Subscription Preferences

Let’s have a look at the various settings you can configure for the Subscriptions module in Zoho Billing.

General Settings

To configure your subscription preferences:

Go to Settings.
Select General under Subscriptions in the Module Settings pane.

Pause and Resume

You can allow subscriptions to be paused temporarily and resumed later. This is useful if customers want to put their plan on hold instead of cancelling it.

To enable this:

Navigate to the General tab.
Slide the toggle to Enabled to enable the pause and resume feature.

Generate a credit note for subscriptions’ paused period

If your customer has paused their subscription, you can issue a Credit Note for the unused portion of the billing cycle by enabling this option. This ensures that your customer is not charged for the time when the subscription was inactive.

Learn more about Pause and Resume Subscriptions.

Prorated Billing

Charge or credit your customers based on the exact duration for which they’ve used your product or service. You can also prorate the difference when customers upgrade and downgrade their subscriptions. Learn more about Prorated Billing.

Renewal Pricing

You can choose whether your subscriptions should renew at the original price or at the latest product price.

Navigate to the General tab.
Under Renewal Pricing, select one of the following options.

Fields	Description
Retain Existing Prices	Subscriptions will renew at the plan and addons prices set at the time of subscription creation.
Use Latest Prices	Subscriptions will renew using the most recent plan and addon prices from the associated price list or product.

In-Term Reactivation

If a subscription was cancelled through dunning, you can reactivate it or allow your customers to reactivate it themselves directly from the Customer Portal, without affecting the current billing cycle. New invoices will not be generated since the subscription’s billing cycle remains unchanged. To Learn more, refer to In-Term Reactivation.

After configuring the desired preferences, click Save on the bottom of the page.

Custom Buttons & Links

You can create new buttons in the Subscription module to perform specific actions for your transactions, or to open external links. You can create them using deluge script and execute actions based on the functions you add. Learn more about Custom Buttons & Links.

Billing Preferences

To configure your billing preferences:

Go to Settings.
Select Billing Preferences under Subscriptions in the Module Settings pane.

Billing Date

You can configure when customers are billed or when invoices are generated for their subscriptions. This can be set to either the subscription start date or a specific calendar date. To learn more, refer to Calendar Billing.

Consolidated Billing

Enable consolidated billing to combine multiple subscriptions for the same customer into a single invoice. Combine multiple invoices for a customer into a single consolidated invoice. The billing date for this consolidated invoice will be the same as that customer’s first subscription, and the charges of other subscriptions will be prorated accordingly. Learn more about 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.

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.

Advance Billing

You can bill your customers in advance, even before the subscription’s next billing period starts, to ensure timely payment and avoid service interruptions. You can also configure how many days before renewal the advance invoice should be generated for each billing cycle.

To configure Advance Billing:

Go to Settings.
Select Advance Billing under Subscriptions in the Module Settings pane.
Make the necessary changes.

To learn more, refer to Advance Billing.

Dunning Management

You can automate the process of handling failed payments using Dunning Management. You can configure multiple retry attempts, email reminders, and final actions (like subscription suspension or cancellation) if payments are not successful. This helps reduce involuntary churn and ensures a smoother revenue recovery process. Learn more about Dunning Management.

Cancellation Preferences

You can collect reasons and feedback when customers cancel their subscriptions from the customer portal. This helps you understand why customers are leaving and improve retention strategies. Here’s how:

Go to Settings.
Select Cancellation Preferences under Subscriptions in the Module Settings pane.
Choose one of the following options:
- Simple Option: Displays the Reason for Cancellation text box in the customer portal. You can make this mandatory.
- Advanced Option: Allows customers to select from predefined cancellation reasons. You can add new reasons by clicking Add Reason.
Click Save to apply your changes.

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