Billing Preferences - Overview
To configure your billing preferences:
- Go to Settings by clicking the Gear icon in the top right corner.
- Select Billing Preferences under Subscriptions in the Module Settings pane.
Calendar Billing
Calendar Billing in Zoho ERP allows you to align your invoicing process with specific calendar dates, ensuring consistency and predictability in your billing cycle. Instead of tying billing strictly to the subscription start date, you can choose a fixed date of every month on which all the invoices are generated. This can help you standardize your billing operations and simplify financial planning.
You can choose to bill your customers according to their subscription activation date or choose to bill them on a specific date of each month. Here’s how to configure the billing date:
- Under Billing Preferences, navigate to Billing Date.
- Select the required option.
Option Description Same as a subscription’s activation date (Anniversary Billing) Customers are billed on the same calendar day each billing cycle, based on the date their subscription was activated.
How it Works: If a subscription starts on the 10th of the month, billing will recur on the 10th of each subsequent month.Configure specific billing dates (Calendar Billing) Customers are billed on fixed calendar dates that you choose, regardless of when their subscription was activated.
How it Works: If billing is set to occur on the 1st and 15th of each month, customers will be billed on the next applicable date following their subscription start.
You can configure calendar billing in the following ways:
| Option | Description |
|---|---|
| Billing Months | You can select the specific months in which you want to bill your customers. The nearest available billing month after a customer’s subscription is activated will be used for billing. This will be applied only to subscriptions with a billing cycle of more than 1 month. |
| Billing Days (Monthly & Yearly Subscriptions) | You can select the specific dates on which you want to bill your customers. The nearest available billing date after a customer’s subscription is activated will be used for billing from the next cycle. This will be applied only to monthly and yearly subscriptions. |
| Billing Days (Weekly Subscriptions) | You can select the specific day of the week on which you want to bill your customers. This will be applied only to weekly subscriptions. |
- Click Save.
Your customers will now be charged based on the billing date you have configured.
Consolidated Billing
If you have customers who have multiple subscriptions with multiple billing dates, you can choose to combine all their invoices into a single invoice. The consolidated invoice’s billing date will be the same as the customer’s first subscription. This helps your customers pay for all their subscriptions at the same time every month.
Scenario: Zylker offers high quality furniture for rent to their customers. Aaron Brown rented a cabinet on 5th April, a bed on 10th April and a table on 15th April. Instead of charging Aaron Brown separately on the 5th, 10th and 15th of every month, Zylker can enable consolidated billing, and send a single invoice for Aaron’s subscriptions. This enables Aaron to conveniently pay for all his subscriptions on the 5th of every month.
Here’s how you can enable Consolidated Billing for your customers:
- Under Billing Preferences, navigate to Consolidated Billing.
- Click Generate a consolidated invoice for multiple subscriptions.
- Click Save.
Now, Consolidated Billing will be applicable to all the customers in your Zoho ERP organization.
Customer Level Consolidated Billing
There might be cases when you would want to enable or disable Consolidated Billing only for certain customers. To enable or disable customer level consolidated billing:
Go to Sales on the left sidebar.
Navigate to the Customers module at the top.
Select a customer.
Scroll down to Consolidated Billing under Other Details in the customer’s Overview page.
Click the gear icon and select Enable or Disable as required.
Note: If you enable or disable Consolidated Billing for a customer, it will override the existing organization preference configured from Settings > Subscriptions > Billing Preferences > Consolidated Billing.
Metered Billing
There may be customers for whom you need to add additional charges on top of their subscription fee each billing cycle. To handle this you can enable metered billing. Invoices generated for each cycle will remain in pending status, allowing you to add those extra charges before they are sent. To learn more, refer to Metered Billing.
Usage Billing
Charge customers based on their actual usage during a billing cycle by updating addons and their quantities at any time. The recorded usage is billed automatically on renewal, and usage records can be accessed at any point for review and tracking. To learn more, refer to Usage Billing.
Prepaid Billing with Drawdown Model
Allow customers to prepay and deduct usage charges from the prepaid balance as consumption occurs. This feature helps in managing usage-based billing more efficiently by drawing down from the prepaid amount in real time. To learn more, refer to Prepaid Billing With Drawdown.
Unbilled Charges
Retain your customer’s subscription related additional charges instead of invoicing them immediately. You can raise a single invoice later for all accumulated charges. Learn more about Unbilled Charges.
Credit Notes
You can allow available credits to be automatically applied to the generated invoices when subscriptions are created, upgraded, or renewed.
- Under Billing Preferences, scroll down to Credit Notes.
- Mark Redeem credit notes for subscriptions.
Excess Payments
You can allow the recoreded excess payments to be automatically applied to the generated invoices when subscriptions are created, upgraded, or renewed.
- Under Billing Preferences, scroll down to Excess Payments.
- Mark Apply excess payments to subscriptions.
Partial Payments
You can now allow your customers to make partial payments with any amount of their choice when paying through the customer portal or invoice payment links.
- Under Billing Preferences, scroll down to Partial Payments.
- Slide the toggle to Enabled to enable partial payments for your customers.
After configuring the desired preferences, click Save on the bottom of the page.