Revenue Management: #6 Revenue Recognition in Professional Services Industry
If you run a consulting firm, agency, or any service-based business, you have a situation where you have signed the contract, maybe even sent the invoice, and have received some initial payments. So, can you consider this as revenue? What if the project spans several months? What if there is a revision or unplanned scope creep in?
How do service-based businesses recognize revenue for time, materials, and milestones?
Revenue Recognition Scenarios in the Professional Services
This can happen to any service-based firm, like legal advisors, consultants, marketing agencies, and IT services providers, as they don't sell physical goods. Instead, they provide time, expertise, and deliverables with different timelines. This means, the revenue is recognized as work is performed and not when the invoices are sent. Here are some of the common scenarios that a service-based company faces:
Time & Material Billing
Many firms work on time and material contracts, where billing is based on hours logged. In contrast, fixed-fee projects promise a set scope for a lump sum. Revenue must be recognized based on the work delivered, not simply how much time has passed or been billed.
Example: A consultant bills $150/hour. If 40 hours are worked in April, $6000 is recognized for that month.
Bundled Services
Like SaaS, A contract might include onboarding, implementation and support. Each has a different timeline and must be recognized separately. Without clear performance obligations, firms risk misstating their revenue.
Example: A network provider sells routers, installs them, and provides support for a one-year period for $50,000. Here, the revenue earned by routers is recognized immediately; revenue from installation will be recognized as and when it is done. However, the revenue for support will be recognised only at the end of the year.
Milestone-Based Deliverables
Some contracts are milestone-based. Even if the client pays upfront or monthly, revenue must be recognized only when the milestone is met. This leads to uneven revenue patterns and complex tracking.
Example: A $20,000 marketing strategy contract has different stages, starting with $500 for discovery, $10,000 for planning, and $5000 at the time of delivery. Revenue aligns with each milestone.
Different Start Date
There can be cases where the client pays upfront for a project that begins after a few weeks. The revenue cannot be considered recognized until the project begins, and it will be deferred until the actual start date.
Example: $10,000 was paid in June for a project that starts in August. The revenue will have to be maintained as a liability/deferred until August.
Scope Changes & Goes for Rework
Projects often evolve with new tasks, changes in timeline, or even the entire deliverable gets changed. These contract modifications require updated revenue allocation and potentially re-recognition of previously booked revenue.
Example: A legal advisory firm signs a six-month contract for $60,000. After two months, the clients expanded the scope by adding training and doubling the reviews from the earlier contract, which required reallocating revenue for the remaining months.
Since service delivery isn't always linear, tracking obligation completion is essential. Manually doing this for a large-scale contract is going to be close to impossible.
Scenario:
A digital consultancy service signs a contract for $60,000 with a client that includes $10,000 worth of an upfront discovery workshop. Additionally, System implementation is planned for $30,000 and will take three months to complete. Technical assistance will be offered at $20,000 for six months.
Zoho Billing for Professional Service Revenue Recognition
Zoho Billing allows professional services firms to configure revenue recognition rules tailored to the contract's stages and services.
For the scenario above, the rule could be set as follows:
| For Discovery Workshop | For Implementation | For Technical Assistance |
Recognition Frequency | Once | Monthly | Monthly |
Recognition Method | Daily | Evenly Distributed | Evenly Distributed |
Recognition Time | Period Start | Period Start | Period Start |
Once configured, Zoho Billing will take care of recognizing the revenue automatically.
It recognizes $10,000 after the discovery sessions are done. For implementation, $10,000 will be recognized per month for the next three months. For technical assistance, $3,333 per month will be recognized, which sums up to $20,000 for the committed six-month period.
Reports in Zoho Billing
If you look at the Revenue Recognition reports after two months in Zoho Billing, you can find,
i) Recognized Revenue Report
Two months into the engagement, the discovery workshop is over, two months of implementation have been delivered, and two months of technical assistance have been rendered.
Component | Recognized Revenue | Description |
Discovery Workshop | $10,000 | Fully recognized |
System Implementation | $20,000 | $10,000/month for two months |
Technical Assistance | $6666 | $3333/month for two months |
Total Recognized | $36,666 | Revenue earned in two months |
ii) Deferred Revenue Report
The remaining revenue in deferred is for pending implementation and assistance services that are to be done.
Component | Deferred Amount |
System Implementation | $10,000 (one month left) |
Technical Assistance | $13,334 ($3333/month x4) |
Total Deferred | $23,334 |
iii) Revenue Waterfall Report
Month | Discovery Workshop | Implementation | Assistance | Total |
Month 1 | $10,000 | $10,000 | $3,333 | $23,333 |
Month 2 | --- | $10,000 | $3,333 | $13,333 |
Month 3 (upcoming) | --- | $10,000 | $3,333 | $13,333 |
Month 4 (upcoming) | --- | --- | $3,333 | $3,333 |
Month 5 (upcoming) | --- | --- | $3,333 | $3,333 |
Month 6 (upcoming) | --- | --- | $3,333 | $3,333 |
Best Practice for Professional Services Revenue Recognition
- Define Deliverables Clearly: Break work into explicit deliverables/obligations to know how it will be delivered.
