Customer Management: # 1 Pick a Convenient Way to Onboard Customer

When Meera opened her bookstore, onboarding customers was effortless. A customer walked in, picked a book and left with a handwritten bill. As the store gained popularity, things changed.

"

Can I place an order over the phone?" a customer asked one day. Soon, emails followed. Then came requests like, "Do you have a monthly magazine subscription?" and "Can I rent books instead of buying them?"

That's when the challenge began.

Customer details were spread across notebooks and spreadsheets.

"Did we already bill this customer?"

"Why is this customer listed twice?"

Some customers were added multiple times, invoices were delayed, and the sales and finance teams struggled to stay aligned. Meera realised that customers were entering her business through various sources, but there was no consistent way to onboard them.

To handle this growth without disrupting daily operations, Meera needed a system that could support different customer onboarding sources while keeping everything organised in one place.

Customer Onboarding in Zoho Billing 

Zoho Billing allows businesses to onboard customers in multiple ways, based on how customers interact with the company. Whether the sales team adds the customer, signs up online, comes through an application, or already exists in another system, Zoho Billing provides a smooth onboarding experience.

Sales Driven Onboarding 

Sales-driven onboarding is commonly used when customers are acquired through direct interaction, such as walk-ins, phone calls, or email requests. In Zoho Billing, a salesperson or finance team member can manually add a customer and issue an invoice.

Imagine when a customer visits the store to purchase books or places an order over the phone, the salesperson adds the customer to Zoho Billing and generates an invoice.

For larger or negotiated deals, the salesperson can create a quote before converting it into an invoice. This helps formalise pricing and close deals efficiently.

Businesses that use Zoho CRM can integrate with Zoho Billing to streamline this process. When a lead is marked as Won in CRM, the customer details are automatically added to Zoho Billing, reducing the manual data entry and ensuring a smooth handoff from sales to the finance team.

Self-Driven Onboarding 

Self-driven onboarding is ideal when businesses want customers to sign up directly through online channels.

Using Zoho Billing, businesses can set up a website with a Pricing page and embed the pricing widget to display available plans. When customers click Subscribe, they are redirected to a secure hosted payment page.

Zoho Billing's multi-page hosted checkout supports email validation during signup, helping prevent duplicate customer records. This allows customers to onboard themselves easily while ensuring accurate customer data.

API-Based Onboarding 

As businesses expand across mobile applications and custom platforms, manual onboarding may no longer scale.

Zoho Billing provides REST APIs that enable businesses to create customers programmatically. When a customer signs up via a custom form or application, the Customer Creation API can automatically create the customer record in Zoho Billing. This ensures real-time onboarding while keeping all customer data centralised.

Migrating Customers from the Legacy System 

For businesses migrating from spreadsheets or other billing systems, Zoho Billing supports customer onboarding via Bulk Import. Customer data can be uploaded in CSV format using a sample import file. This makes it easy to bring existing customers into Zoho Billing without manual re-entry or downtime.

What an Effective Customer Onboarding Does to Your Business 

Effective customer onboarding sets the tone for the entire customer relationship. When onboarding is smooth and consistent, businesses reduce operational friction, gain better visibility into customer data and respond faster to customer needs. It enables teams to work with clarity instead of corrections and allows businesses to scale without adding complexity. Ultimately, strong onboarding builds trust early, improves team efficiency, and lays the foundation for long-term customer retention and growth.

 

Up Next: Organise before Operate

 

 

• 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

• Standard practice rerun updated deluge function over existing recordes

  Hi folks, we have a function which is triggered via webhook from a third-party solution which then calls another api with a contact-id and gets a json payload back and then parses that data to custom fields in our CRM to the record id. As requirements

• Zoho Campaigns API endpoint for contact details

  there is some REST API support for Zoho Campaigns, however, I am not able to find an endpoint for "get contact details".  in particular, I'd like to access contact's subscription status and also their topic. ideally there is all profile available including

• Specifying time increments on a Date/Time field

  Hi all, Im using a Date/Time field in my CRM module. At the moment the increments are 30 minutes. How can I change these to be 15 minutes? Thanks

• Nimble enhancements to WhatsApp for Business integration in Zoho CRM: Enjoy context and clarity in business messaging

  Dear Customers, We hope you're well! WhatsApp for business is a renowned business messaging platform that takes your business closer to your customers; it gives your business the power of personalized outreach. Using the WhatsApp for Business integration

• Sort by Project Name?

  How the heck do you sort by project name in the task list views??? Seems like this should be a no-brainer?

