How to maintain steady cash flow during the COVID-19 crisis using Zoho Subscriptions

How to maintain steady cash flow during the COVID-19 crisis using Zoho Subscriptions

Dear customers,

I hope this finds you and your loved ones in good health.

We're all witnessing the effect that COVID-19 is having on businesses throughout the world. As consumers try to conserve their own resources, businesses can expect to receive more cancellation requests than usual. 

Here are some useful tips to help you be flexible and keep your customer base:

1. Communicate candidly and clearly with your customers:
During this period, transparent communication with customers is a necessity. A lot of businesses have started displaying messages on their home pages, explaining their BCP (Business Continuity Process) and other important announcements they want to convey to their customers.

As an additional means of communication, you can use the banner message in the customer portal of Zoho Subscriptions. The banner message is visible in the home page of the portal, so it can help get the customer's attention quickly. You can set up this message under Settings > Preferences > Branding > Portal settings.

2. Put renewals on a temporary hold:
      i) Pause and resume subscriptions
It's a good idea to provide your customers the option to freeze their subscriptions temporarily, rather than canceling them altogether. By giving them an option to pause their subscriptions, you are letting your customers know that they can rely on you when it's time to resume. It's also a good way to encourage customers to stick with you for their next purchase instead of switching vendors. 

Here's how you can pause a subscription in Zoho Subscriptions:



You can still perform automatic actions while a subscription is paused, through Zapier.

      ii) Extend the billing date:
Even customers who love your service may have difficulty paying for it on time right now. One way to keep these customers from canceling is to push back the date for their next subscription payment. By offering uninterrupted service and a little more time to pay, you're giving them a good reason to remain loyal. To do this, just update the subscription's Next Billing Date in Zoho Subscriptions and they won't be charged until the new date.



3. Be approachable:
As a standard business practice, you might have set up automatic payment reminders in Zoho Subscriptions to go out on specific days before or after the invoice due date. However, given the current circumstances, you can definitely expect delays in payment.

Since you have control over the content that goes out in these reminder emails, think about rephrasing it to let your customers know that if they need any assistance, they can reach out to you by phone or email. This way, your finance team doesn't have to wait and wonder whether the customer will make their payment or not, or spend time sending extra emails. You can tweak your reminder email content under Settings > Reminders.

By making it easy for your customers to approach you and treating them on a case-by-case basis, you can actually bring down the number of unpaid transactions.

4. Offer credits:
Another way to earn the customer's goodwill is to create special offers to assist them. For instance, Zoho's Emergency Subscription Assistance Program (ESAP) offers subscription credits to businesses in need. If you want to adopt a similar practice for your business, you can create credit notes in Zoho Subscriptions and enable the Redeem Credit Notes option so that it is automatically applied for the upcoming renewal.

5. Don't auto-cancel services upon non-payment:
Most subscription businesses have automated their billing process in such a way that if the customer doesn't pay, the subscription is automatically canceled. While this is a good practice most of the time, you might want to adopt a flexible approach during this crisis. 

Instead of letting the subscriptions be canceled automatically, you can monitor the Under Risk report in Zoho Subscriptions, and contact those customers to suggest alternate payment arrangements for your services.

6. Know why your customers leave:
During difficult times, businesses and customers alike aim to cut costs and reduce their spending.  If your customers are canceling right now, make sure you give them a chance to say why they're leaving. You might be able to retain them by offering some flexibility, or it may be best to reach out to them later and see if they're ready to come back. Even if you can't keep them as a customer, knowing why they left still helps you improve your service going forward. 

In Zoho Subscriptions, you have the option to make the Cancelation Reason field mandatory. You can configure this under Settings > Preferences > Subscription > Cancellation Preferences.
​


Though some of these tips might have a negative effect on your finances temporarily, they can gain you long-term benefits like customer loyalty and customer retention, which will help your business recover more easily. 

Did you find these tips useful? Can you think of some other best practices that businesses can use to get through difficult times? Let us know in the comments. 

Note from Zoho: If you need any assistance regarding Zoho Subscriptions, our support team is available 24 hours a day, Monday-Friday. You can also reach out to us through email (support@zohosubscriptions.com) or phone.