- Match Revenue with Service Period: Use time-based or milestone-based rules depending on the service to be recognized.
- Reassess on Scope Changes: The system should be equipped to automatically understand contract changes and recognize scheduled changes when the project terms shift.
- Manual Revenue Recognition: It is best to use Manual Revenue Recognition based on completion for long-term milestone-based projects.
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'sCommunity 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 youCommunity 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 mostIntroducing: 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
Kaizen #205 - Answering Your Questions | Managing Picklists and Enabling History Tracking via Zoho CRM APIs
Hello everyone! Welcome back to another post in our Kaizen series. In this post, we will look at how you can manage picklist fields in Zoho CRM using APIs. This topic was raised as feedback to Kaizen #200, so we are taking it up here with more details.Multiple Vendor SKUs
One of the big concerns we have with ZOHO Inventory is lack of Vendor Skus like many other inventory software packages offer. Being able to have multiple vendor skus for the same product would be HUGE! It would populate the appropriate vendor Sku forInternally created tickets
Hi there When tickets are created internally on-behalf of customers - there is nothing to show that the ticket was created by an internal agent. This means, that it's easy for our agents to confuse tickets which were created by internal team members andAutomatically change website passwords
Hi everyone, We just switched to a Professional package to also use the "Automatically change website passwords" function. But I cannot find anything about it, how to use it, anywhere. Does anyone know how I can use this function? Best, CasparChange Invoice Prices for an Effective Date
Hi, It would be a really good feature to be able to change the prices on invoices/recurring invoices from an effective date in the event of price increases. For instance, I am in the process of increasing prices that will be effective from a specific"Other Current Asset" accounts as "Paid Through" accounts in Expense
It would be incredibly useful to be able to assign accounts of type Other Current Asset as Paid Through accounts in Expense. Currently, Other Current Liability are permitted as Paid Through Accounts. This makes sense, as Credit Cards are current liabilities.Multi column open text questions that allows respondents to add rows for additional information
I need to create a question that has 2 columns with open text, but I also need to allow respondents to click a "+" button, or something similar, so that they can add additional information if they choose to. I've tried using the Multiple Textboxes typeBot Filtering & Apple Mail Privacy Protection Compliance in Zoho Campaigns
Dear Campaigns Users, The wait is over! We’re excited to announce that the enhanced bot filtering feature is now live in Zoho Campaigns. This update brings greater accuracy to your email campaign reports by distinguishing real user engagement from automatedDécouvrons les détails qui simplifient vos journées de travail avec Trident
Nous nous installons dans des routines efficaces et rodées avec le temps. Chaque matin, nous ouvrons nos e-mails, passons aux messages, consultons notre agenda, puis attaquons nos tâches. Ce processus nous semble maîtrisé, mais est-il réellement optimiséIssue with Purchase Rate Showing as “0” After Importing Items List
Dear Zoho Books Support Team, Good day. I’m reaching out regarding an issue I’m facing while importing my items list into Zoho Books. Despite mapping all fields correctly and including the purchase price for each product in my Excel file, the PurchaseAPI for Task Entity in Zoho Books
I’m working on automating task creation in Zoho Books via a custom button in the Bills Module. The goal is to create a task in the Tasks Module and assign it to the Finance Team, so they can track progress efficiently. While reviewing Zoho Books documentation,create invoice in zoho books from the zoho forms
Is there a native way to have create invoice in zoho books, when zoho form is completed?Email undelivered
GOod Day I am always receiving an uncategorized-bounce to my email. I am not sure why this is happening.Add inventory_valuation_method to items endpooints
To ensure consistent item creation it would be helpful to have the inventory_valuation_method (FIFO vs WAC) be able to be set at item creation or as an update (consistent with current behavior where it is not allowed for items with existing transactions)Use Zoho to send sales receipts for Gocardless transactions
I've been using gocardless for years and have d/d mandates set up on there. Each week we get bulk payments from customer d/d's. However, we need to send sales receipts to these customers. So I know I can sync mandates into Zoho, and then I can set upZoho - Gocardless sales receipts
I've been using gocardless for years and have d/d mandates set up on there. Each week we get bulk payments from customer d/d's. However, we need to send sales receipts to these customers. So I know I can sync mandates into Zoho, and then I can set upIntroducing Rollup summary in Zoho CRM
------------------------------------------Moderated on 5th July'23---------------------------------------------- Rollup summary is now available for all organizations in all the DCs. Hello All, We hope you're well! We're here with an exciting update thatIntroducing Connected Workflows in Zoho CRM for Everyone : Free Your Teams to Focus on What Matters