• Maximum limit of bank accounts

  I'm currently setting up Zoho Books in order to migrate at the start of our next financial year (April) and while adding bank accounts I've tried to add a second account from the same bank and receive an error about the maximum limit of bank accounts.

• Account and Email and Password

  I'm signing up as a Partner so I can move my website clients across to a separate email server from their current cPanel one.. So I have a Zoho account and then I moved one of my emails across to that account to test the import process... So the question

• Zoho Sprints iOS and Android app update: Global view. Screen capture control, file encryption, tags enhancement(iOS)

  Hello everyone! We are excited to introduce new features in the latest version(v2.1) of the Zoho Sprints iOS app update. Let’s take a quick look at what’s new. 1. Global view Global view brings all your project items into one centralised space. You can

• Creating Restaurant Inventory Management on Zoho

  Hi,  We run a small cloud kitchen and are interested to use Zoho for Inventory and Composite Item tracking for our food served and supplied procured to make food items.  Our model is basically like subway where the customer can choose breads, veggies,

• Price Managment

  I have been in discussions with Zoho for some time and not getting what I need. Maybe someone can help explain the logic behind this for me as I fail to understand. When creating an item, you input a sales rate and purchase rate. These rates are just

• How do I create an update to the Cost Price from landed costs?

  Hi fellow Zoho Inventory battlers, I am new to Zoho inventory and was completely baffled to find that the cost price of products does not update when a new purchase order is received. The cost price is just made up numbers I start with when the product

• only 100 entry download entries in Zoho Form

  Is there a way to download more than 100 entries in a form at a time? It is capped (unless I am not doing the export correctly). This is very frustrating as I want to make sure I don't miss a record when downloading data. Thanks!

• Zoho FSM Premium Edition is Here

  As your field service operations grow, so do the complexities — managing large distributed teams, keeping sensitive data secure, generating the right reports at the right time, and ensuring every technician dispatched is the right fit for the job. The

• Seeking a WhatsApp Business App (not API) Zoho CRM integration

  We have a business need to integrated WhatsApp Business App (not API) into Zoho CRM to centrally manage communications between our Sales team and Leads & Contact. Is there a reputable integration available for this scenario of ours? Core features we would

• Zoho Recruit mailserver get blocked by Microsoft!

  Hi, We have experienced this issue twice now, where Zoho Recruit outbound IP addresses are being blocked by Microsoft. We are confident that Microsoft is the blocking party, as all outbound emails to candidates with @hotmail.com, @live.com, and @outlook.com

• Auto-sync field of lookup value

  This feature has been requested many times in the discussion Field of Lookup Announcement and this post aims to track it separately. At the moment the value of a 'field of lookup' is a snapshot but once the parent lookup field is updated the values diverge.

• How are other Books users integrating crypto and digital assets into Books?

  If my company owns some digital assets I would want those to exist in Books as assets, and also be able to change the value as needed when generating reports. My company would also be receiving payment in cryptocurrencies and may sell at the time of payment

• Lets Talk Recruit: Key takeaways from our India community meetups

  Welcome back to Let's Talk Recruit — the series where we bring you real stories, product insights, and community highlights from the world of recruitment. Our last post covered how Resume Harvester can take the follow-up out of hiring. This edition is

• Edit a previous reconciliation

  I realized that during my March bank reconciliation, I chose the wrong check to reconcile (they were for the same amount on the same date, I just chose the wrong check to reconcile). So now, the incorrect check is showing as un-reconciled. Is there any way I can edit a previous reconciliation (this is 7 months ago) so I can adjust the check that was reconciled? The amounts are exactly the same and it won't change my ending balance.

• Approval Workflow for Purchase Orders Abrir

  The requirement is , that all purchase orders greater than or equal to 5000 go through an approval process from certain people, but within books I only see that the approvers can be by levels or any approver but we cannot enter a rule like these. Can

• Unable to create new finance account in Zoho Books Android app due to missing account number field.

  Free plan I have enabled a setting via the website requiring unique account codes to be specified for all accounts. When using the android app, go to expenses, new expense, select account, new account. Promoted to enter the Account name and description.

• How to Fetch data from Sales Order and Insert into Purchase Order with Deluge

  Hello, I am wanting to write a Deluge script that would take the shipping address on a Sales Order and upon conversion to a Sales Order automatically insert it into that corresponding PO. I am new to Deluge but understand that it has great capabilities.

• Google Drive shared folder

  My deluge script has stopped working, no longer collecting files from Google Drive - have these connections finally been deprecated ?? They seem to be active but errors occur when updating them ?