Because Zoho recognizes that our own customers may be facing difficult times right now, we have rolled out an Emergency Subscription Assistance Program (ESAP) to help small businesses through this crisis. Learn more about this program.

Take care and stay safe! We'll get through this storm together.

Regards,
Harikrishna
Customer Relations | Zoho Finance



    • Sticky Posts

    • Introducing Invoice Consolidation for Offline Subscriptions

      Hello Folks, Glad to announce the feature of Invoice Consolidation for Offline Subscriptions. If you are having multiple subscriptions for your customers, now, you can send a single consolidated invoice for all the Offline Subscriptions that are getting renewed on the same date. Advantage?  Customers will be receiving single invoice instead of multiple invoices upon renewal. Also reduces your efforts in follow-up with your customers for payment collections. For Example: If Customer has Subscription

    • New feature: Create back-dated subscriptions

      Hello from the Zoho Subscriptions team. :)   We’re happy to announce that today marks the launch of a much-awaited feature: creating back-dated subscriptions!   From here on out, whenever you create a new subscription with an activation date that is earlier than the present date, you’ll no longer get an error. Instead, you'll be creating a back-dated subscription. This means that the subscription started at that earlier point in time. The next billing date will be calculated automatically based on

    • Announcement Regarding Notification Emails

      Hello Everyone! This announcement is regarding the admin notification emails which you've been receiving from the email address "support@zohosubscriptions.com". From the 1st of October, 06:00 GMT, the emails with the following subjects will be sent from "no-reply@zohosubscriptions.com". Unable to send invoice for the profile - {profile_name} Unable to process auto payments. If you have set up any filters or workflow in your email account, please add "no-reply@zohosubscriptions.com” and  “support@zohosubscriptions.com”

    • Zoho Subscriptions plugin for WordPress

      Zoho Subscriptions plugin for WordPress allows you to easily embed your plan specific checkout page in an iframe with just a few mouse clicks and without a single line of code. How can WordPress Zoho Subscriptions Plugin boost your productivity? It's now easier to embed Zoho Subscriptions checkout page in your WordPress site. Forget the old method of logging in to Zoho Subscriptions, copying a URL and scripting to make adjustments. All this can be done automatically through this plugin. A great time

    • Indian GST organisation Migration Guide

      With respect to the new GST regime releasing on July 1, 2017in India, Zoho Subscriptions Indian edition is also gearing up to make your business GST Ready. This article focuses on how to get your existing organisation in Zoho Subscriptions to migrate to the new GST regime.    Note:  Any organisation created on or after July 1, 2017 will already be GST ready. You wouldn't have to migrate your organisation. Migrating your existing organisation to support GST To migrate your existing organisation to

    • Recent Topics

    • Create PO from an invoice

      We are a hardware and software sales company which receives orders over the internet. We drop ship most of our products from a warehouse outside of our company. Our orders get sync'd into Zoho from our store via onesaas as invoices. It would be great

    • Import Function: ONLY update empty fields

      When setting up an import from a spreadsheet to CRM, there is a checkbox "Don't update empty values for existing contacts" (see screenshot below). While I see some limited benefit from this functionality, I think there should also be an "ONLY update empty

    • Collaboration with customers made easy with Zoom Meeting and Zoho Desk integration

      Hello everyone! We are happy to announce that you can now integrate your Zoho Desk account with Zoom Meeting. The integration bridges the gap between digital communication and human connection, empowering teams to deliver timely support when it matters

    • CRM Canvas - Upload Attachments

      I am in the process of changing my screens to Canvas.  On one screen, I have tabs with related lists, one of which is attachments.  There doesn't appear to be a way to upload documents though.  Am I missing something really obvious?  Does anyone have

    • TrueSync regularly filling up my local disk

      Seems that WorkDrive's TrueSync randomly starts filling up my local hard drive space. None of the folders have been set as "Make Offline" but still it seems to randomly start making file offline. The settings of the app is so minimal and is of no real

    • Kaizen #194 : Trigger Client Script via Custom buttons

      Hello everyone! Welcome back to another interesting and useful Kaizen post. We know that Client Scripts can be triggered with Canvas buttons and we discussed this with a use case in Kaizen#180. Today, let us discuss how to trigger Client Script when a

