes life easy for businesses with its automated revenue recognition rule. However, certain businesses have more challenges that an automated system cannot handle, and there are certain situations where automated revenue recognition is not feasible. For example, construction services paid in advance but with uncertain start dates can make the revenue recognition rule look inappropriate. Some manual interventions are needed to handle this scenario.
Manual revenue recognition in Zoho Billing helps you handle these uncertainties. It is used when the timing and amount of revenue cannot be determined accurately through automated rules. This is common in industries such as construction, where project completion is tied to milestones that may occur at irregular intervals.
Example 1:
Imagine a construction firm signs a $50,000 contract to renovate a commercial building. The client pays the entire amount upfront, but the agreement specifies that the revenue will be recognized only as key project stages are completed. Each milestone carries a defined value or percentage of the total contact, say,
Design & Approval Phase: $5000
Demolition & Site Preparation: 30% of the total contract value
Structural & Roofing Work: 40% of the total contract value
Interiors & Handover: 100% of the remaining
Milestone | Recognition | Completion Date | Amount Recognized |
Design & Approval | Fixed Cost | 12/Jan/2025 | $5000 |
Demolition & Site Preparation | 30% of the total contract | 20/Feb/2025 | $15,000 |
Structural & Roofing Work | 40% of the total contract | 25/Apr/2025 | $20,000 |
Interior & Handover | 100% of the balance | 30/Jun/2025 | $10,000 |
Total Revenue Recognized= $50,000 | |||
The company ensures that its financial statement accurately reflects real project progress by only reporting revenue when each phase is completed, rather than relying on an automated schedule that may not match the actual work done.
If you look at the revenue recognition report, it will show up like this,
i) Recognized Revenue Report
At the end of the project,
Month | Recognized Revenue |
Jan 2025 | $5000 |
Feb 2025 | $15,000 |
Mar 2025 | $0 |
Apr 2025 | $20,000 |
May 2025 | $0 |
Jun 2025 | $10,000 |
Total Recognized | $50,000 |
ii) Deferred Revenue Report
As the project progresses, deferred value gets recognized.
Month | Deferred Revenue |
Jan 2025 | $45,000 |
Feb 2025 | $30,000 |
Mar 2025 | $30,000 |
Apr 2025 | $10,000 |
May 2025 | $10,000 |
Jun 2025 | $0 |
iii) Revenue Waterfall Report
Billing Date | Total Billed | Jan 2025 | Feb 2025 | Mar 2025 | Apr 2025 | May 2025 | Jun 2025 | Recognized Revenue | Deferred Revenue |
Jan 2025 | $50,000 | $5,000 | $15,000 | $0 | $20,000 | $0 | $10,000 | $50,000 | $0 |
The project owner ensures that revenue is recorded accurately only after each milestone is completed, and this is done manually without any specific frequency.
Example 2:
A software consulting firm signs a $120,000 contract to implement an in-house ERP solution with a client. The client pays the amount upfront, but the project involves phases that don't follow uniform timelines/deadlines.
The defined timelines are,
Requirement Analysis & Resource Planning: $10,000
System Customization: 25% of the total contract
Testing & QA: 35% of total contract
Deployment & Support: Remaining contract value
Milestone | Recognition | Completion Date | Amount Recognized |
Requirement Analysis & Planning | Fixed Cost | 15/Jan/2025 | $10,000 |
System Customization | 25% of the contract value | 10/Mar/2025 | $30,000 |
Testing & QA | 35% of the contact value | 25/May/2025 | $42,000 |
Deployment & Support | 100% of the balance | 30/Jul/2025 | $38,000 |
Total Revenue Recognized= $120,000 | |||
When you look at the revenue recognition report for this software deployment, it will show up as follows,
i) Recognized Revenue Report
At the end of the deployment,
Month | Recognized Revenue |
Jan 2025 | $10,000 |
Feb 2025 | $0 |
Mar 2025 | $30,000 |
Apr 2025 | $0 |
May 2025 | $42,000 |
Jun 2025 | $0 |
Jul 2025 | $38,000 |
Total Recognized | $120,000 |
ii) Deferred Revenue Report
As the development progresses, deferred value gets recognized.
Month | Deferred Revenue |
Jan 2025 | $110,000 |
Feb 2025 | $110,000 |
Mar 2025 | $80,000 |
Apr 2025 | $0 |
May 2025 | $38,000 |
Jun 2025 | $38,000 |
Jul 2025 | $0 |
iii) Revenue Waterfall Report
Billing Date | Total Billed | Jan 2025 | Feb 2025 | Mar 2025 | Apr 2025 | May 2025 | Jun 2025 | Jul 2025 | Recognized Revenue | Deferred Revenue |
Jan 2025 | $120,000 | $10,000 | $0 | $30,000 | $0 | $42,000 | $0 | $38,000 | $120,000 | $0 |
Manual revenue recognition is critical when automated rules don't serve the purpose. As we saw through construction and IT consulting examples, Zoho Billing allows businesses to recognize revenue at the right amount and time, ensuring financial statements remain aligned with real project progress.
