Revenue Management: #10 Common Mistakes while Recognizing Revenue

Revenue Management: #10 Common Mistakes while Recognizing Revenue


We are at the end of the series on Revenue Management, covering how different businesses recognise revenue. Even with clear standards like ASC 606 and IFRS 15 in practice, businesses often struggle with the nuances of revenue recognition. Especially growing businesses that are so keen on scaling take a wrong foot.


Where do businesses often go wrong, and how can they avoid it? 


Here are some of the common mistakes businesses make and suggestions for avoiding them before they cause us harm.


Recognizing Revenue Early
A common mistake is recording the full value of a contract or an invoice as recognized immediately upon payment, especially for services or subscriptions delivered over time. This inflates revenue in the short term and understates liabilities.

To avoid this, Businesses should ensure revenue is recognized only when performance obligations are met, not when billing or cash collection. This avoids overstating earnings in the short term and ensures compliance with ASC 606/IFRS 15. Deferred revenue schedules and automated recognition tools can help align recognition with delivery.

Ignoring Performance Obligation
Many companies fail to separate multiple deliverables in a contract, such as onboarding, training, support, or updates. This results in an improper allocation of revenue across the contract's life.

Contracts often include multiple deliverables, such as onboarding, training, or ongoing support. Each should be treated as a separate performance obligation, and revenue should be allocated based on its standalone selling price.

Overlooking Discounts
Revenue must be recognized based on the actual transaction price, not the list price. Failing to adjust the discounts, credits, or rewards provided will inflate the financial figures.

To overcome this, Revenue must be recorded at the true transaction price, not the list price. Discounts, reductions, credits, and incentives should be factored in from the start, and estimates for variable consideration should be reassessed periodically. This ensures reported revenue reflects the real value of the customer contracts.

Failing to Update Contract Amendments
Mid-term changes like upgrades, downgrades, or cancellations must be tracked properly. A reassessment must be performed based on the revised obligations and the revenue that remains deferred. Many companies fail to do this or skip this recalibration step.

Upgrades, downgrades, extensions, or cancellations require proper revenue reassessment. Businesses should clearly distinguish whether a change creates a new contract or modifies the existing one. Automated systems that recalculate deferred balances can simplify this process and ensure accurate reporting.

Manual Spreadsheets
Racking revenue manually through spreadsheets increases the risk of errors, especially when managing deferrals, returns, or variable billing models. Automating this process with tools like Zoho Billing ensures accurate, hassle-free recognition with audit-ready reporting.

Manual spreadsheets are prone to errors and limit scalability. Adopting automated revenue recognition software ensures accuracy and reduces compliance risk. Strong internal policies, approval workflows, and finance team training enhance accuracy and reliability. 



Notes
Key Takeaway

With the right processes and tools, these challenges can be avoided. Businesses that invest in automation and adopt best practices early on will be better positioned to scale sustainably while maintaining compliance with recognition standards. 

Zoho Billing is designed to simplify revenue management by automating recognition, tracking contract changes, handling deferred revenue schedules, and ensuring audit-ready compliance. It provides the accuracy, transparency and scalability needed for growing businesses to keep revenue recognition on the right foot. 
​






    • 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

    • How can I delete a user profile created ?

      I can't delete custom profiles created. Why ?

    • Zoho Books Create Invoice API

      I am creating zoho invoices via the API.  Now that zoho has released sub-accounts, i'd like to create invoices and link them to sub-accounts within "sales" account.   For example; my chart of accounts looks like this; Sales ->Website Sales    ->Campaign Sales ->Offline Sales However, when I try to pass these accounts to the API, I receive an error that only Bank accounts can be passed with the create invoice.  

    • Multiselect lookup in subform

      It would be SO SO useful if subforms could support a multiselect look up field! Is this in the works??

    • Ability to Set Text Direction for Individual Cells in Zoho Sheet

      Dear Zoho Sheet Team, We hope you are doing well. We would like to request an enhancement in Zoho Sheet that allows users to set the text direction (right-to-left or left-to-right) for individual cells, similar to what is available in Google Sheets. Use

    • Workflows being applied and the Large unwanted popup

      When a workflow is being applied do to an action, then the Agent is left with a large Window asking if they would like the see the changes this workflow did. Is there any way to disable this prompt from appearing?