Hello Everyone, We’re thrilled to introduce the next big evolution in Zoho CRM for Everyone -- Connected Workflows. This new feature builds on our commitment to deliver a CRM that’s truly inclusive, adaptable, and designed for consistent collaborationIntroducing Connected Records to bring business context to every aspect of your work in Zoho CRM for Everyone
Hello Everyone, We are excited to unveil phase one of a powerful enhancement to CRM for Everyone - Connected Records, available only in CRM's Nextgen UI. With CRM for Everyone, businesses can onboard all customer-facing teams onto the CRM platform toCooling-off Period Just Got Better: More Coverage, More Control
We’ve enhanced the Cooling-off Period feature in Zoho Recruit to give you more control over repeat applications and referrals. This helps you maintain a cleaner, more efficient recruitment pipeline. With this enhancement, you can: Prevent duplicate candidateCliq iOS can't see shared screen
Hello, I had this morning a video call with a colleague. She is using Cliq Desktop MacOS and wanted to share her screen with me. I'm on iPad. I noticed, while she shared her screen, I could only see her video, but not the shared screen... Does Cliq iOS is able to display shared screen, or is it somewhere else to be found ? RegardsRevenue Management: #7 Revenue Recongition in Construction & Real Estate Industry
If you are in the construction or real estate business, you are used to long project timelines and progressive invoicing to keep up with your billing. But when does revenue get recognized? Will it happen when the contract gets signed? At different milestonesTikTok (and other social platform) Messages and comments of the past
When I link a social channel, Zoho will show in "Inbox", "Messages" and "Contact" sections the interaction done in the past? (comment, messages...)Email Integration - Zoho CRM - OAuth and IMAP
Hello, We are attempting to integrate our Microsoft 365 email with Zoho CRM. We are using the documentation at Email Configuration for IMAP and POP3 (zoho.com) We use Microsoft 365 and per their recommendations (and requirements) for secure email we haveHow do I fix this? Unable to send message; Reason:554 5.1.8 Email Outgoing Blocked.
How do I fix this? Unable to send message; Reason:554 5.1.8 Email Outgoing Blocked.Restrict Employee mail deletion
Dear Zoho, Is there a way where i can restrict my employees to delete any mails from their account554 5.1.8 Email Outgoing Blocked.
Hi guys, I just singed up for mateusz.nowicki@zoho.com mail and I can't send any mails.. Why? Everytime I try to send something I got error like the one in the screenshot. Please, help me.Zoho IP blocked by SpamHaus
ERROR CODE :550 - 5.7.0 Your server IP address is in the SpamHaus SBL-XBL database, byeFile Upload in Creator's Subfrom
Hello Sir/Madam, Here is a Problem......... Scenario: In CRM One Custom Module (Payments) have one File Upload Field now we have to Upload that File into Creator's Custom Form (Documents) have one Subform (Documents) in Document Upload Field using DelugeError AS101 when adding new email alias
Hi, I am trying to add apple@(mydomain).com The error AS101 is shown while I try to add the alias.Trigger workflow base on email clic
Searching the help and forum, I see that there were workflow trigger rules based on email. But now, I can't find this type of trigger when I create a custom workflow. What I'm looking for would be to automate the sending of an email for a new prospect,Bigin Form Acknowledgement
How to troubleshoot and find out why form acknowledgement is not sending emails after form submission?Option to Customize Career Site URL Without “/jobs/Careers”
Dear Zoho Recruit Team, I hope you are doing well. We would like to request an enhancement to the Career Site URL structure in Zoho Recruit. In the old version of the career site, our URL was simply: 👉 https://jobs.domain.com However, after moving toZoho Mail POP & IMAP Server Details
Hello all! We have been receiving a number of requests regarding the errors while configuring or using Zoho Mail account in POP/ IMAP clients. The server details vary based on your account type and the Datacenter in which your account is setup. EnsureEver since the new Android App udpates notifications are not working
notifications are not working for the app is its closed I followed the tutuorial to the notificaction fixed and everythig seems to be right but notifications are not workigZoho Analytics & Zoho Desk - but not all desks
I have several desks in our company and one of those is used by our HR department. I want to bring through the data to the shared Zoho Analytics workspace - except for the HR desk. Can this be excluded at data import stage ?Incoming Emails Not Showing Up in Zoho Inbox
Hi - I have my Zoho email account set up to forward a copy of all incoming emails to a secondary Gmail address, whilst retaining the original email in the Zoho inbox. However, all my incoming emails are currently not showing up in my Zoho inbox, so I'mHow to retrieve my following requests on this forum?
Sorry, but I did not find the proper subforum for this question.How to list emails in a folder, e.g. Inbox, on multiple pages when using Zoho mail webpage?
Something as shown in the figure. There are totally 50 emails in Sent folder. If "Mail per page" equals 20, then the Sent folder is split into 3 pages. When I wander through Sent folder, I can just select a specific page to jump to. BTW, it seems thatUnable to Create Zoho Booking via the Book Appointment API
Its giving the below error { "response": { "errormessage": "Error setting value for the variable:customer_details\n null", "status": "Error" } } Request: POST Url: https://www.zohoapis.in/bookings/v1/json/appointment attached Zoho-oauthtokenNext Page