Revenue Management: #8 Revenue Recognition in Educational & Training Institutions

Revenue Management: #8 Revenue Recognition in Educational & Training Institutions

Educational Institutions and training centres typically collect course fees at the time of enrolment, sometimes for a one-day workshop and sometimes for a year-long certification course. You might also charge separately for course materials or evaluation. But when can you actually recognize that income? Would you be able to recognize it on payment? Spread it across the course period? What happens if a student cancels midway?


How do institutions manage revenue when learning is delivered over time?

Revenue Recognition Scenarios in Education & Training
Education institutions and training providers often deal with varying course durations, delivery models (online, in-person, hybrid), and fees collected upfront. Though the five-step revenue recognition model remains constant, the timing and allocation of revenue depend on the learning service's structure. Here are common revenue recognition scenarios for this industry:

Upfront Free for Long-Term Course
When a learner enrols in a course that runs for several months and pays the full fee in advance, the institution cannot recognize the entire amount immediately. Instead, the revenue should be spread out across the period the training is delivered.

Example: A $6000 certification course runs for 6 months. Revenue should be recognized at $1000 per month during the course period.

Short-Term Workshops & Seminars
For one-day or short-duration workshops, revenue can often be fully recognised once the sessions are delivered, assuming there is no refund window.

Example: A $500 weekend workshop is recognized on the day it occurs.

Course Materials & Exams
Institutions that charge separately for materials, exams, or certification must split those payments and recognize those amounts individually.

Example: $1200 total course fee, including $900 for training for three months and $300 for materials. Revenue should be recognized $300 upfront and $300/month for three months.

Cancellation, Refunds, and Attendance-Based Pricing
Refund policies and partial completions must be factored into recognition. If a student drops out after 1 month of a 3-month course, only one-third of the revenue should be recognized unless a refund is issued.

Example: A $900 course is cancelled after 1 month. You must recognize $300 and defer or refund the rest based on the policy. Credit note will be created, and the deferred $600 will be reversed to the customer as credits or issued a refund.

These scenarios show that educational institutions must align revenue with actual learning delivery and not merely based on fee collection. Automating this alignment avoids revenue overstatement and ensures compliance.


Info
Scenario :

A training company signs up a student for a three-month Data Analytics certification program for a fee of $3000. The payment is made in full at the start. The course includes three months of training and $600 worth of course material.  



Zoho Billing for Education Institution Revenue Recognition
Zoho Billing enables learning platforms to automate revenue recognition by setting up roles that separately reflect course delivery and service components.

For the above scenario, you can configure the recognition rule as follows,

Component

Recognition Frequency

Recognition Method

Recognition Time

Course Material

Once

One-Time (Daily)

Period Start

Training Session

Monthly

Evenly Distributed

Period Start

 

Although $3000 is collected upfront, only $600 for the course material can be recognized immediately according to the performance obligation. The remaining $2400 will be spread evenly across the three-month training period.


Reports in Zoho Billing

i) Recognized Revenue Report
Two months into the course, the course material is delivered, and one month of training is pending.

Component

Recognized Revenue

Description

Course Material

$600

Recognized fully at the start

Training Session

$1600

out of $2400 for two months of training given

Total Recognized

$2200

Recognized in two months

 


ii) Deferred Revenue Report
After two months, it will be left with the training session payment alone as deferred.

Component

Deferred Amount

Course Delivery

$0

Training Session

$800

Total Deferred

$800

 


iii) Revenue Waterfall Report

Month

Course Material

Training Session

Total

Month 1

$600

$800

$1400

Month 2

----

$800

$800

Month 3

----

$800

$800

Total

$600

$2400

$3000

 

Idea

Best Practices for Education Institution Revenue Recognition

  • Separate Instructional & Non-Instructional Items: Classify course material, training, certification, and exam components distinctly
  • Align Revenue with Course Delivery: Ensure the recognition rule is set based on course delivery and that the revenue is recognized when the student receives the instruction.
  • Set Return/Refund Policy Clearly: Establish a clear policy and terms to account for students who drop out or cancel courses after signing up.

