Billing Management: #10 Solving Common Mistakes in Billing

Over the past few weeks, we have explored different facets of billing, from the simplicity of traditional one-time billing to the evolving landscape of subscriptions, retainers, and usage-based models. We've unpacked how billing isn't just about sending an invoice; it's about how a business communicates value, maintains trust, and keeps its financial rhythm steady.

As businesses grow, so does the complexity of billing. What once worked with a single invoice or payment can quickly become tangled when projects overlap, clients prepay, usage fluctuates, or charges go unbilled. While every business strives for precision in billing, even a small mistake can quietly cost time, money, and reputation.

In this final part of our Billing Management Series, let's step away from theory and get into the reality of businesses that struggle with billing errors, confusion, and missed revenue opportunities.

Missing Items 

Jessica runs a marketing agency. After wrapping up a major campaign, she sat down late into the night, manually typing the invoices. Halfway through, she realized she had missed adding a few minor tasks.

The client called the next morning. "Jessica, why is our invoice missing some items we agreed on?" they asked. Jessica could only apologize and rush to correct the total, feeling frustrated and embarrassed.

Zoho Billing keeps invoice creation error-free and straightforward. An invoice can be created and saved as a draft before it reaches the customer. This allows users like Jessica to double-check whether all the entries or items were added as agreed by the client. Once checked, the invoice can be sent, and through automatic reminders, follow-up can be done on the payment, leaving Jessica to focus on her campaigns instead of keeping it.

Invisible Hours 

Rakesh's firm was in the middle of a multiple-phase project. On Friday, he checked the milestone report and noticed something alarming.

"Wait, we logged 60 hours, right? Where are the extra 15?" he asked the team. They shrugged, looking sheepish. Some work had been done, but was never logged into the manual timesheets. Rakesh realized that the company might lose revenue without even knowing it.

Zoho Billing enables time logging from different devices and avenues to make it more accessible and reliable. It allows time logging in real time through the console, desktop version, mobile app (iOS and Android), and smartwatches. Once the time is logged, it automatically calculates the worked billable hours correctly and gives users confidence that the team's efforts were fully accounted for.

Subscription Chaos 

A fast-growing SaaS company had dozens of clients who upgraded and downgraded their plans each month. One afternoon, the finance team noticed a client's mid-cycle upgrade wasn't reflected correctly.

"Why does this invoice show the old plan?" demanded the client. "We upgraded last week!" yells the customer with frustration. Meanwhile, a failed payment had gone unnoticed, compounding the problem.

Zoho Billing automates subscriptions, handling plan changes, proration, and failed payment retries. Proration ensures that the customer is charged the precise additional amount required whenever they choose to upgrade their plan. Conversely, smart dunning assists the company by making three attempts before flagging it as unsuccessful. This also enables customers and users to receive notifications to ensure the renewal payments are successful.

Retainer Mystery 

At a law firm, partners argued over the amount of a client's retainer during a meeting. "Did we use $2500 or $3000 of this client's retainer?" one of the partners asked exasperatingly. Staff had been manually tracking prepayments, and this uncertainty delayed the issuance of the next invoice. Meanwhile, clients were called to verify balances, creating awkward back-and-forth conversations.

Zoho Billing promptly tracks advance payments under each customer record and applies them automatically to invoices. A comprehensive balance report provides precise information about the remaining retainer, ensuring alignment between partners and clients and minimizing internal misunderstandings.

Advance Invoice Dilemma 

A consulting firm must bill a client for a monthly strategy session. The finance team manually created the invoice, but accidentally issued a duplicate one. "Wait, did we just charge them twice?" someone asked with surprise. The client called, puzzled and frustrated, causing a tense back-and-forth over email before the error was resolved.

Zoho Billing automates advanced invoicing, tracking which invoices have been paid or applied. This ensures no duplicate invoices are sent to the client and keeps the renewal cycle intact. The clients receive clear, accurate bills for upcoming services.