    • [Webinar] A recap of Zoho Writer in 2025

      Hi Zoho Writer users, We're excited to announce Zoho Writer's webinar for January 2026: A recap of Zoho Writer in 2025. This webinar will provide a recap of the features and enhancements we added in 2025 to enhance your productivity. Choose your preferred

    • Picklist field shows "none" as default

      Hello, Is there an option to avoid showing "none" as the default value in a picklist field? I also don't want to see any option displayed. My expectation is to have a blank bar, and then when I display the drop-down list, I can choose whichever I wa

    • Stage-probability mapping feature in custom module

      Hi, I'm building a custom module for manage projects. I would like to implement the stage-probability feature that Potentials has. Is this possible?

    • 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

    • Field Description is very small

      Hello, The field Description in the activity is very small. Why don't try open a new window, or a bigger popup, or increase the width of the "popup". Example:

    • StatusIQ

      Please add StatusIQ to data sources. We using site24x7 and StatusIQ together and site24x7 integration is already there. Thanks and regards, Torsten

    • In Zoho People, the Operations buttons are frequently not visible or do not appear consistently.

      In Zoho People, the Operations buttons are frequently not visible or do not appear consistently. We request you to please investigate and address this issue, as it is affecting daily HR operations and user access.

    • Marketing Tip #14: Increase cart value with product bundles

      Bundling products is a great way to increase average order value while giving customers more convenience. Think “camera + tripod + memory card” or “soap + lotion + bath salts.” Bundles make shopping easier and feel like a better deal. It’s a win-win for

    • Problem with Workdrive folders

      I'm having a problem a problem accessing files in a Zoho work drive folder when using the Zoho writer app. The problem folder appears grayed out in the Zoho work drive window in both the online and writer application. However I can open the folder in

    • Sortie de Zoho TABLE ??

      Bonjour, Depuis bientôt 2 ans l'application zoho table est sortie en dehors de l'UE ? Depuis un an elle est annoncée en Europe Mais en vrai, c'est pour quand exactement ??

    • Add RTL and Hebrew Support for Candidate Portal (and Other Zoho Recruit Portals)

      Dear Zoho Recruit Team, I hope you're doing well. We would like to request the ability to set the Candidate Portal to be Right-to-Left (RTL) and in Hebrew, similar to the existing functionality for the Career Site. Currently, when we set the Career Site

    • Auto tracking URL generation based on Carrier

      Hi, While creating a shipment order for a package in Zoho Books, I have a requirement that for example, if the carrier is Delhivery and tracking number is 1234, then can automatically the tracking link/URL be generated as www.delhivery.com/1234. Similary,

    • Helper Functions and DRY principle

      Hello everyone, I believe Deluge should be able to use 'Helper functions' inside the main function. I know I can create different standalones, but this is not helpful and confusing. I don't want 10000 different standalones, and I dont want to have to

    • Holidays - Cannot Enter Two Holidays on Same Day

      I have a fairly common setup, where part-time employees receive 1/2 day's pay on a holiday and full-time employees receive a full day's pay. Historically, I've been able to accommodate this by entering two separate holidays, one that covers full-time

    • Pre-orders at Zoho Commerce

      We plan to have regular producs that are avaliable for purchase now and we plan to have products that will be avaliable in 2-4 weeks. How we can take the pre-orders for these products? We need to take the money for the product now, but the delivery will

    • Customer ticket creation via Microsoft Teams

      Hi all, I'm looking to see if someone could point me in the right direction. I'd love to make it so my customers/ end users can make tickets, see responses and respond within microsoft teams. As Admin and an Agent i've installed the zoho assist app within

    • Zoho Books' 2025 Wrapped

      Before we turn the page to a new year, it’s time to revisit the updates that made financial management simpler and more intuitive. This annual roundup brings together the most impactful features and enhancements we delivered in 2025, offering a clear

    • Add specific field value to URL

      Hi Everyone. I have the following code which is set to run from a subform when the user selects a value from a lookup field "Plant_Key" the URL opens a report but i want the report to be filtered on the matching field/value. so in the report there is

    • Can multiple agents be assigned to one ticket on purpose?