    • Contact not saved after editing

      Hi. I discovered a couple of problems with Zoho contact. (1) BUG. Contact is not saved after editing. If you edit an existing contact by putting a bracket in one of the fields you get the message "Contact updated successfully" but nothing is saved. All updates (including the other fields) are lost. Steps to reproduce. Go to an existing contact and change the first name to "Robert (Bob)". (2) In the phone number fields you can only save numeric data (0 to 9). This seems an unneccessary restriction.

    • Zoho Mail Android app update: UI revamp

      Hello everyone! We are excited to share that the first phase of the Zoho Mail Android UI revamp is now live. In this update, we have redesigned navigation bar at the bottom to quickly access the Email, Calendar, Contacts, and Settings modules. Also, the

    • Opt-out from mailing list means can't email at all??

      It seems that if a contact unsubscribes from a mailing list the only way to email them is to uncheck the email opt-out box first, then re-check after the email has been sent. I've been through a chat with support and they confirmed this. This seems bizarre.

    • Email Opt Out Question

      Has the problem where if a customer is emailed opt out prevents you sending standard emails? For me this feature is simply to stop any email marketing and should not block people from receiving emails via Zoho mobile, which makes no sense.

    • Search API filter/sort ignores comment-triggered modifiedTime updates

      Summary When a comment is added to a Call or Account, the parent record's modifiedTime is correctly bumped. This bumped value is visible in: GET /api/v1/calls/{id} ✅ GET /api/v1/calls/search without a filter ✅ — the record's response body shows the new

    • Items Landed Cost and Profit?

      Hello, we recently went live with Zoho Inventory, and I have a question about the Landed Cost feature. The FAQ reads: "Tracking the landed cost helps determine the overall cost incurred in procuring the product. This, in turn, helps you to decide the

    • Bank Feeds

      Since Friday my bank feeds wont work. I have refreshed feeds, deactivate and reactivate and nothing is working

    • Show backordered items on packing slip

      Is it possible to show a column on the Packing Slip that shows number of backordered items when a PO is only partially filled? I would also like to see the Backordered column appear on POs after you receive items if you didn't get ALL of the items or partial amounts of items. And lastly, it would be nice to have the option of turning on the Backordered column for invoices if you only invoice for a partial order. -Tom

    • Users I've shared the sheet with cannot use the Custom Functions

      Hi, I have a Zoho Sheet worksheet that I shared to 2 colleagues, giving them full access: In that worksheet, I created a button with a custom Deluge function and it works flawlessly for me: For those I shared the worksheet to, when they click the button,

    • Introducing parent-child ticketing in Zoho Desk [Early access]

      Hello Zoho Desk users! We have introduced the parent-child ticketing system to help customer service teams ensure efficient resolution of issues involving multiple, related tickets. You can now combine repetitive and interconnected tickets into parent-child

    • Newby Questions

      Q1. The top bar of Zoho Books has a "Search in Banking (/) " field. What is the proper use of this text box? - Searching for Amazon for example has no results but there are transactions. - Is the search case sensitive? - Are regular expressions allowed?

    • Add Custom Fields only in Customer module and not on supplier module!? Is not there a way to do that!?

      I am trying to create custom fields on clients module but it also gets created on suppliers module; which of course does not make sense at all as a lot of custom fields are client or supplier specific but never both. I am missing something? This seems

    • Inventory "Bulk Actions" button - add more fields to "Bulk Update > Select a field"

      Can we not get a lot more actions that are commonly used by customers into the "More Actions" button on the Inventory list? More fields listed in the Bulk Update > Select A Field? Possible Bulk update Fields Preferred Supplier ( to quickly move items

    • Using Email Triggers on Zoho Flow

      Hello, I'm sending the email to create the variables as this article says: https://help.zoho.com/portal/en/kb/flow/user-guide/create-a-flow/articles/email-trigger#How_email_trigger_works But the collection of the variables only seems to work when the

    • Zoho Bookings - Provide Appointment System ID in Zoho Flow Variable

      Hi Bookings Team, It would be great if you could provide the system record ID for appointments as a variable in Zoho Flow trigger outputs and Fetch Appointments action. This would allow us to create a dymanic URL which can be clicked by a staff user to

    • Tip #7: Customize the appointment confirmation page

      A confirmation page plays a crucial role in creating the first impression, as that's where customers land when booking with you. It shows your brand identity, engages your audience, and drives more conversions. Yet, this section is often overlooked when

    • WhatsApp Calling Integration via Zoho Desk

      Dear Zoho Desk Team, I would like to request a feature that allows users to call WhatsApp numbers directly via Zoho Desk. This integration would enable sending and receiving calls to and from WhatsApp numbers over the internet, without the need for traditional

    • Show backordered items on packing slip

      We send out a lot of large orders, and often there are one or two things backordered. How can I fix the packing slips to show quantity ordered  & quantity packed There should also be the ability to "ship" 0 of an item so the receiver knows that things

    • How do you create an event/meeting in a different time zone?