Usage Puzzle 

A cloud storage company billed customers based on monthly data usage. Staff spent hours consolidating reports, calculating tiered charges, and applying discounts. Despite all this, the customer claimed, "We've double-counted somewhere."  He added, "Your invoice doesn't match my usage. Can you explain?" Hours were wasted checking logs and recalculating charges.

Zoho Billing integrates with your tracking system through APIs, promptly capturing usage data without any manual intervention. The usage is computed automatically according to the pricing configured, and it is visible on the invoices and in the customer portal.

Variable Usage Confusion 

An energy management company billed a commercial client based on electricity consumption. In a particular month, the client's usage spiked unexpectedly.

"I can't believe this is our invoice!  It's way higher than last month," the client exclaimed. Staff struggled to recalculate charges, delaying the invoice, and the frustrated client waited.

Zoho Billing automatically calculates variable usage charges according to the consumption rule. When usage data is added to the system, manually or by importing it, the corresponding charges will be applied and billed accurately with no room for errors while computing.

Compliance Headache 

Rio manages a mid-sized business with clients across multiple states and countries. Every month, he struggles with varying tax rules, be it GST or VAT calculation, and keeping his invoices compliant. "Did we apply the right tax for that international client?" he wonders, realizing a small mistake could result in penalties. The finance team spends hours cross-checking the invoices, often working late to ensure everything is accurate.

Zoho Billing offers edition-specific features that cater to different regions and compliance requirements. The editions starting from the USA, India, Australia, Canada, UAE, UK, and so on keep businesses covered in terms of taxable invoicing and compliance with local tax authorities. It automatically calculates applicable tax rates, applies local and international rules, and generates audit-ready invoices based on the country you choose. Zoho Billing ensures that every transaction is fully compliant, allowing Rio to move on without several hours of manual checks.

Precision in Billing Management 

Billing challenges encompass more than just numbers on a page; they also involve real people, their frustrations, and the risk of lost revenue. From missing line items to complex usage calculations, Zoho Billing automates various processes, ensures accuracy, and provides visibility across different levels.  Every invoice, advance request, or usage report is a professional touchpoint that strengthens clients' trust and allows businesses to focus on growth instead of chasing numbers. 

As we end this series on billing management, we are excited to make one extra post that will definitely excite everyone here. 

Hint: Zoho Billing now covers the Advanced Usage Billing Model. Keep guessing! 

• 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'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

• when the record is created the tag want to Show as Opportunity how i achive this using Deluge Script

  In the quotation i have the work flow schedule for create opportunity record in the module , on that time the quotation tag select as opportunity created. How i achive this using Deluge Script . this like i want to Do tag1 = Map(); tag1.put("name","Nurturing

• Delete a channel

  I need delete a channel in tickets.

• Copy / Duplicate Workflow

  I have workflows setup that are very similar to each other. We have a monitoring system watching servers, and all notifications - no matter what client it is about - will come from a  noreply@ address which is not very helpful in having it auto assigned to the right account. I have setup a workflow that will change the contact name of the ticket (currently it would say noreply@) to the correct customer which is based on the subject line, as that mentions which server the alert it is about. I need

• Subtasks don't update parent task's times

  Hi there: I've recently upgraded to premium and check that subtasks completion % don't update the proportional completion of the parent tasks related to it.  We've been challenging with the problem of having to update twice or sometimes 3 times the completion of the related tasks. I've seen posts similar to this, of 3 years old.  Is there any roadmap for making this happen in a future release? Thanx César Ratto Lima, Perú.

• Should I Use DMARC?

  When I configure Zoho Mail's DMARC settings, it's mandatory to fill in the RUA and RUF (Aggregate notification email address*, Forensic notification email address*) addresses. When we enter an email address in these fields, we receive reports from the

• Tip #44 – Get Deeper Insights with Zoho Assist’s Custom Reports – ‘Insider Insights’

  In today’s fast-paced IT environment, having a clear view of your remote support activities is more important than ever. Zoho Assist’s Custom Reports feature gives IT teams the ability to generate tailored reports that provide actionable insights and

• Message "...does not support more than 100 distinct values..." WHY????

