Zoho Billing for Subscriptions: A Practical Setup Guide

What is Zoho Billing and what happened to Zoho Subscriptions?

Zoho Subscriptions was renamed and expanded into Zoho Billing. Zoho's own pages now state that Zoho Subscriptions has evolved into Zoho Billing, and the old Subscriptions pages now carry a notice pointing to Zoho Billing. If you used Subscriptions before, you are now on Zoho Billing.

Alongside recurring subscriptions, Zoho Billing handles quotes, retainer invoices, one-time invoices, sales receipts, credit notes, payment links, expenses, time tracking with project billing, and a reports library that covers MRR and ARR, churn, retention, usage billing and revenue.

How do you set up plans, add-ons and coupons in Zoho Billing?

Everything starts in the Product Catalog. A product is the thing you sell, such as your software or membership. Plans sit under a product and define the price and billing frequency. Add-ons are extras a customer can attach, and coupons apply discounts. Get this structure right before you import customers, because every invoice and report depends on it.

1. 1Complete Settings: organization profile, base currency, taxes and compliance, and branding for invoices and emails.
2. 2Connect at least one payment gateway under online payments so subscriptions can be charged automatically.
3. 3Create a product for each distinct offering, then add plans for each tier and billing period.
4. 4Create add-ons for optional extras such as extra seats, storage or support hours.
5. 5Create coupons with clear limits on duration and which plans they apply to.
6. 6Set up hosted payment pages or pricing widgets so new customers can sign up themselves.
7. 7Configure dunning, email notifications and portal preferences before the first renewal date.

How does dunning work in Zoho Billing?

Dunning is the automated process that recovers payment when a renewal charge fails or an invoice goes unpaid. For subscriptions that auto-charge a card or bank debit, you can retry up to three times, set the days between attempts, and choose whether the customer gets an email with a payment link after each failure. Total retry days cannot exceed 30.

When the last retry fails, you choose the final action. A subscription can be left unpaid but still renewing, cancelled, or moved to a free plan if you offer one. The related invoice can be left as is, voided, or reversed with a credit note. Offline subscriptions get a dunning period where the subscription shows as Past Due before the final action applies.

Multiple dunning rules, pausing dunning and in-term reactivation are only available on certain plans, so check the edition comparison before you design your recovery flow. Zoho also recommends a card-expiry reminder email to reduce failed renewals.

What can customers do in the portal, and which payment gateways are supported?

The customer portal lets your customers view and pay invoices, download statements, update billing details and saved cards, and manage their own subscriptions. Depending on the preferences you enable, they can upgrade, downgrade, change quantities, add add-ons, redeem coupons, pause, resume or cancel. You control which actions are allowed, and you can add multi-factor authentication or single sign-on.

Zoho Billing's global help lists Zoho Payments, Stripe, PayPal, Square, Braintree, Authorize.net, CSG Forte and Verifone as gateways. Some country editions add local options. The India edition documents Razorpay, and GoCardless is documented for collections in AUD, CAD, EUR, GBP and NZD. Zoho does not charge a fee for online payments, but your gateway will.

How does revenue recognition and sync with Zoho Books and Zoho CRM work?

Revenue recognition spreads income over the period you deliver the service instead of booking it when cash arrives. Advance payments sit in a Deferred Revenue account and move to recognized revenue on a schedule. You can choose monthly, quarterly, yearly or custom frequency and a daily, evenly distributed or prorated method. Zoho states it follows the ASC 606 and IFRS 15 five-step model. Once enabled, it cannot be switched off, and it is only available on certain plans.

The Zoho Books integration syncs both ways for customers, items, price lists, invoices, payments, projects, timesheets, taxes and more. It cannot be disabled after setup, so decide on your chart of accounts and income account mapping first. The Zoho CRM integration syncs Accounts and Contacts with customers and Products with items, either one way from CRM or both ways. Subscriptions show on CRM records, and offline subscriptions can be created from CRM, while card-based subscriptions are created in Billing.

What should businesses in the USA, Canada, Gulf, UK and India know?

Zoho runs separate country editions of Billing, and tax settings, gateways and some features differ between them.

• USA: Zoho Billing lists an Avalara AvaTax integration for sales tax calculation. Zoho's enterprise revenue recognition page lists the US as a live market.
• Canada: Also listed as a live market for enterprise revenue recognition. Set up GST, HST and PST in tax settings before invoicing.
• UAE and Saudi Arabia: Both are listed as live markets for enterprise revenue recognition. If you sync with Zoho Books, VAT and e-invoicing rules are handled in your Books setup.
• UK and EU: GoCardless supports GBP and EUR collections. Review your GDPR position for customer data held in the portal.
• India: The India edition documents Razorpay as a gateway, which suits card and UPI-heavy collections. Check the current list in your edition.

What mistakes should you avoid when setting up Zoho Billing?

Most problems come from early decisions that are hard to reverse.

• Connecting Zoho Books before agreeing income accounts, because the integration cannot be turned off
• Enabling revenue recognition without your accountant reviewing the rule, since it cannot be disabled
• Creating a separate plan for every discount instead of using coupons or price lists
• Leaving dunning on defaults so customers are cancelled sooner or later than intended
• Not matching base currencies between Zoho Billing and Zoho CRM when multi-currency is on

Flowpeak sets up Zoho Billing remotely from Chennai for subscription businesses worldwide: catalog design, gateway and dunning configuration, Books and CRM sync, and data migration from older tools. If you want a second opinion on an existing setup, start with a free scoping call.

Frequently asked questions