      Is it possible to assign one ticket to two or more agents at a time? I would like the option to have multiple people working on one ticket so that the same ticket is viewable for those agents on their list of pending tickets. Is something like this currently

    • Zoho removed ability to see all Scheduled Reports!

      If you are not the owner of a scheduled report, Zoho recently removed the capability to see each scheduled report. As an admin who relies on seeing all scheduled reports being sent, this is a terrible update. Now I cannot see ANY scheduled reports...even the ones I am being sent!!  This should be a setting for admins to control.  This is a bad update.

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

      Hi Team, when I,m trying to create a email account (imagixmidia.com.br) it's showing this error >>  This user is not allowed to add in Zoho. Please contact support-as@zohocorp.com for further details plz help me  thanks

    • Edit default "We are here to help you" text in chat SalesIQ widget

      Does anyone know how this text can be edited? I can't find it anywhere in settings. Thanks!

    • Feature Request: Sync Leave Tracker to Zoho Mail / Calendar or provide option to download information

      Zoho Leave Tracker offers the option to sync the leave Calendar to Microsoft 365 and Google Calendar. Adding an option to sync to Zoho-Mail Calendar would avoid duplication and add significant value for users. An alternative would be to allow users to

    • Compensation | Salary Packages - Hourly Wage Needed

      The US Bureau of Labor Statistics says 55.7% of all workers in the US are paid by the hour. I don't know how that compares to the rest of the world, but I would think that this alone would justify the need for having an hourly-based salary package option.

    • Multiple currencies - doesn’t seem to work for site visitors / customers

      I am trying to understand how the multiple currency feature works from the perspective of the website visitor who is shopping on my Zoho Commerce site. My site’s base currency is US Dollars (USD) but my store is for customers in Costa Rica and I would

    • Archiving Contacts

      How do I archive a list of contacts, or individual contacts?

    • How do people handle using Outlook and Zoho Project calendar at the same time?

      We have an ongoing problem in our organisation where we use Zoho Projects to plan all of our projects tasks and that also allows us to look forward using the workload report to see which of our consultants are overstretched etc and which are available.

    • 10GB Email Storage Limits in Zoho CRM

      We’ve had Zoho One for almost 5 years and have always synced our emails from Gmail via IMAP… As of late, we’ve run into issues with our emails not syncing, due to being over the 10GB storage cap… What’s very odd is that we haven’t changed a thing? I know

    • Performance is degrading

      We have used Mail and Cliq for about three years now. I used to use both on the browser. Both have, over the past 6 months, had a severe degradation in performance. I switched to desktop email, which appeared to improve things somewhat, although initial

    • How to set page defaults in zoho writer?

      hi, everytime i open the zoho writer i have to change the default page settings to - A4 from letter, margins to narrow and header and footer to 0. I cannot set this as default as that option is grayed out! so I am unable to click it. I saved the document

    • Add Israel & Jewish Holidays to Zoho People Holidays Gallery

      Greetings, We hope you are doing well. We are writing to request an enhancement to the Holidays Gallery in Zoho People. Currently, there are several holidays available, but none for Israel and none for Jewish holidays (which are not necessarily the same

    • Unable to Send Different Email Templates for Different Documents in Zoho Sign

      Hello Zoho Community, I am facing a limitation with Zoho Sign regarding email notifications sent to customers when a document is sent for signing. Currently, whenever I send any template/document for signing, the email notification that goes to the customer

    • Enable History Tracking for Picklist Values Not Available

      When I create a custom picklist field in Deals, the "Enable History Tracking for Picklist Values" option is not available in the Edit Properties area of the picklist. When I create a picklist in any other Module, that option is available. Is there a specific reason why this isn't available for fields in the Deals Module?

    • ZO25: The refreshed, more unified, and intelligent OS for business

      Hello all, Greetings from Zoho One! 2025 has been a remarkable year, packed with new features that will take your Zoho One experience to the next level! From sleek, customizable dashboards to an all-new action panel for instant task management, we’ve

    • Next Page