Tip #5 : Setup Approval Workflow for your Subscription Business

Tip #5 : Setup Approval Workflow for your Subscription Business

Hello everyone,

We have been sharing a tip every week to address specific business scenarios which can be implemented for your subscription business. Last week, we shared a tip about implementing the Refer and Earn Workflow system. This week, we will be looking at how you can set up an Approval Workflow for Subscription Business.

Business Scenario:

One of our customers had a special requirement for his Subscription Box Business. He runs a Pet Food subscription box business where the food items are shipped to customers periodically.

Customers subscribe to a box of their choice online. Once they subscribe, he has a set of prerequisites that his customers must meet. For example, he cross-checks with customers for their preferred food ingredients, validates their delivery address, checks his inventory to see if the stock is available, etc. This usually takes a day or two. After he completes the cross-checking, he approves that subscription. Next, he bills his customer periodically from the approved date instead of the date on which his customer subscribed.

To understand this scenario better, let's consider that a customer subscribed to a box on January 1. After the merchant cross-checks, the subscription is approved on January 4. Rather than billing the customer on the 1st of every month, the customer will be billed on the 4th, say February 4, March 4 and so on.

Although the subscription will be in live status in Zoho Subscriptions (with the payment collected upfront from the customers), he needs an Approval Workflow to address the mentioned business scenario. Now, let's look into how we can implement in Zoho Subscriptions.

Addressing His Scenario

We have summarized the customer's requirements and the solutions we suggested to address them below.
  1. Requirement:
    Introduce a new approval status for each subscription.

    Solution:
    We created a custom field with its type as Dropdown and name as  Approval Status. We added two values: Awaiting Approval and Approved. By default, when a subscription is created, the custom field will hold the value as Awaiting Approval and it will change once the subscription is approved.
  2. Requirement:
    Differentiate and view the subscriptions based on their approval status.

    Solution:
    We created two custom views for the Subscriptions module and configured them to display the subscriptions based on the Approval Status custom field. Learn more about configuring custom views.
  3. Requirement:
    Approve the subscription and change the subscription renewal date automatically.

    Solution:
    We created a custom button to address this requirement. Custom Buttons can be configured to run a piece of code when you click them and you can configure them for any module. In this case, the custom button has two actions:
     
    I.    First, it needs to change the value of the Approval Status custom field to Approved.

    II.   Second, it needs to change the subscription renewal date to be after a month from present date, so that the customer gets billed periodically from the approved date rather than the date on which he subscribed.
We addressed these requirements by writing a code for the custom button. You can view the code in GitHub. By configuring this, he was able to change the Approval Status and also the renewal date in a single click.

To configure the custom field:

      1.  Go to Settings > Preferences > Invoices.
      2. Create a custom field with the name as Approval Status and type as Dropdown.
      3. Type the options as Awaiting Approval and Approved and select the Default Value as Awaiting Approval.
      4. Click Save.

To setup the custom button:
      1. Go to Settings > Preferences > Subscriptions.
      2. Create a new custom button.
      3. Enter a suitable name.
      4. Copy and paste the code from GitHub. Modify it as per your requirements.
      5. Click Save and you are good to go.

Now, you'll find the custom button in the subscriptions details page.

Found this useful? Try it out for your subscription business and let us know how it works. If you have any questions, feel free to comment below! We are here to answer them.


Cheers,
Sasidaran K,
Zoho Subscriptions.

