Billing Management: #3 Billing Unbilled Charges Periodically

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.
 
 



      • 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

        • Diff signature for compose new email and replies

          Hi,   How do i have different signature for replies and new emails. its inconvenient to have one large signature for replies. Usually on Outlook we have the option to keep separate signatures for new emails and for replies.

        • Zoho Website Site Speed Up & Setting

          We are experiencing slow loading speeds on our Zoho website and would like assistance in optimizing its performance. Kindly review the site and suggest or implement necessary improvements to enhance speed, especially related to: > Caching mechanisms >

        • Clickjacking: Zoho Vault's Response

          Issue: Password manager browser extensions are found to be vulnerable to clickjacking security vulnerabilities that could allow attackers to steal account credentials, TFA codes, and card details under certain conditions. Reported by: Marek Toth, Independent

        • Refund

          Hi There, Please refund me asap possible, because of no support given. Thank you

        • No option for pick up in Zoho Books / Inventory but yes on commerce

          Is it planned to release soon on books/inventory?

        • Accessing Zoho form enteries via API

          Hi As a user I can view enteries to a form at: https://forms.zoho.com/<myOrganisation>/report/<myReportName>/records/web How do I access these entries via API? I don't have any problem with scope and getting tokens. But I have no idea what the API call

        • Blueprint Issue - Being able to set a subform field as mandatory

          I'm creating a blueprint. My record involves a subform which is only shown once field is set but the field gets set in step two of the process. My problem - I can't save the record as the subform field is set to mandatory - If I unset the mandatory field,

        • Blueprint - Mandatory file upload field

          Hi, File upload (as we as image upload) field cannot be set as mandatory during a blueprint transition. Is there a workaround? Setting attachments as mandatory doesn't solve this need as we have no control over which attachments are added, nor can we

        • Zoho Books - Include Quote Status in Workflow Field Triggers

          Hi Zoho Books team, I recently tried to create a Workflow rule based on when a Quote is Accepted by the customer. This is something which I thought would be very easy to do, however I discovered that Status is not listed as a field which can be monitored

        • Zoho Books - Show Related Sales Orders on Quotes

          Hi Books team, I've noticed that the Quotes don't show show the related Sales Order. My feature request is to also show related Sales Orders above the Quote so it's easy to follow the thread of records in the sales and fulfilment process. Below screenshot

        • Add VAT/Tax line to bank adjustments

          When categorising transactions and matching bank feeds with transactions such as customer payments, we use the "Add Adjustment" to add things like fees/bank fees. It would be useful to choose a VAT/Tax rate here. Whilst there is a bank charges option when adding a payment, this goes into the default bank charges account. We use the adjustments so that we can choose the account and separate our fees. We use different card providers and Worldpay charges VAT so we are stuck. We cannot integrate with

        • New Menu Layout Feedback

          I'd really like to see the banking item back on the top of the menu. I'm sure part of it is just because that's what I'm accustomed to. However, for a bookkeeping program, I think there's a logic to having banking be on top. Not a giant issue, but something

        • How to use Rollup Summary in a Formula Field?

          I created a Rollup Summary (Decimal) field in my module, and it shows values correctly. When I try to reference it in a Formula Field (e.g. ${Deals.Partners_Requested} - ${Deals.Partners_Paid}), I get the error that the field can’t be found. Is it possible

        • Form Accessibility

          Hi, is there an update on the accessibility standard of Zoho forms? Are the forms WCAG 2.1 AA compliant? 

        • Cannot schedule report delivery

          The only 'send option' available when exporting reports is 'immediately' The option to schedule the report is missing.

        • adding attachment in sendmail script where attachment is in a CRM field

          Hi all, I have a custom field of type 'File Upload' in one of my modules in my CRM. I want to include the file in that field as an attachment to an email - which is done from a button on  the 'Results' module. I have created a script and a button to initiate an email from that module. The Deluge scripting window has allowed me to add arguments for all the fields I need to use except for the one file upload type field. My script currently looks like the below (content of the email omitted). As you

        • [Free Webinar] Learning Table Series - AI-Enhanced Insurance Claim Management in Zoho Creator

          Hello Everyone! We’re excited to invite you to another edition of Learning Table Series, where we showcase how Zoho Creator empowers industries with innovative and automated solutions. Struggling with lengthy claim processes, a lack of visibility into

        • Not sure how to use credits to my account

          Hi I have a $50 credit to my account. I'm just wondering how I can apply that to either a current invoice or to try a new service. Any advice would be great, thanks. Kind Regards Chris

        • Control who sees Timeline and Interactions in Zoho CRM through Profiles

          The feature has been enabled for all DCs (except US, EU, and IN DCs). We will be rolling it out to the other DCs in the upcoming days. Dear All, In a CRM, not all users would require access to the history of a record. For instance, a Marketing Operations

        • Zoho Desk Integration - Add the option to send the estimate from the Zoho Desk Ticket Integration

          Hi, Currently in the Zoho Desk integration, the user is able to create an estimate from a ticket, once the estimate is created the user can see the estimate under the ticket (see screenshot below), but is not able to send that estimate from Zoho Desk.

        • Utilisation de Zoho en conformité avec l’article 286 du Code général des impôts (CGI)

          Cher(e) client(e), Conformément à l’article 286 du Code général des impôts (CGI) impose aux entreprises assujetties à la TVA d’utiliser des systèmes de caisse ou de gestion commerciale certifiés lorsqu’elles enregistrent des ventes à des particuliers.

        • Issue showing too many consultations in my workspace link.