While we learn the manual recognition process, we will explore these specific industry types in future posts and provide a detailed walk-through of how these businesses record their earnings.
Our next post will start with the SaaS industry, where revenue recognition follows a very different pattern. Unlike milestone-based revenue recognition, SaaS depends more on a recurring billing cycle.
Stay tuned as we explore revenue recognition for SaaS businesses in a few days.
Topic Participants
Hari | Zoho Billing
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
Recent Topics
Engage with your customers at scale using WhatsApp Marketing Template messages
Hi everyone, To make it easier for organizations to communicate with customers, Desk now allows you to send individual, mass, and bulk WhatsApp template messages from both the Ticket and Contact modules. How is this going to benefit your business? WhatsAppImportation Tickets error
Hi, I'm newbie here 🤓 So, i'm importing data from csv, but when I try advance to mapping fields the importer tool show this message: Previously I try import, other data, and not show errors in this step. Some ideas? Best Regards,Showing description in timesheet and timelogs.
I am wondering if it’s possible in version 5 of Zoho People to have the description show by default or with a manipulation on the user’s part. Let me show you what I mean. As you can see this is the view for the users. Now if they want to see the fullWorkaround: openURL in Blueprints - An alternate approach
There is a roundabout way to open a URL in blueprints after a save event. By using the 'onBeforeMandatoryFormSave' in Client Script, you can open an external URL. Now, the problem is, this is designed to be run BEFORE the blueprint is saved, not after,MTD SA in the UK
Hello ID 20106048857 The Inland Revenue have confirmed that this tax account is registered as Cash Basis In Settings>Profile I have set ‘Report Basis’ as “Cash" However, I see on Zoho on Settings>Taxes>Income Tax that the ‘Tax Basis’ is marked ‘Accrual'Migrate file from Single File Upload to Multi File Upload
Dears, I have created a new field Multi File Upload to replace the old Single File Upload field. I'd like to ask you guys what is the best way to migrate the files to the new field?Open "Live Chat" from a hyperlink?
Hi, I often write paragraphs and text on our company website, and usually say you can get in touch with us via live chat. Can the chat window be triggered to pop open without clicking the chat graphic in the bottom window, and use it in a hyperlink? ie:Zoho Sites search box
Is there a Search box that can be added to a Zoho site? It would be for searching within the site only.What stops me from packaging and shipping an order when the inventory is negative?
It seems if the inventory value is negative, that Zoho Inventory should not allow me to create a Package and Ship it. But, there seems to be nothing to stop me from doing that other than when I go to physically package the item and realize that there is no stock. There also seems to be nothing on the screen that even indicates to me that I should not package and ship. To me this is the fundamental point of an inventory system. Am I doing something wrong?Conditional formatting based on another field
Hi I have two fields on my form stage 1 complete and stage 1 deadline. I am trying to setup conditional formatting so that if stage 1 complete is after stage 1 deadline the record is highlighted in red. I need both stage 1 complete and stage 1 deadlineIs there API Doc for Zoho Survey?
Hi everyone, Is there API doc for Zoho Survey? Currently evaluating a solution - use case to automate survey administration especially for internal use. But after a brief search, I couldn't find API doc for this. So I thought I should ask here. ThanUsing IMAP configuration for shared email inboxes
Our customer service team utilizes shared email boxes to allow multiple people to view and handle incoming customer requests. For example, the customer sends an email to info@xxxx.com and multiple people can view it and handle the request. How can I configureThe sending IP (136.143.188.15) is listed on spamrl.com as a source of spam.
Hi, it just two day when i am using zoho mail for my business domain, today i was sending email and found that message "The sending IP (136.143.188.15) is listed on https://spamrl.com as a source of spam" I hope to know how this will affect the deliveryChanging a Single-Line Text field into a Multi-line Field without losing data
Is it possible to change a Single-Line Text field into a Multi-line Field without losing data. I have a module with data for which I would like to change a single-line field into a multi-line field but I'm worried it might delete the pre-existing daWebhook - Google Sheets
I have 2 forms that are both integrated with Google Sheets. I've set up a webhook to pull form 1 data from Google Sheets to prefill data in Form 2. The issue I have is that the forms name fields are First Name & Last Name but the Google sheets integrationVerified Mark Certificate
Hello Dears, Can anyone help and check my mail or direct me to the desired person who can add the verification tag to my mail https://www.zoho.com/blog/mail/email-authentication-with-bimi.htmlAppointment booking is temporarily unavailable
Embeded Zoho booking page in my WordPress website. When someone starts a booking, after choosing time and date, an error appears before payment - "Appointment booking is temporarily unavailable due to restricted settings." Used the embeded code givenCannot connect to 365 business calendar and Teams, says personal but it is not.
hi I have a number of users connected to their 365 business accounts. Adding a new user and it thinks hes got 365 personal edition. He does not.... Anyone know what's going on. Trying for days now. Bookings go into his MS calendar but as its thinks itsLimited review (/questions) for Bookings 2.0
Hi all, I'm writing this review of Bookings 2.0 for two reasons: 1) it may be of interest to others, and 2) I'd like to be corrected if I'm wrong on any points. It's a very limited review, i.e. the things that have stood out as relevant, and particularlyZoho Bookings - Reserve with Google
Does Zoho Bookings plan to to integrate with Reserve with Google?Tip #3: How to change your booking page language
Displaying your booking page in your target audience's language can greatly increase customer satisfaction. By speaking their language, you will help customers feel more comfortable scheduling with you and create a stronger connection with them. Let'sBigin Android app update: Alerts while creating tasks outside of working days, conflicting events and calls.
