Billing Management: #5 Usage Billing

Billing Management: #5 Usage Billing

After understanding the nuances of Advance Billing and Retainers, we will explore one of the booming billing models.

Long ago, villagers drew water from a shared well in a small village. The well was a lifeline for the entire community. Ravi, the well keeper, spent his days making sure the water stayed clean, the walls stayed strong, and the rope was firm.

At first, he allowed everyone to take water freely. But Ravi soon realized that maintaining the well required effort; if no one contributed, the well would eventually fall into disrepair.

So he gathered the villagers and proposed something simple,

 "You don't have to pay me a fixed amount every month. Instead, pay me for the water you take."

The rule remained simple and fair. Families that took one or two pots paid less, and large households paid more. No one was overcharged, and Ravi always had enough to keep the well in good condition.

Ravi invented the earliest form of usage billing without even knowing it. It is a model built not on flat fees but on fairness: pay for what you consume, nothing more, nothing less.

 What is Usage Billing? 

Usage billing is a billing model in which customers are charged based on how much of a product or service they actually use. Unlike traditional flat subscriptions, which apply the same fee regardless of consumption, usage billing creates a direct link between value received and price paid. For customers, it ensures fairness, and for businesses, it unlocks scalable revenue growth.

As stated above, usage billing is not new. Utilities, telecom providers, SaaS companies, IoT, and several others highly rely on it. In recent times, however, it has become a strategic move by industries that thrive on flexibility.

Why Businesses Adopt Usage Billing? 

Usage-based pricing nowadays is considered a growth driver. Recent reports highlight,
  • 85% of SaaS companies have adopted some form of usage-based pricing, according to the State of Usage-Based Pricing 2025 Report by Metronome & Greyhound Capital.

  • 63% already practice it,, and 74% expect to expand usage billing further, notes as study by Chargebee in collaboration with OpenView.

  • Hybrid pricing models, where a flat subscription fee is combined with usage-based elements, are booming, with nearly half of the SaaS firms adopting them, according to the 2025 SaaS Pricing Trend Report from Maxio.

  • The same Maxio report adds that companies using usage-based pricing often report faster revenue growth (median 21%+) and stronger net dollar retention compared to peers.

 Simplifying the Complex 

Conceptually, usage billing is simple. But executing it well requires precision. Two main challenges in usage-based billing are:
  • Tracking consumption with accuracy.

  • Turning usage into an invoice transparently.

Zoho Billing provides both. It enables businesses to combine flat-rate subscriptions with usage-based billing, supporting hybrid pricing models that suit modern industries.

A subscription in Zoho Billing can be marked as a usage subscription just by a simple checkbox. Renewal invoices will include all the usage that is added and invoiced during the next billing period to ensure accurate billing. Zoho Billing supports multiple ways to record usage. Users can manually record usage individually by accessing the application. It can be uploaded in bulk using import options, and the most popular way is through APIs to push usage data automatically from your system to Zoho Billing.

Wisdom to Strategy
 
Paying only for what you use has made customers feel valued for ages. By charging based on consumption, businesses ensure sustainability and growth. From ancient water pots to today's gigabytes, transactions, and compute cycles, the principle hasn't changed, just that the scale and sophistication have changed. And with solutions like Zoho Billing, companies can turn this age-old wisdom into a modern growth strategy.

Alright, this is just a beginning. In the coming posts, we'll dive deep into how usage billing plays out across industries from SaaS to telecom to IoT, showing how businesses can apply it to stay competitive and loyal. 
    • 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

    Nederlandse Hulpbronnen


      • Recent Topics

      • Mapping Issue

        since, Tickets are already mapped with the Requestors and when we map Requestors with Organization, then Tickets are not visible under that Organization. Kindly solve this issue.
      • New features and improvements in Desk's integration with Zia powered by GPT 

        Hi everyone, We’re pleased to announce several new enhancements in Zia Powered by GPT integration. These updates bring more customization options, improved response generation, and additional language support. Below is an overview of the enhancements
      • Painéis do Zoho CRM ajudam na Gestão Comercial?

        A gestão do departamento comercial é uma questão fundamental para qualquer empresa. Uma boa gestão proporciona previsibilidade, alinhamento e melhores resultados. Acredito que todos que adquirem uma plataforma de CRM buscam uma gestão ágil e eficiente
      • Adding transferwise.com as an online payment method

        Hi, I am not a fan of using Paypal or google pay, can we look at introducing transferwise.com as a payment method as i think it will work better in the corporate world. https://transferwise.com/ Cheers
      • How to Bulk-Update Sales Orders in CRM

        Hi - I need to bulk update existing sales orders with dates from our ERP of when the sales orders were created. I made a date field on the Sales Order module where I want to insert that data. I can't Mass Update because I am not updating the fields to
      • How do mass change start date and end date?