      Does anyone know how do you create an event/meeting in a different time zone? 

    • Deluge Learning Series – Mastering file handling in Deluge | April 2026

      The Deluge Learning Series is conducted on the fourth thursday of every month. In each session, we discuss built-in functions and statements in Deluge and demonstrate how they are used across different Zoho products. With practical examples and real-world

    • Multi-currency and Products

      One of the main reasons I have gone down the Zoho route is because I need multi-currency support. However, I find that products can only be priced in the home currency, We sell to the US and UK. However, we maintain different price lists for each. There

    • Editing recurring tasks

      Hi there, I use recurring annual tasks quite often but sometimes I have a contact leave an organization so I want to re-assign that annual task to a new contact. When I go into the task to change the contact it only does so for the current year. Future

    • Cross Module Filtering – Use Fields from Lookup modules in Custom Views criteria and Advanced Filters

      Hello everyone, Zoho CRM now enables you to achieve deeper filtering of records in a module, using fields of a lookup, thereby enhancing your data management experience manifold. This filtering based on lookup module fields is now available in advanced

    • On Duty Requests - Zoho People Data

      Hello Team, We are currently using the On Duty Form to record Work From Home (WFH) requests in our organization. However, we are facing an issue where pending On Duty requests are not appearing in the Attendance Module. For example, if I submit On Duty

    • Business Day Logic Update: More Accurate Scheduling for Your Workflows

      Hello everyone, We’re improving how business-day calculations work in workflows, especially when triggers happen on weekends. This update ensures that offsets like +0, +1, and +2 business days behave exactly as intended, giving you clearer and more predictable

    • Styling for Subform Fields using client script

      Currently we can add styles to list and detail page for fields using .addstyle in the Client Script But that is missing for fields of Subform We would really like the feature to addstyle for subforms in the detail page Can you please consider adding it,

    • Zoho Commerce -

      Zoho Commerce currently only allows merchants to define the United Kingdom as a single shipping zone, which creates a significant issue for businesses operating between the EU and the UK. Under the Northern Ireland Protocol, Northern Ireland follows EU

    • Add a way to connect Log360 Cloud logs with Zoho analytics

      Hi, Several month ago Log360 Cloud was added to zoho one - and this is great. But as far as I see there is no prebuilt way to connect Zoho analytics to the logs we have in Log360 Cloud. Please add a prebuilt connection like we have for so many other zoho

    • IP flagged as abusive

      I'm getting the error that 136.143.188.15 is listed as abusive. I've checked with mxtoolbox.com and it is indeed in the list

    • date & datetime client script getInput types

      Please add date & datetime as available types for the getInput client script function. https://www.zohocrm.dev/explore/client-script/clientapi/Client#getInput

    • Approval Workflow Not Triggering When Status Updated via Custom Button

      Hi Team, I’m facing an issue with an approval workflow in my application. I have a workflow that updates a record’s Status field from “Pending” to “Waiting for Approval.” I have configured an Approval Workflow with the condition: Status = "Waiting for

    • Automate the file import step

      Hello everyone, I have a Sales - 'Account' category, and currently import the file to update it as follows: Import Accounts - From File - Update existing Accounts only - select and match the field the CRM. Since we have been using Microsoft 365 SharePoint.

    • Data Import

      Hello Latha, Is there any option to enable data import option in Equipment module? Best regards, Chethiya.

    • Unable to Access /crm/v7/taxes – OAuth Scope Mismatch in Zoho CRM API

      I am currently integrating Zoho CRM (v7 API) with our system and I need clarification regarding the Taxes API and OAuth scopes. Context: We are creating Quotes via the API (/crm/v7/Quotes) Each quote contains line items with taxes (e.g., TVA 19%, 10%,

    • Email from CRM being Blocked or Marked as Spam by Google (and maybe more)

      In the past 24 hours we’ve noticed that emails sent via Zoho CRM are being blocked or flagged as phishing, particularly by Google. The issue seems to occur specifically when emails contain links. URLs like www.domain.com or www.example.com are automatically

    • Next Page