Hello everyone! In the most recent version of the Bigin Android app, we have brought in support to display an alert if task is being scheduled outside of the working days. Also, when scheduling an event or call in the Activities module, a conflict alertBigin update: Link email messages to pipeline records.
Hello everyone! In the latest version of the Bigin iOS(v1.11.9) and macOS(1.8.9) app, we have brought in support for an option to link email to pipeline records. This helps you to view emails specific to a deal, especially when a contact is associatedBigin Android app update: Custom buttons and widgets
Hello everyone! We are excited to introduce custom buttons and widgets on the Bigin Android app. Widgets: A widget is a customizable UI component in Bigin that improves efficiency and user experience. It lets businesses embed components, streamline interactions,Zoho Sheet for Desktop
Does Zoho plans to develop a Desktop version of Sheet that installs on the computer like was done with Writer?Zoho Sheet - Desktop App or Offline
Since Zoho Docs is now available as a desktop app and offline, when is a realistic ETA for Sheet to have the same functionality?I am surprised this was not laucned at the same time as Docs.Collective-booking event not added to all staff calendars
We assign two staff to certain events. When the client books this event, it adds it to one staff calendar (the 'organiser') but not the other. How can I ensure all staff assigned to a collective booking get the event in their calendar? (A side note: itProject Management Bulletin: October, 2025
Every need leads to innovation. Project Management tools were developed out of sheer necessity to drive large projects. With wide usage, the specifications grew precise, and so did the refinement. Over years we’ve crafted one of the best project managementZoho Sheets saying locked when not locked
Zoho Sheets won't let me add more rows to sheet because it's saying the sheet is locked, but the sheet is not locked. I tried using a different browser but I still have the same issue.Identifying and Merging Accounts with Similar (Non-Exact) Names
Hello everyone, I’m aware of the built-in deduplication feature in Zoho CRM that allows merging records with exactly matching values for selected fields. However, I’m running into a situation where our migrated data contains multiple variations of theOption for super admin to recover the deleted chats in Zoho Cliq
Currently, in Zoho Cliq, if a user accidentally deletes their chats, there is no option for the Super Admin to recover or view those deleted messages. I believe it would be helpful if Super Admins had a recovery option, perhaps within a certain time frame,Zoho CRM iOS app updates: the Homepage, Zoho Survey integration, and support for multiple file uploads in subform
Hello everyone! The Zoho CRM mobile app continues to evolve to bring you a smoother and more powerful CRM-on-the-go experience. We're excited to share some important updates now available in the iOS app. Here's what's new: Homepage support Zoho SurveyI am trying to integrate my module in sandbox environment to add data via API
I went through the documents and tried to setup the API for adding the module via the api but the problem is the token setup is done on "https://accounts.zoho.in/oauth/v2/token" domain and the bulk write is done on "https://content.zohoapis.com/crm/v8/upload"Setting up primary mobile number.
Hi Sir Earlier I joined IIFL team and got an organizational email of zoho services. Later i quit and now my account is deactivated with IIFL but i am unable to link my mobile number to my own email id with zoho.Tables for Europe Datacenter customers?
It's been over a year now for the launch of Zoho Tables - and still not available für EU DC customers. When will it be available?Guided Conversations - Ticket Creation
Hi there, Using Guided Conversations to Take Customer Data and apply it into a Support Ticket for internal use, Is there a way to take multiple Textual Variables Inputs (A series of questions), and have the answers all appear in the Description of theHow to send certain invoices for Approval based on condition?
To streamline operations, I need the invoices to go for approval when certain conditions are met. For example, if my staff gives a discount of x amount, it must go for approval. If there is no discount, then the invoice will be approved automatically.Unable to continue payment
Hi, I want to make a payment for my email subscription, but I cannot proceed with the payment because my NITKU is invalid. In Indonesia, the NITKU consists of 22 digits, but Zoho only provides 20 digits, causing my NITKU to be invalid. Please help meIs there a way to show contact emails in the Account?
I know I can see the emails I have sent and received on a Contact detail view, but I want to be able to see all the emails that have been sent and received between all an Accounts Contacts on the Account Detail view. That way when I see the Account detailMassive spam pretending to come from our address – is this a Zoho security issue?
Hi, We’ve been receiving more and more suspicious emails lately — many of them clearly look like scams. But yesterday, we got an email that appeared to be sent from our own address, which was very concerning. We're starting to wonder if this might beNext Page