  I get this message on one of my reports: Sorry, Zoho Reports currently does not support more than 100 distinct values in columns. 'Account Name * Sum(Amount),Count(Amount Tier)' contains more than 100 distinct values.  Possibly, you can apply filter to reduce the number of distinct values in 'Account Name' or drop the 'Account Name' field in Rows. I want to list all ACCOUNT NAMES (about 500) with SALES BY ACCOUNT.  What is blocking this?

• 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.

• Let's Talk Recruit: Super-charge hiring with Zoho Recruit add-ons

  Welcome back to our Let’s Talk Recruit series! This time, we’re diving into something that might seem like a small upgrade but has a huge impact on recruiter productivity: Zoho Recruit add-ons. Think about how much of your day is spent in your inbox or

• Vendor Signatures Needed for Purchase Orders

  Hello everyone, We have a unique requirement that necessitates that Vendors & Suppliers formally acknowledge our Purchase Orders upon receipt. I was hoping that there would be an option to do so in Zoho Books, but that does not appear to be the case.

• Is there an API to "File a Ticket" in Desk

  Hi, Is there an API to "File a Ticket" in Desk to zoho projects?

• Store "Sign in with Google/Microsoft/GitHub etc." details

  Quite often now, users are using a sign-in provider like Google or Microsoft to sign into various apps and services. It would be great if Vault could remember which providers you use for each website and sign you in with that provider instead of a username

• Tip of the Week #72– Assign thread ownership to avoid confusion.

  When teams handle a large volume of emails, managing threads becomes important to stay organized. Without a clear system, duplicate replies, missed follow-ups, or confusion over responsibilities can happen. Thread assignment solves this by designating

• Unarchive tickets

  How can I manually unarchive tickets?

• Optimize your Knowledge Base for enhanced accessibility by adding alt tags for images

  Let's learn why alt tags are crucial for your articles. You can add alternative tags (alt tags) and alternative text (alt text) to the images you share on your community forums or when embedding them in articles. Alt tags refer to the HTML attribute,

• FSM trying again

  have not linked FSM yet to the rest of out Zoho suit. It certainly looks like the apointment and service part is more manageable for our staff. The question is that our engineers multi task examples 1. deliver products to customers not fitted 2. Service

• Feature Request: Conditional Field Mandatoriness Based on Display Status

  Hello Zoho Creator Team, I would like to suggest an enhancement to improve the flexibility of form validations. Currently, when we need a field to be mandatory only if it's displayed on the form, the only option is to: Set the field as not mandatory in

• Data Migration Strategies for Moving to a Cloud Solution

  Hi everyone, I’ve been working on moving some of our critical systems, including CRM and project data, to a Zoho cloud solution, and one of the biggest challenges I’ve encountered is data migration. Transferring large volumes of data while keeping it

• Commerce Order as Invoice instead of Sales Order?

  I need a purchase made on my Commerce Site to result in an Invoice for services instead of a Sales Order that will be pushed to Books. My customers don't pay until I after I add some details to their transaction. Can I change the settings to make this

• How to set different item selling prices for Zoho Commerce and Zoho Books

  Item selling prices for Zoho Commerce and Zoho Books are in sync. If we update the Item selling price in Books, the same will happen in commerce and vice versa. I need a separate commerce selling price for online users and a separate books selling price

• How to report 'Response violation' OR 'Resolution violation'

  Hi, I want to report on SLA Violation Type. I grouped my tickets on this column. It seems I only get 'Response and Resolution Violation' or 'Not Violated'. The former seems to be given to a ticket if only the Response Time was violated. I would expect

• [Webinar] Automate sales and presales workflows with Writer

  Sales involves sharing a wide range of documents with customers across the presales, sales, and post-sales stages: NDAs, quotes, invoices, sales orders, and delivery paperwork. Generating and managing these documents manually slows down the overall sales

• Power of Automation :: Quick way to associate your Projects with Zoho CRM

  A custom function is a software code that can be used to automate a process and this allows you to automate a notification, call a webhook, or perform logic immediately after a workflow rule is triggered. This feature helps to automate complex tasks and