    • Sticky Posts

    • Tip #4 : Refer and Earn Workflow system for your Subscription Business

      Hello everyone, We've been coming up with a tip every week to address specific business scenarios which can be implemented for your business. In continuation to the previous post, this week we will be seeing about how you can implement the Refer and Earn Workflow system to acquire more customers. Why are Referrals important? Customer Acquisition is crucial for any business to sustain itself in a constantly evolving market. It involves persuading new consumers to purchase your products. Customers

    • Tip #2 - Cancellation of Offline Subscriptions based on the Expected Payment Date

      Hello everyone, As you all know, we are coming up with a custom function workflow every week to address specific business scenarios. In continuation of this previous blog, this week we will be seeing about Cancellation of Offline Subscriptions based on the Expected Payment Date. Business Scenario: In general, for any business, the customers make payments via online as well as offline. In case of subscription where the automatic collection of charge is enabled (aka online subscription), the customer's

    • Tip #3 : Send SMS Reminders for your Subscription Business

      Hello everyone, As you all know, we are coming up with a tip every week to address specific business scenarios. In continuation to the previous blog, this week we will be seeing how you can use SMS reminders for your Subscription Business. Using SMS messages for your Subscription Business: While managing your subscription business, more often than not, you need to keep your customers informed about upcoming renewals, payment reminders and cancellations. By keeping them informed in advance, you can

    • Tips And Tricks - Announcement

      Hello everyone, Every business is unique and each of them follows a specific workflow. While managing your customers' subscriptions with Zoho, you might have some needs unique to your business. Custom Functions helps you address such needs. This is a start to a series of posts, where we will be coming up with a custom function workflow every week that addresses specific business scenarios. Watch this space for further updates! Also, if you have any specific business scenario which needs to be addressed,

    • Tip #6 : Accessing external URLs from Zoho Subscriptions

      Hello everyone, We have been sharing a tip every week to address specific business scenarios which you can implement for your subscription business. Last week, we shared a tip about implementing the Approval Workflow system. This week, let's look at how you can access external URLs with the help of Custom Link. Business Scenario: Every business functions differently and has its unique requirements. At times, businesses might want to access other websites or applications by appending specific information

    • Recent Topics

    • Dropshipping Address - Does Not Show on Invoice Correctly

      When a dropshipping address is used for a customer, the correct ship-to address does not seem to show on the Invoice. It shows correctly on the Sales Order, Shipment Order, and Package, just not the Invoice. This is a problem, because the company being

    • RFQ MODEL

      A Request for quotation model is used for Purchase Inquiries to multiple vendors. The Item is Created and then selected to send it to various vendors , once the Prices are received , a comparative chart is made for the user. this will help Zoho books

    • Will zoho thrive be integrated with Zoho Books?

      title

    • Product Updates in Zoho Workplace applications | August 2025

      Hello Workplace Community, Let’s take a look at the new features and enhancements that went live across all Workplace applications this August. Zoho Mail Delegate Email Alias Now you can let other users send emails on your behalf—not just from your primary

    • Unable to send message; Reason:554 5.1.8 Email Outgoing Blocked

      Hi, I sent few emails and got this: Unable to send message; Reason:554 5.1.8 Email Outgoing Blocked And now I have few days since I cant send any email. Is there something wrong I did? Also can someone fix this please

    • Want to use Zoho Books in Switzerland. CHF support planned?

      Hi, We're a Swiss company using other Zoho suite software and I discovered Zoho Books and other accounting SaaS when looking for an accounting tool. Do you intend to cover Switzerland and CHF based accounting anytime soon? Roy

    • Weekly Tips : Teamwork made easy with Multiple Assignees

      Let's say you are working on a big project where different parts of a single task need attention from several people at the same time—like reviewing a proposal that requires input from sales, legal, and finance teams. Instead of sending separate reminders

    • Best way to share/download presentation files in Zoho without losing formatting?

      Hello Zoho Community, I often work with PPT/PDF files in Zoho Docs and share them with colleagues. While PDFs usually give a direct download option, I’ve noticed that PPT/PPTX files sometimes only open in the viewer without a clear download link. Is there

    • Celebrating Connections with Zoho Desk

      September 27 is a special day marking two great occasions: World Tourism Day and Google’s birthday. What do these two events have in common (besides the date)? It's something that Zoho Desk celebrates, too: making connections. The connect through tourism

    • What is Resolution Time in Business Hours

      HI, What is the formula used to find the total time spent by an agent on a particular ticket? How is Resolution Time in Business Hours calculated in Zohodesk? As we need to find out the time spent on the ticket's solution by an agent we seek your assistance