        You can mass do everything else, so maybe I'm missing something. But if I have a bunch of tasks and want to assign multiple tasks within a date set, how do I do that without doing them one by one?
      • Announcing New Features in Trident for macOS (v.1.2.0)

        Hello Community, Trident for macOS has quite a few new features that will improve your business email communication. Let's take a quick look at them. Creating templates Earlier, you could save email drafts as templates in Trident. With the current update,
      • Products in time entry

        Morning, Is there a way to add the product field to the time entry layout? Giving us the ability to identify a product per time entry. Thanks Rudy
      • Zoho.eu and U.S. Cloud Act? Can U.S. request Zoho.eu data?

        Given the current political situation in the U.S. and possible near future implications for data privacy and security, I am curious about Zoho’s obligation to comply with the U.S. cloud act or other U.S. requests for private customer information from
      • Zoholics Europe Awards

        We're excited to announce that at this year's Zoholics events across Europe, we're holding customer awards for the first time ever! This is your chance to shout about the amazing things you've created, connected, or achieved with Zoho's developer application!
      • Why "balance due" for the VOIDED INVOICE is not zero?

        We wonder why the "balance due" for the VOIDED INVOICE is not zero? For example our case, we issued invoice for a client for MYR1000, then after client request for cancellation. Client haven't make payment yet. So we marked the invoice as void. We think
      • Format handling error

        Hi, I'm having an issue when merging a document using a custom function when with decimal numbers. In my template preview, it's seems correct ,but when I do the merge and attach the file to a record, all types of docs aren't displaying the number correctly.
      • Announcing New Features in Trident for macOS (v.1.20.0)

        Hello everyone! Trident for macOS is here with interesting features and enhancements to elevate your workplace communication and productivity. Let's take a quick look at them. Change the "From" email address easily. When composing or replying to an email,
      • Announcing new features in Trident for Windows (v.1.27.6.0)

        Hello Community, Trident for Windows is here with exciting new features to elevate your email communication. Let’s dive into what’s new! View and manage .pst files. A .pst (Personal Storage Table) file is an Outlook Data Storage file format for storing
      • Email limit reached

        I'm assessing whether zoho crm will work for our startup, however I tried to send emails to my leads and after 12 emails got the notification that email limit has been reached. That is ridiculously low. Whats wrong and how can you fix that. I am still
      • Importing Into Zoho CRM

        Do you have a list in Excel that you would like to import into Zoho CRM? If your administrator has not restricted your ability to import, the process is fairly easy to accomplish, but understanding the options can make everything go smoother. First you may need to prepare the spreadsheet Remove any extra rows from the top of the spreadsheet, like titles or blank lines. Row 1 should be the column headers. Row 2 should be where the data starts. Make sure that there is a column for any required fields
      • Analyze the Name of the Deal Owner and Created by

        I need to display the Name of the User who created a deal and the Deal Owner. Since both fields are lookups to the same table (Users), it defaults to the user record of the Deal Owner and I cannot display the name of who created it. I can generate the
      • Date Import Problems

        I'm trying to import products from csv/xls files, but I can't get the Sales Start Date field to import. I know the import is working because all the other information is imported, but the Sales Start Date field is left empty. I think it must be a format
      • Canvas and Related lists

        Hi, As much as I like canvas, when adding in a asection with related lists,it doesnt mimic the same functionality as the standard view within the CRM e.g left hand panel will show the module and total number of records. Is there a way of indicating this
      • New Search Function

        Hey Team, The search function updated in our CRM about a week ago, so I assume it was an automated update across Zoho. It no longer displays leads/deals etc in Chronological order so that the most recently created or updated is the first to display which
      • Problem with the "Search" function

        Hi, I've been using Workdrive for a few days and lately, the files I added in Workdrive don't appear in the search. It looks like my latest files aren't indexed. Are you aware of this issue ? 
      • Getting error "invalid warehouse_id" when trying to update any transaction in Zoho books

        I got a message from Zoho saying that the Warehouse and Branch has been merged into one category "Locations" Once I migrated to this setup I was no longer able to edit any invoice / create creadit notes - got an error saying "invalid warehouse_id" I never
      • Return "kit_quantity" when fetching Kit items via "List all the items" API call