• Can't add attachment on email template

  The attachment does show up. This is my template. Hi ${Cases.Assigned Programmers}, Please be reminded about the following task that has been assigned to you. Subject : ${Cases.Subject} Description : ${Cases.Description} Ticket # : ${Cases.Request Id}

• Zoho Desk: Mobile Updates | Q1 2026

  Hello everyone, Greetings! As we gear up for the end of Q1, we are excited to share a quick journey into all that released in the first quarter of 2026. We have brought in a few enhancements in the mobile apps that improve overall user experience and

• CRM x WorkDrive: We're rolling out the WorkDrive-powered file storage experience for existing users

  Release plan: Gradual rollout to customers without file storage add-ons, in this order: 1. Standalone CRM 2. CRM Plus and Zoho One DCs: All | Editions: All Available now for: - Standalone CRM accounts in Free and Standard editions without file storage

• Additional Address - Company Name

  It would be very helpful to have a "Company Name" field in the Additional Address shipping section.  In a situation where you drop-ship orders to a different address or different company entirely, it may be necessary to list the company name of the receiver. I understand that the Attention field can be used for that purpose, but that's not really the intended purpose of that field.

• All new Address Field in Zoho CRM: maintain structured and accurate address inputs

  Availability Update: 29 September 2025: It's currently available for all new sign-ups and for existing Zoho CRM orgs which are in the Professional edition exclusively for IN DC users. 2 March 2026: Available to users in all DCs except US and EU DC. 24

• Zoho Payroll's Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain and Canada edition is available in Zoho One

  Great news for Zoho One users! Zoho Payroll has expanded to five new regions: Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, and Canada. And the best part? These new editions are fully integrated with Zoho One, just like our existing editions in India, the UAE, Saudi

• Does Zoho Creator support multilingual translation for user-entered data?

  I understand that Zoho Creator provides localization support for UI elements such as field labels and static text. I would like to know: Does Zoho Creator support automatic translation of user-entered data (for example, form inputs or stored records)

• Upload field on tasks module

  Hello, Why I cannot add an upload field to a Task? Or maybe when creating the task make attachements visible, so you can add an attachement while creating the task? Looking forward to your response!

• WhatsApp phone number migration

  Hi @Gowri V and @Pheranda Nongpiur, Thanks for implementing the promised enhancements to the integration between Zoho CRM and WhatsApp. The previous discussion has been locked, so I'm opening this new one. I am copying below a specific

• How to let club members update their own profile data

  Our club has about 200 members. We keep names, addresses, phones, emails, payment records, etc. for each, recently migrated to Creator. Once a year I send email to each member to confirm or correct their info on file with us, as well as ask for payment

• Document retention in Zoho Sign

  Document management doesn’t end at signing. It extends to how long you retain agreements—and how securely you dispose of them. With the document retention option in Zoho Sign, you can define structured, policy-driven timelines for managing completed documents.

• Sales Allowed Beyond Available Stock and Payment Recorded Without Restriction

  Hi, While testing in Zoho Inventory, I noticed that a sales order can be created with a quantity exceeding the available stock in the selected warehouse. In my case: Available stock: 5 units Ordered quantity: 6 units Despite this: I was able to convert

• Deleting, Adding and Changing a Zoho Books Entry

  Zoho Books Community & Support, If a bulk upload of entries were added to an account, what is the process to: - Delete an entry - Change the amount of an entry - Is there a means to manually add an entry other than upload?

• Zoho Commerce in multiple languages

  When will you be able to offer Zoho Commerce in more languages? We sell in multiple markets and want to be able to offer a local version of our webshop. What does the roadmap look like?

• Zoho CRM - Feature Request - Analytics Components Group By Week Alternative Formats

  On the Zoho CRM Analytics Components, please consider adding an option to allow group by week format to be changed to other formats such as Week Commencing or Week Ending dates, rather than the current Week Number. This would provide improved usability

• The Social Playbook March edition: Myth vs Facts

  We’ve all heard a lot of myths growing up. Some sound convincing, some feel believable, and over time they start to feel like facts. But the truth is, a myth is still a myth until it’s backed by real facts. Marketing is no different. Over time, many ideas

• Updating Analytical Fields Data

  Dear Zoho team, I'm having an issue with the recently added fields in both Analytical Desk and Analytical. How can I generate the data in Analytical when new fields are added? https://analytics.zoho.com/workspace/2436819000000007005/edit/24368190000

• Next Page