    • Adding Overlays to Live Stream

      Hello folks, The company I work for will host an online event through Zoho Webinar. I want to add an overlay (an image) at the bottom of the screen with all the sponsors' logos. Is it possible to add an image as an overlay during the live stream? If so,

    • Email Sending Failed - SMTP Error: data not accepted. - WHMCS Not sending emails due to this error

      I have been trying to figure out a fix for about a week now and I haven't found one on my own so I am going to ask for help on here.  After checking all the settings and even resetting my password for the email used for WHMCS it still says: Email Sending Failed - SMTP Error: data not accepted.  I have no clue how to fix it at this point. Any insight would be lovely. 

    • Zoho Flow - Update record in Trackvia

      Hello, I have a Flow that executes correctly but I only want it to execute once when a particular field on a record is updated in TrackVia. I have the trigger filters setup correctly and I want to add an "update record" action at the end of the flow to

    • Add Comprehensive Accessibility Features to Zoho Desk Help Center for End Users

      Hello Zoho Desk Team, We hope you're doing well. We’d like to submit a feature request to enhance the client-facing Help Center in Zoho Desk with comprehensive accessibility features, similar to those already available on the agent interface. 🎯 Current

    • Rename Record Summary PDF in SendMail task

      So I've been tasked with renaming a record summary PDF to be sent as part of a sendmail task. Normally I would offer the manual solution, a user exports the PDF and uploads it to a file upload field, however this is not acceptable to the client in this

    • in zoho creator Sales Returns form has sub form Line Items return quantity when i upate the or enter any values in the sub form that want to reflect in the Sales Order form item deail sub form field Q

      in zoho creator Sales Returns form has sub form Line Items return quantity when i upate the or enter any values in the sub form that want to reflect in the Sales Order form item deail sub form field Quantity Returned\ pls check the recording fetch_salesorder

    • Estimates with options and sub-totals

      Hi It seems it would be great to be able to show multiple options in an estimate. For instance I have a core product to which I can add options, and maybe sub-options... It would be great to have subtotals and isolate the core from the not compulsory items. Thanks

    • Optional Items Estimate

      How do you handle optional items within an estimate? In our case we have only options to choose with. (Like your software pricing, ...standard, professional, enterprise) How can we disable the total price? Working with Qty = 0 is unprofessional....

    • Important Update : Zendesk Sell announced End of Life

      Hello Zendesk users, Zendesk has officially announced that Zendesk Sell will reach its End of Life (EOL) on August 31, 2027 (Learn more). In line with this deprecation, Zoho Analytics will retire its native Zendesk Sell connector effective October 1,

    • Zoho Sheets

      Hi, I am trying to transition into Zoho sheets, I have attached the issues encountered. Server issues, file trying to upload for more than 30 mins, even once uploaded my data aren't loaded. Simple calculations are not working I have attached the sample.

    • Zoho CRM + Zoho FSM : alignez vos équipes commerciales et techniques

      La vente est finalisée, mais le parcours client ne fait que commencer ! Dans les entreprises orientées service, conclure une vente représente seulement la première étape. Ce qui suit — installation, réparation ou maintenance régulière — influence grandement

    • Top Bar Shifting issue still not fixed yet

      I mentioned in a previous ticket that on Android, the top bar shifts up when you view collections or when you're in the settings. That issue still hasn't been fixed yet. I don't wanna have to reinstall the app as I've noticed for some reason, reinstalling

    • Power of Automation:: Automate the process of updating project status based on a specific task status.