 

Notes
Up Next: Revenue Recognition in Media & Publishing


      • 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

        • Celebrating Connections with Zoho Desk

          September 27 is a special day marking two great occasions: World Tourism Day and Google’s birthday. What do these two events have in common (besides the date)? It's something that Zoho Desk celebrates, too: making connections. The connect through tourism

        • Attention API Users: Upcoming Support for Renaming System Fields

          Hello all! We are excited to announce an upcoming enhancement in Zoho CRM: support for renaming system-defined fields! Current Behavior Currently, system-defined fields returned by the GET - Fields Metadata API have display_label and field_label properties

        • 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

        • No bank feeds from First National Bank South Africa since 12 September

          I do not know how Zoho Books expects its customers to run a business like this. I have contacted Zoho books numerous times about this and the say it is solved - on email NO ONE ANSWERS THE SOUTH AFRICAN HELP LINE Come on Zoho Books, you cannot expect

        • Zoho CRM Calendar | Custom Buttons

          I'm working with my sales team to make our scheduling process easier for our team. We primary rely on Zoho CRM calendar to organize our events for our sales team. I was wondering if there is a way to add custom button in the Calendar view on events/meeting

        • Citation Problem

          I had an previous ticket (#116148702) on this subject. The basic problem is this; the "Fetch Details" feature works fine on the first attempt but fails on every subsequent attempt, Back in July after having submitted information electronically and was

        • Open Sans Font in Zoho Books is not Open Sans.

          Font choice in customising PDF Templates is very limited, we cannot upload custom fonts, and to make things worse, the font names are not accurate. I selected Open Sans, and thought the system was bugging, but no, Open Sans is not Open Sans. The real

        • Does Zoho Sheet Supports https://n8n.io ?

          Does Zoho Sheet Supports https://n8n.io ? If not, can we take this as an idea and deploy in future please? Thanks

        • Failing to generate Access and Refresh Token

          Hello.  I have two problems: First one when generating Access and Refresh Token I get this response:  As per the guide here : https://www.zoho.com/books/api/v3/#oauth (using server based application) I'm following all the steps. I have managed to get

        • Power of Automation:: Automate the process of updating project status based on a specific task status.

          Hello Everyone, Today, I am pleased to showcase the capabilities of a custom function that is available in our Gallery. To explore the custom functions within the Gallery, please follow the steps below. Click Setup in the top right corner > Developer

        • Zeptomail 136.143.188.150 blocked by SpamCop

          Hi - it looks like this IP is being blocked, resulting in hard bounces unfortunately :( "Reason: uncategorized-bounceMessage: 5.7.1 Service unavailable; Client host [136.143.188.150] blocked using bl.spamcop.net; Blocked - see https://www.spamcop.net/bl.shtml?136.143.188.150

        • Apply transaction rules to multiple banks

          Is there any way to make transaction rules for one bank apply to other banks? It seems cumbersome to have to re-enter the same date for every account.

        • How to bulk update records with Data Enrichment by Zia

          Hi, I want to bulk update my records with Data Enrichment by Zia. How can I do this?

        • Need Guidance on SPF Flattening for Zoho Mail Configuration

          Hi everyone, I'm hoping to get some advice on optimizing my SPF record for a Zoho Mail setup. I use Zoho Mail along with several other Zoho services, and as a result, my current SPF record has grown to include multiple include mechanisms. My Cloudflare

        • Is there an equivalent to the radius search in RECRUIT available in the CRM

          We have a need to find all Leads and/or Contacts within a given radius of a given location (most likely postcode) but also possibly an address. I was wondering whether anyone has found a way to achieve this in the CRM much as the radius search in RECRUIT

        • How do I split a large CSV file into smaller parts for import into Zoho?

          Hi everyone, I’m trying to upload a CSV file into Zoho, but the file is very large (millions of rows), and Zoho keeps giving me errors or takes forever to process. I think the file size is too big for a single import. Manually breaking the CSV into smaller

        • Is Zoho Sheet available for Linux ?

          Is Zoho Sheet available for Linux ?

        • Client Script Payload Size Bug

          var createParams = { "data": [{ "Name": "PS for PR 4050082000024714556", "Price_Request": { "id": "4050082000024714556" }, "Account": { "id": "4050082000021345001" }, "Deal": { "id": "4050082000023972001" }, "Owner": { "id": "4050082000007223004" }, "Approval_Status":

        • Custom Fonts in Zoho CRM Template Builder

          Hi, I am currently creating a new template for our quotes using the Zoho CRM template builder. However, I noticed that there is no option to add custom fonts to the template builder. It would greatly enhance the flexibility and branding capabilities if

        • Create static subforms in Zoho CRM: streamline data entry with pre-defined values

          Last modified on (9 July, 2025): This feature was available in early access and is currently being rolled out to customers in phases. Currently available for users in the the AU, CA, and SA DCs. It will be enabled for the remaining DCs in the next couple

        • Messages not displayed from personal LinkedIn profile

          Hello. I connected both our company profile and my personal profile to Zoho social. I do see all messages from our company page but none from my private page. not even the profile is being added on top to to switch between company or private profile,

        • lead convert between modules

          Hello, The workflow we set up to automatically transfer leads registered via Zapier into the Patients module to the Leads module started to malfunction unexpectedly on September 25, 2025, at 11:00 AM. Under normal circumstances, all fields filled in the

        • Flow Task Limits - How to Monitor, Understand Consumption?

