Billing Management: #6 Usage Billing in SaaS

Imagine a customer shuffling across multiple subscriptions, a streaming service, a music app, cloud storage, and a design tool. Each one charges a flat monthly fee, regardless of how much or how little they use. Some months, the customer barely opens the subscriptions, yet the bill is the same. This is what we call subscription fatigue, meaning resistance from the customer towards fixed, recurring charges that don't match their actual usage.   

For SaaS, subscription fatigue is more than a buzzword. It's a business risk as a flat rate may appear overcharging for one, but others enjoy paying less for their high usage. This imbalance leads to churn, lost revenue and customer grievances.

The solution lies in usage billing, where the customer pays based on what they consume. By aligning cost with value, businesses can increase fairness and unlock sustainable growth. While the principle is simple, it requires a reliable way to track and monetise usage properly.

Zoho Billing Makes Usage Billing Seamless

Zoho Billing provides SaaS businesses with all the tools needed to implement usage-based pricing effectively. Key capabilities that Zoho Billing offers that work effectively for SaaS businesses include:

• Flexible Pricing Tiers: Businesses can create multiple plans with different prices and list them on their websites for direct signup.

• Zero value Plan: For charging customers purely based on usage alone, businesses can create $0 value plan and associate usage addons to charge appropriately.

• Addons: Attach both flat-rated addons and usage-based addons to the subscription.

• Hybrid Model: Combine a flat subscription fee with usage-based addons to monetise additional consumption fairly.

When a usage addon is attached to a subscription, Zoho Billing ensures that usage is tracked, recorded and billed accurately.

Scenario 1:

Sam runs a small consulting firm and uses a mailing application to communicate with his clients. His plan costs $200 and includes 500 GB of storage. Sam stays within the limit most months; however, with many attachments, proposals and reports during a particular month, his mailbox usage exceeds by another 100 GB. The mailing application provides a usage addon for $0.50/GB for the additional usage instead of offering a rigid higher value plan.

Item	Value
Base Subscription	$200
Included Invoices	500
Actual Usage	600
Extra Usage	100
Unit Price for Extra Usage	$0.50/GB
Additional Charge	$50
Total Invoice Value (Base Price+Added Usage)	$250

The billing team records the extra 100 GB usage in Zoho Billing using the manual usage entry method and nothing more. The system automatically calculates $50 overage fee and appends it to the invoice to make the renewal invoice for the period $250.

Scenario 2:

Imagine Smith Enterprise uses a cloud analytics SaaS product. The contract covers a base subscription plan and two usage add-ons: API calls and storage. The base plan costs $500/month and includes 100,000 API calls and 500 GB storage. For every API call they make, an extra $0.01 per call will be charged. Similarly, for extra storage, $0.10 will be charged per GB. 

During a particular month, the company consumes 250,000 API calls and 750 GB of storage, clearly above the usage limit. A subsequent invoice is created, and the charge based on the usage data is added to the base subscription value.

Addon 1		Addon 2
Item	Value	Item	Value
Included API Calls	100,000	Includes Storage	500 GB
Actual Usage	250,000	Actual Usage	750 GB
Extra Usage	150,000	Extra Usage	250
Unit Price	$0.01/call	Unit Price	$0.10/GB
Additional Charge	150,000x$0.01= $1500	Additional Charge	250x$0.10= $25

 

Item	Charges
Base Subscription	$500
API Call Overage	$1500
Storage Overage	$25
Total Invoice	$2025

The company exports the API call logs and storage usage data into a CSV file that can be imported into Zoho Billing. Zoho Billing digests both records, applies the pricing rule separately for each add-on, and generates a consolidated invoice.

Scenario 3: 

Roy runs a digital marketing agency offering various marketing campaigns across social media platforms. Roy owns a SaaS application that generates posts and charges $1.5 per post design. No fixed base price for this, but their clients are purely charged based on the number of posts made. During festive sessions, Roy's team schedules a maximum of 450 posts for a client.

Item	Value
Base Subscription	$0
Rate per post	$1.5
Actual Usage	450 posts
Total Invoice Value ($1.5x450)	$675

 

Using Zoho Billing, Roy records the usage manually or by importing them into the system. With no base price, the platform automatically calculates the total invoice based on the usage. Roy receives a clear invoice for $675, reflecting the value consumed.

SaaS Usage Billing Simplified

Usage Billing ensures that customers pay only for what they consume, whether extra storage, extra API calls, or purely based on the number of posts made. With Zoho Billing, SaaS businesses can seamlessly manage complex and straightforward usage billing scenarios. Adding usage to Zoho Billing is simplified through different methods. It can be added manually if there are fewer subscriptions, and usage data can be imported if there are more subscriptions and usage add-ons. Usage can also be pushed using APIs into Zoho Billing.

Post your use cases in the comments and find the best way to handle them using Zoho Billing.

Next, we will dive into Usage Billing in Telecom and Internet Service Providers, showing how this model powers those sectors. 