          Hi Team, I’ve set up two Workspaces to track meetings from different sources. So far, this has been working well, and the two Workspaces are differentiated without any issues. However, when I navigate to Consultations and share the link to my personal

        • CRM Validation Rules Support Only Single Condition

          Simply put, CRM validation rules support only a single condition for each field on "All Records". You also cannot specify additional validation rules on the same field because it has already been used in an existing validation rule. The ONLY solution

        • Unapproved Leaves are hard to distinguish in Attendance View

          This is a an unapproved leave request It appears in the Attendance view without any visual indicator if its approved or not For a whole day request this might be manageable but for hourly requests it gets very hard to know which are approved, which are

        • Performance Appraisal Probation Period

          Hello All,  Is there any possible way to create an appraisal cycle for new staff members, at the end of probation period? Many thanks!

        • Zoho Creatorの一括操作における処理の同期/非同期について

          現在、Creatorのレポート機能を利用して、複数のレコードに対して一括で処理を実行しようとしていますが、処理の実行順序について確認したいことがあります。 レポート内の複数レコードに一括で処理を実行した際、処理は同期的に行われるのでしょうか？それとも非同期的に行われるのでしょうか？ 【同期処理の場合】 レコード①に対する処理が開始され、終了後にレコード②に対する処理が開始され、最後にレコード③に対する処理が実行されるように、処理が順番に行われる場合。 【非同期処理の場合】 レコード①、レコード②、レコード③の処理が一斉に開始され、それぞれ並行して処理が行われ、全処理が終了する場合。

        • Mail Delivery Failed

          Good morning,   I have just set up an account with 5 users, however each time a message is sent to 1 user a m'mail delivery failed' message is generated. See below.   Any ideas   Thanks   Rob   This message was created automatically by mail delivery software. A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed: robb@thesmartgroup.ae mailbox is full: retry timeout exceeded ------ This is a copy of the message,

        • Delete commerce website

          I need to delete a commerce website, but the only option is to click on settings, REQUEST DELETE, choose an urgency notice, add a message....AND THEN nothing, no way to send the request. Why is nothing simple!?!?!  I just want to delete the store.  The

        • Adding external users to Zoho Social under Zoho ONE licence - how to best achieve this

          My client has a small business, and we are looking to implementing Zoho ONE with a single flexible user licence as that is all they really need and offers the best pricing for the range of modules we eventually wish to set them up with, one of which will

        • Has anyone built a custom AI support agent inside Zoho (SalesIQ/Zobot)?

          Hi all, I’ve been experimenting with building my own AI support assistant and wanted to see if anyone here has tackled something similar within Zoho. Right now, I’ve set up a Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) pipeline outside of Zoho using FAISS. It

        • This mobile number has been marked spam. Please contact support.

          Problem Description: One of our sales agents in our organization is unable to sign in to Zoho Mail. When attempting to log in, the following message appears: This mobile number has been marked as spam. Please contact support at as@zohocorp.com @zohocorp

        • What’s New in Zoho Inventory | April 2025

          Hello users, April has been a big month in Zoho Inventory! We’ve rolled out powerful new features to help you streamline production, optimise stock management, and tailor your workflows. While several updates bring helpful enhancements, three major additions

        • When Zoho Tables Beta will be open to EU data center

          Hello all, We in EU are looking at you all using and testing and are getting jealous :) When we will be able to get into the beta also? We don't mind testing and playing with beta software. Thank you!

        • Pass current date to a field using Zoho Flow

          I am trying to generate an invoice automatically once somebody submits a record in Zoho CRM. I get an error in the invoice date. I have entered {{zoho.currentdate}} in the Date field. When I test the flow, I get "Zoho Books says "Invalid value passed

        • API: Mark Sales Order as Open + Custom Status

          Hi, it's possible to create Custom Status (sub-status actually) states for the Sales Order. So you have Open, Void. Then under Open you can have Open, and create one called Order Paid, Order Shipped, etc etc...which is grouped under Open. I can use the

        • Multi-Unit Inventory with Flexible Unit Selection (Purchase in One Unit, Sell in Another)

          We need multi-unit inventory management in Zoho Books with the flexibility to choose units (e.g., Box or Piece) at the time of purchase or sale. For example, if 1 Box = 10 Pieces, we should be able to record purchases in Boxes but sell either in Boxes

        • Zoho Quartz Screen Recording

          Hello, can we get access to Quartz, please, as a standalone solution? It would be great for creating training videos for current and future staff on how to use Zoho software according to our company requirements. Thank you

        • This domain is not allowed to add in Zoho. Please contact support-as@zohocorp.com for further details

          This is the error i keep getting when trying to use my Zoho Domain Mail. This domain is not allowed to add in Zoho. Please contact support-as@zohocorp.com for further details Find attached. I hope this can be resolved very quickly so i can go on and make

        • Tip 26: How to hide the "Submit" button from a form

          Hi everyone, Hope you're staying safe and working from home. We are, too. By now, we at Zoho are all very much accustomed to the new normal—working remotely. Today, we're back with yet another simple but interesting tip--how to hide the Submit button from your forms. In certain scenarios, you may want to hide the submit button from a form until all the fields are filled in.  Use case In this tip, we'll show you how to hide the Submit button while the user is entering data into the form, and then

        • filter broke my data

          I uploaded a file recently from Sheets and it has top 2 rows frozen, with table headers in second row and each one is filterable. somehow my first 2 columns became unfiltered and no matter what I do I cannot reapply the filter?? also didn't realize they

        • Next Page