          So, I got an email last night saying that I've exhausted 70% of my tasks for this month, and encouraging me to buy more tasks. I started to dig into this, and I cannot for the life of me figure out where to find any useful information for understanding,

        • Cross References Do Not Update Correctly

          I am using cross references to reference Figures and current am just using the label and number, i.e. Figure #. As seen here: When I need to update the field, I use the update field button. But it will change the cross reference to no longer only including

        • Manage control over Microsoft Office 365 integrations with profile-based sync permissions

          Greetings all, Previously, all users in Zoho CRM had access to enable Microsoft integrations (Calendar, Contacts, and Tasks) in their accounts, regardless of their profile type. Users with an administrator profile can now manage profile-based permissions

        • Zoho Desk KB article embedded on another site.

          We embed KB articles from Zoho Desk on another site (our application). When opening the article in a new tab, there is no issue, but if we choose lightbox, we are getting an error "To protect your security, help.ourdomain.com will not allow Firefox to

        • How to Track and Manage Schedule Changes in Zoho Projects

          Keeping projects on track requires meticulous planning. However, unforeseen circumstances can cause changes to schedules, leading to delays. It becomes important to capture the reason for such changes to avoid them in the future. Zoho Projects acknowledges

        • Is there a notification API when a new note is addeding

          Trying to push to Cliq, or email notification when there's a new note added in module. How to implement this?

        • 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.

        • Collaborate Feature doesn't work

          Hello Team. It seems that the collaborate section is broken? I can post something but it all appears in "Discussions". In there is no way how I would mark something as Draft, Approval, post or any of the other filter categories? Also if I draft a post

        • Create new Account with contact

          Hi I can create a new Account and, as part of that process, add a primary contact (First name, last name) and Email. But THIS contact does NOT appear in Contacts. How can I make sure the Contact added when creating an Account is also listed as a Contact?

        • Edit Permission during and after approval?

          When a record is sent for approval Can a user request for edit permission from the approver? We don't want to give edit permissions for all the records under approval Only on a case-by-case basis How can we achieve this?

        • Zoho web and mobile application not workingn

          Both zoho forms web and mobile application aren't working. I have checked my network connections and they are fine.

        • Introducing the revamped What's New page

          Hello everyone! We're happy to announce that Zoho Campaigns' What's New page has undergone a complete revamp. We've bid the old page adieu after a long time and have introduced a new, sleeker-looking page. Without further ado, let's dive into the main

        • Prevent stripping of custom CSS when creating an email template?

          Anyone have a workaround for this? Zoho really needs to hire new designers - templates are terrible. A custom template has been created, but every time we try to use it, it strips out all the CSS from the head.  IE, we'll define the styles right in the <head> (simple example below) and everything gets stripped (initially, it saves fine, but when you browse away and come back to the template, all the custom css is removed). <style type="text/css"> .footerContent a{display:block !important;} </style>

        • Bulk Moving Images into Folders in the Library

          I can't seem to select multiple images to move into a folder in order to clean up my image library and organize it. Instead, I have to move each individual image into the folder and sometimes it takes MULTIPLE tries to get it to go in there. Am I missing

        • Zoho Campaigns - Why do contacts have owners?

          When searching for contacts in Zoho Campaigns I am sometimes caught out when I don't select the filter option "Inactive users". So it appears that I have some contacts missing, until I realise that I need to select that option. Campaigns Support have

        • Latest updates in Zoho Meeting | Breakout rooms and End to end encryption

          Hello everyone, We’re excited to share a few updates for Zoho Meeting. Here's what we've been working on lately: Introducing Breakout Rooms for enhanced collaboration in your online meetings and End-to-end encryption to ensure that the data is encrypted

        • Systematic SPF alignment issues with Zoho subdomains

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

        • Accidentally deleted a meeting recording -- can it be recovered?

          Hi, I accidentally deleted the recording for a meeting I had today. Is there a way I can recover it?

        • Next Page