• Topic Participants

• Hari Hara Sudhan. S

  

• 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

• Emails sent through Bigin are not posting in IMAP Sent folder

  I have set up my email to work from within Bigin using IMAP.  I am using IMAP so I can sync my email across multiple devices - phone / laptop / desktop / iPad / etc.  I want all my emails to populate my email client (outlook & iphone email) whether or

• Possible for first Signer of Sign Form to specify the next signer in the sequence

  We have many use cases where multiple signers need sign the same document. We'd love to be able to use sign forms, where the a signer who uses the Sign Form link can specify the name and email address for the next person in the sequence.

• BUG: Can't copy-paste data outside Sheet

  Currently I can't paste data copied from inside any of my Zoho Sheet files to any other app. Copy-paste works inside the sheet It does NOT work between two different sheets These sheets are built from automation templates Everything works fine if I create

• Zoho CRM Community Digest November 2025 | Part 1

  Hello Everyone! Here’s what came through in the first half of November: new updates and a few helpful community discussions with real, notable solutions. Product Updates: Android App Update: Inctroducing Swipe Actions You can now swipe left or right on

• Upload own Background Image and set Camera to 16:9

  Hi, in all known online meeting tools, I can set up a background image reflecting our corporate design. This doesn't work in Cliq. Additionally, Cliq detects our cameras as 4:3, showing black bars on the right and left sides during the meeting. Where

• The Social Wall: November 2025

  We’re nearing the end of the year, and the holiday season is officially kicking in! It’s that time when sales peak and your social media game needs to be stronger than ever. We’re back with exciting new updates across AI, analytics, and the mobile app

• Auto-Invite Users to Portals in Zoho CRM based on Conditions

  Hello Everyone, You can now automate portal invitations in Zoho CRM with the new Auto-Invite users feature in Portal management. No more manually enabling portal access one by one. With this enhancement, you can automatically send invites for users to

• Truesync for Linux

  Is Truesync available on linux ?

• Rich Text For Notes in Zoho CRM

  Hello everyone, As you know, notes are essential for recording information and ensuring smooth communication across your records. With our latest update, you can now use Rich Text formatting to organize and structure your notes more efficiently. By using

• Hidding/excluding specific picklist options from filter

  Hi. Is it possible to hide/exclude specific picklist options from this filter? I don't want them to be shown when someone tries to filter in the leads module

• Zoho DataPrep switching Date Format

  When using a pipeline that is importing Zoho Analytics data into Zoho DataPrep, the month and day of date fields are switched for some columns. For example, a Zoho Analytics record of "Nov. 8, 2025" will appear in Zoho DataPrep as "2025/08/11" in "yyyy/MM/dd"

• Subforms to Capture Multi-Row Data in Job Sheets

  Subforms transform your job sheets from simple checklists to powerful, data-rich forms. In field service work — whether maintenance, inspection, installation, or repair — a single job can involve multiple repeatable entries: readings, parts used, activities

• 年内最後のユーザー向けイベント：5名限定！ 課題解決型ワークショップイベント Zoho ワークアウト開催のお知らせ (12/18)

  ANNOUNCEMENT 1 REPLY INSIGHTS ユーザーの皆さま、こんにちは。Zoho ユーザーコミュニティチームの中野です。 12月開催のZoho ワークアウトについてお知らせします。 今回はZoomにて、オンライン開催します。 参加登録はこちら（無料） https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/QHn6kJAcRs-znJ1l5jk0ww ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Zoho ワークアウトとは？ Zoho ユーザー同士で交流しながら、サービスに関する疑問や不明点の解消を目的とした「Zoho

• Add "Fetch Composite Item" Action for Inventory

  I want to make a Flow that uses information returned in the GET call for Composite Items, and it's not currently available in Zoho Flow. Please consider adding this functionality.

• Adress Labels for sending of the oder und barcode

  We want to print with my address labels to stick on the order of the ware can. there are these options?

• printing individual labels - Dymo LabelWriter

  I am trying to print individual labels to my Dymo LabelWriter - has anyone done this? Latest Update (December 2025): The Canvas Print View is now available! We encourage you all to try it out and share your feedback with us. Learn more here: Zoho CRM

• Zoho Creator for Agriculture

  Greetings, I am starting to work on  Zoho Creator specifically for the agricultural field, any recommendations, tips or ideas that might be helpful ? Also, if you are interested by any means in working on such project, kindly contact me. The project is

• Custom Print Layout

  I would like to create a custom print layout of a Lead or Contact. Is there a way to do that? What I mean is that if I'm viewing a specific lead or contact I'd like to be able to print or export that lead/contact and only print and/or export certain information.