        I have been appreciating the new Kits feature quite a bit, it is exactly what we were looking for in Zoho to solve many pain points. However, there is 1 problem I am running into and that is the fact there is no stock information that can be pulled for
      • Automating Pricing in Zoho Inventory Based on Brandline Quantity

        I am currently setting up my Zoho Inventory system and would like to implement an automatic pricing feature for sales orders. We have created a custom field called "brandline" for our items. All products with the same brandline value should have the same
      • Tags with Zapier

        Maybe I'm missing something....I hope so... Using tags for triggers is a key need.  This prevents us from having a ton of different lists. I am trying to find out how to add a tag using zapier when someone makes a purchase....but it doesn't seem to be
      • Print & PDF Support for Composite items

        There needs to be a way to print a composite item showing all the components, qty & images.
      • Build custom AI solutions with Catalyst’s QuickML capabilities in CRM

        Hello everyone, We’re thrilled to announce an improvement for our Zoho CRM Enterprise users: the ability to create custom AI solutions using Catalyst’s QuickML directly from Zoho CRM. As you may already know, Zia, Zoho CRM’s AI-powered assistant, offers
      • We cant create a custom function

      • Live webinar: Power-up your business presentations with Show's add-ons

        We all spend a good amount of time building presentations for meetings, reports, and pitches. But even with good content, slides can sometimes feel basic or less engaging. That’s where having the right tools helps. With Zoho Show’s add-ons, you can embed
      • Contractor recruitment

        We mainly supply contract staff, so there is an end point to when they are 'Hired'.  The problem we have is that once we have marked the candidate as 'Hired' there is no way that we can change their status afterwards without 'unhiring' them against the job. We need to be able to hire people for a fixed period of time, after which they would become 'available' again.  How do we go about doing this?
      • Writer very buggy and glitchy after only a few minutes of use... oh my.

        I am finding Writer to be very buggy and glitchy while using it. I've tried it in Firefox, Chrome, Safari... all Mac. Complete words get deleted on backspace (probably a feature, but disconcerting and bad design, esp. if you just want to delete a couple
      • How can I use the API to add a drop-shipping address to a sales order for one-time use?

        I need to be able to add a drop-shipping address for one-time use to a sales order via the API. Adding every such address to the contact (customer), then feeding the shippingaddress_id into the sales order, is not an acceptable approach; we have some
      • Zoho say my domain seems to be already associated with another account

        I created a website on zoho and associated my domain (bompescado.com) on it. You can see the A record and CNAME are working to it. Now I need to associate the same domain as webmail, but when I try it return with: " This domain name seems to be already associated with another account. If you own this domain, please contact us for assistance." Im following the advice and conctacting you to say I've not been associated this domain on zoho before.  What do I need? Well, I need you manually remove it
      • Mass Print Attachments from Selected Records in Custom Module

        Dear Zoho CRM Team, We’d like to request a feature enhancement regarding the handling of attachments. Use Case: We have a custom module that stores invoices uploaded by our affiliates. Currently, we need to open each record individually to print these
      • how to integrate zoho bigin to wordpress website ?

        hello , i want to integrate zoho bigin to wordpress webiste , can anyone help me with the tutorial ?
      • Surely it's time Inline editing from views

        I think the first request I found for in-line editing from grids was approximately 12 years ago - that post was locked because it was suggested Zoho sheetview solved the problem. However, it's now 2024, and in-line editing from grids is just a basic expectation.
      • Issue with POST request creating Calls in CRM

        Hello, I am in the middle of integrating some 3rd party Call center API with Zoho CRM and going through our logs I see some discrepencies. We sometimes get an error: {"data":[{"code":"INVALID_DATA","details":{"api_name":"Call_Duration","json_path":"$.data[0].Call_Duration"},"message":"Please
      • only lastname as index(?) field in custom module

        Hello, I have a small problem. I have created a custom module. The data records are only labeled with the last names. Also in the lookup etc.... It's stupid if you have different first names with the same surname. Then I only ever see the surname. In
      • How to read content out of File (Excel, Zoho Sheet, CSV) and iterate through rows

        Hello, I'd like to be able to iterate through all the rows in a CSV or Excel/Zoho Sheet file to perform actions on them. How is this possible in Flow? Thanks in advance! Best regards, Sven
      • Import CSV file into Zoho CRM using Zoho Flow?

        Is there a way to automate the import of contacts from Zoho Flow to Zoho CRM? I have a csv file on a remote server that I would like to pull off and import/update on a schedule.  I know you can do it with Zapier but I would like to stay within the Zoho
      • Next Page