• Date triggering Workflow rule

  I have a function triggered by a workflow rule. The function takes a date and creates a task for that date and fills in a field with the name of the day for that date. It also updates the status field of the record. The workflow rule is set to run whenever

• Restricting contact creation

  Hi all! I am looking to use Zoho Desk in a part of the business that takes end user enquiries. These are generally single interactions, and not linked to an account name. As Desk is Account centric, has anyone designed a way to manage these incoming emails

• Import Holiday Calendars

  HI Zoho Is there anyway of importing an online calendar like https://www.calendarlabs.com into the business hours calendars, to speed up setup of holiday calendars. Also could we also request a feature where you can specify a Holiday as hours, i.e it could be that the company is on a 1/2 day due to a holiday or when it is Eid in the UAE and they are only allowed to work restricted hours so we need the calendar to be flexible to allow for this. Regards Jamie

• Filtering Tickets based on Email headers

  We're starting to get a lot more junk coming into our Zoho Desk, which is then triggering unnecessary email alerts to agents. Once thing we could do to cut this junk in half, is to filter tickets based on email headers. Any email containing the `List-Unsubscribe`

• Error 550 5.4.1

  I’ve tried sending an email to someone but keep receiving this back. Any help would be greatly appreciated 

• Billing Management: #2 Fair way of Billing- Prorated Billing

  Hello, From speaking about the traditional ways of billing in the previous post, we are moving into the deep sea of billing. We are now in a zone to break out the most complex yet, I would call it the fairest way of billing, the Prorated Billing. Prorated

• Has Anyone successfully integrated Zoho and Sage Intact?

  Hey all, We’re evaluating Zoho One + Sage Intacct and I’m trying to connect with anyone who has actually implemented the two together.Specifically, I’d love to know: -- Which functions you kept in Zoho vs. Intacct (e.g., Product Catalog, AR/AP, invoicing,

• How can I filter a field integration?

  Hi,  I have a field integration from CRM "Products" in a form, and I have three product Categories in CRM. I only need to see Products of a category. Thanks for you answers.

• Adding image in HTML report page

  Hi, I want to know two things: 1. Can anyone advise how to add an image in HTML report. The tagged used is <img> but what path do I mention for the image to be added in the HTML report. 2. Also, I want to know if I am creating an application for the market

• How to change view of HTML report based on device but always print in A4

  Hello everyone, I am aware that HTML report view can be configured to adjust according to the screen size like Laptop, Tablet and mobile using media queries. But my concern is no matter on which device the reports is opened when printed should always

• Age Calculation

  I've attempted to calculate the age of someone based on their birthday input by using the formula field. It works but I don't want all those decimals on there. I then tried to use "set variable" after birthday input but I get a field type mismatch, long vs. floating. Any ideas would be wonderful.

• Search on Custom Field

  We're working on an integration with the Zoho FSM API and are trying to retrieve companies based on a custom field we added to the Companies module. However, we can't find a way to filter or query records using custom fields through the API. We have a

• Sendmail function / custom action?

  I've setup a function hoping to email various business departments the details of a record once all work in that record is complete so gone about setting up a custom action in such way that each record line on the report has a button to click. Question is how do I actually include data from that record in the email that is sent when the button is clicked? I had thought that since this were being sent per record the email would include the data which had been entered

• API to post drafts for social media

  I we want to post draft posts to our zoho social account and then approve and schedule them within Zoho social. is this possible with for example: https://apis.zoho.com/social/v2/post TIA Jon

• Canvas View in Zoho Recruit

  Is it possible or would it be possible to have the new 'Canvas View' in Zoho Recruit?

• What impactful sales coaching techniques have you used to boost your team's performance?

  I'm curious about the real-world impact of sales coaching on team performance. What specific techniques or strategies have you found most effective in driving consistent improvement and growth in your sales team? Any success stories or lessons learned

• Adding Taxes to paid consultations in Zoho Bookings

  I created a 'paid' consultation under Zoho Booking and integrated it with payment gateways for online/instant payment before a booking is done. How can I add 'taxes' to the price of consultation? I can add taxes to other Zoho apps (liks Books, Checkout,

• Next Page