• Print View

  Nothing happens when I'm in a module , ie; Contacts, and I hit the Print View Button. Even when it does come up and say "loading", nothing loads

• Get Holiday ready with Zoho Mail's Offline mode

  With the holiday season right around the corner, this is the perfect time to get ready to unplug, relax, and enjoy a well-deserved break. In addition to preparing yourself, you can also make sure your organization members are set for their time away from

• Zoho Flow Credits

  Hi , I would like to ask the reason why every time I added plus credit but few days later I will return back to default? (as below I add credit to 3000 but today It change back to 1000) Most important is, when the credit fully used, not any reminder to

• Zoho CRM Kiosk issues

  Firstly this is for a system on the AU servers if that makes a difference. Issues are as follows (For Kiosk): 1. Re-ordering fields in the screen builder is broken. The fields seem to be re-ordering themselves, unless you order everything by moving the

• Zoho Books emails suddenly going to Spam since 11 Nov 2025 (Gmail + now Outlook) — anyone else?

  Hi everyone, We migrated to Zoho Books in July 2025 and everything worked fine until 11 Nov 2025. Since then, Zoho Books system emails are landing in customers’ Spam (first Gmail, and now we’re seeing Outlook/Office 365 also starting to spam them). Impacted

• Zoho Voice lance BYOC (Bring Your Own Carrier) : intégrez votre opérateur

  Pour accompagner sa croissance, une entreprise a besoin d’une infrastructure téléphonique flexible et évolutive. Les solutions de téléphonie s’adaptent aux exigences du centre de contact, tout en intégrant aisément les opérateurs locaux de votre choix.

• Email Template Edits Not Saving

  I can make an edit, click save, and see the blue bar annimation at the top, but the edits don't actually save. Important, because my email templates are now broken and clients are receiving bad emails. Tried on Chrome, Firefox and IE.

• Default Ticket View - Table?

  Guys, We mostly use the table view to queue tickets. Maybe I am missing it - but how can I set that view as 'default" for all our agents? Thanks JV

• Duplicate customers being created in Desk

  Hi I've trying to work out why I've getting duplicated customers being created in my desk. I have an external booking system that generates an email when I get a customer booking a job. A booking email gets sent to Desk where I manage the booking and

• Can I have different users see different pick list values for Potential Stage?

  We have some users focusing on new business and others focusing on existing business, and they follow different sales processes/cycles, so we would like them to see different pick list values for Stage (eventually leading up to Closed Won/Lost in both cases).   And just to keep it interesting - some of these users will of course do a combination, so would need to see one pick list for their New business potentials and a different pick list for their Existing business ones.   Salesforce does this

• Links in Instagram

  Hi there, I have been using Later for a while now but keen to come back to Zoho Social as Later doesn't offer tagging of pages on Facebook but they offer something Zoho doesn't. You can add a link to your bio which opens up your profile feed where images

• Tracking Snippet not working in Zoho Marketing Automation!

  First off, the fact that you have to wait about 12-24 hours for every response is terrible. How are we supposed to conduct business? Second, we have been trying for several days to get the Tracking Code Snippet in marketing automation to work, to no avail.

• email moderation issue when email is sent in the name of a mail group

  Symptom: an email that is sent by a mail group moderator in the name of a moderated mail group is held back for approval. Reproduction: Create a moderated mail group with members and moderators. Allow that mails can be sent in the name of the group (extended

• Is there any way to send an Excel received by email to Dataprep?

  Every day I receive an email alert with an Excel file that I want to process through a Dataprep pipeline. To do this, I need to: -Save the file to disk -Open the pipeline -Run the pipeline -Update the source -Several clicks to select and open the saved

• Recruit paid support?

  Hi all, Could anyone who has paid support package advise if it provides value for money with regards to support response times? Exploring the idea as unfortunately when we have faced issues with Recruit it has been a 7+ day timescale from reporting to

• Using 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 configure

• Add Lookup Field in Tasks Module

  Hello, I have a need to add a Lookup field in addition to the ones that are already there in the Tasks module. I've seen this thread and so understand that the reason lookup fields may not be part of it is that there are already links to the tables (

• Hotmail is blocking the zoho mail IP

  Greetings, Since last Tuesday (5 days ago today) I wrote to Zoho support and I still haven't received a single response (Ticket ID: 2056917). Is this how you treat people who pay for your email service? I am making this public so that those who want to

• Read webpage - MSXML2.ServerXMLHTTP

  I have the following VBA script, put together from various sources (mainly zoho forum/help/support, so it once worked, I guess): private Sub GetListOfSheets() Dim url As String Dim xmlhttp As Object Dim parameters As String Dim html As String range("B1").value

• Zoho Creator Form Search

  I'm new to Zoho Creator and so far i do like it but im shocked there seems to be no easy way to add a search function and/or navigation to there forms as this readily available in every platform i have used in the past. Anyway i have a form which i have

• How to setup DKIM / SPF in Zoho Mail

  Hello there! I'm having a hard time understanding how to setup the TXT records for SPF and DKIM with Zoho Mail. I'm following the instructions here: https://www.zoho.com/campaigns/help/setup-spf-dkim.html Specifically, when it comes to the value for the

• Mass update cant trigger a workflow?

  Hello there, Is this a normal Creator behaviour? In a report, if I manually edit each data row, it will pass those changes to all other reports. However, if I perform a Mass Update on a few data rows at once, the new data is not pushed to other reports.

• Next Page