      Hello Everyone, Today, I am pleased to showcase the capabilities of a custom function that is available in our Gallery. To explore the custom functions within the Gallery, please follow the steps below. Click Setup in the top right corner > Developer

    • Billing Management: #3 Billing Unbilled Charges Periodically

      We had a smooth sail into Prorated Billing, a practice that ensures fairness when customers join, upgrade, or downgrade a service at any point during the billing cycle. But what happens when a customer requests additional limits or features during the

    • No bank feeds from First National Bank South Africa since 12 September

      I do not know how Zoho Books expects its customers to run a business like this. I have contacted Zoho books numerous times about this and the say it is solved - on email NO ONE ANSWERS THE SOUTH AFRICAN HELP LINE Come on Zoho Books, you cannot expect

    • Citation Problem

      I had an previous ticket (#116148702) on this subject. The basic problem is this; the "Fetch Details" feature works fine on the first attempt but fails on every subsequent attempt, Back in July after having submitted information electronically and was

    • Failing to generate Access and Refresh Token

      Hello.  I have two problems: First one when generating Access and Refresh Token I get this response:  As per the guide here : https://www.zoho.com/books/api/v3/#oauth (using server based application) I'm following all the steps. I have managed to get

    • Zeptomail 136.143.188.150 blocked by SpamCop

      Hi - it looks like this IP is being blocked, resulting in hard bounces unfortunately :( "Reason: uncategorized-bounceMessage: 5.7.1 Service unavailable; Client host [136.143.188.150] blocked using bl.spamcop.net; Blocked - see https://www.spamcop.net/bl.shtml?136.143.188.150

    • Apply transaction rules to multiple banks

      Is there any way to make transaction rules for one bank apply to other banks? It seems cumbersome to have to re-enter the same date for every account.

    • How to bulk update records with Data Enrichment by Zia

      Hi, I want to bulk update my records with Data Enrichment by Zia. How can I do this?

    • How do I split a large CSV file into smaller parts for import into Zoho?

      Hi everyone, I’m trying to upload a CSV file into Zoho, but the file is very large (millions of rows), and Zoho keeps giving me errors or takes forever to process. I think the file size is too big for a single import. Manually breaking the CSV into smaller

    • Client Script Payload Size Bug

      var createParams = { "data": [{ "Name": "PS for PR 4050082000024714556", "Price_Request": { "id": "4050082000024714556" }, "Account": { "id": "4050082000021345001" }, "Deal": { "id": "4050082000023972001" }, "Owner": { "id": "4050082000007223004" }, "Approval_Status":

    • lead convert between modules

      Hello, The workflow we set up to automatically transfer leads registered via Zapier into the Patients module to the Leads module started to malfunction unexpectedly on September 25, 2025, at 11:00 AM. Under normal circumstances, all fields filled in the

    • Flow Task Limits - How to Monitor, Understand Consumption?

      So, I got an email last night saying that I've exhausted 70% of my tasks for this month, and encouraging me to buy more tasks. I started to dig into this, and I cannot for the life of me figure out where to find any useful information for understanding,

    • Cross References Do Not Update Correctly

      I am using cross references to reference Figures and current am just using the label and number, i.e. Figure #. As seen here: When I need to update the field, I use the update field button. But it will change the cross reference to no longer only including

    • Manage control over Microsoft Office 365 integrations with profile-based sync permissions

      Greetings all, Previously, all users in Zoho CRM had access to enable Microsoft integrations (Calendar, Contacts, and Tasks) in their accounts, regardless of their profile type. Users with administrator profiles can now manage profile-based permissions

    • How to Track and Manage Schedule Changes in Zoho Projects

      Keeping projects on track requires meticulous planning. However, unforeseen circumstances can cause changes to schedules, leading to delays. It becomes important to capture the reason for such changes to avoid them in the future. Zoho Projects acknowledges

    • Is there a notification API when a new note is addeding

      Trying to push to Cliq, or email notification when there's a new note added in module. How to implement this?

    • Collaborate Feature doesn't work

      Hello Team. It seems that the collaborate section is broken? I can post something but it all appears in "Discussions". In there is no way how I would mark something as Draft, Approval, post or any of the other filter categories? Also if I draft a post

    • Edit Permission during and after approval?

      When a record is sent for approval Can a user request for edit permission from the approver? We don't want to give edit permissions for all the records under approval Only on a case-by-case basis How can we achieve this?

    • Next Page