Subscription Operations

The Subscriptions module in Zoho ERP provides a set of functions that help you manage subscriptions throughout their lifecycle. From creating and editing subscriptions to pausing, resuming, cancelling, and deleting them when required, these functions allow you to manage your billing efficiently from one place.

Learn more about the actions you can perform in a subscription.

Edit Subscription

You can edit your customers’ subscriptions to make necessary changes to their subscriptions. You can use the edit option to upgrade or downgrade your customers’ existing or cancelled subscriptions.

To edit a subscription:

Navigate to the Sales module and go to the Subscriptions tab.
Select a subscription.
Click Edit in the subscription’s Overview page.
Make the necessary changes.
Scroll down to the When to apply changes section and select when you want the changes to be applied.

Option	Description
Immediately	The changes will be made to the subscription on the current date. Insight: When you upgrade or downgrade a subscription, a prorated invoice and credit note will be respectively generated. Note: If the billing frequency is changed, the billing cycle will also change and the current date will become the billing date.
End of Term	The changes will be made to the subscription from the next billing cycle. Insight: If you upgrade or downgrade the subscription, a new invoice with the updated information will be generated at the beginning of the next billing cycle.
Scheduled Update	You can make changes to a customer’s subscription and schedule it to be applied on a specific date. If you schedule an upgrade or downgrade, a prorated invoice and credit note will be generated for the subscription on the scheduled date. Scenario: Zylker is an internet service provider. One of their customers, Aaron Brown is subscribed to their Basic plan and the current billing cycle is 5th May to 5th June. Aaron Brown decides to upgrade to the Professional plan from 20th May. Using Scheduled Updates in Zoho ERP, Zylker can schedule the upgrade for 20th May. Now, the subscription will be updated on 20th May and a prorated invoice and credit note will be generated accordingly. Note: If the billing frequency is changed, for example, upgrading from a monthly plan to a yearly plan, the scheduled date will be the new billing date and the billing cycle will change accordingly.

Note:

If you have scheduled an update for the End of Term or a Scheduled Date and you make an immediate update, the scheduled update will be cancelled.
If an update is scheduled on the subscription renewal date, it will be applied the day after the renewal.

Once you’ve selected when to apply the changes,

Click Continue.
Check the subscription’s charges in the next page and click Update.

The subscription will now be updated.

Backdated Subscriptions

In Zoho ERP, you can create backdated subscriptions to record subscriptions that began in the past but weren’t entered into the system at the right time. This helps you maintain accurate records and generate invoices for the missed period, if required.

When you create a backdated subscription, it will be created with the chosen backdate as its start date. You can then choose if you want to generate an invoice for the current billing cycle.

When to Use Backdated Subscriptions

If a customer’s subscription began earlier than the date you’re adding it.
To ensure your invoices and revenue reports reflect the correct start date.
To migrate existing subscriptions from another system into Zoho ERP.

How to Create a Backdated Subscription

Navigate to the Sales module and go to the Subscriptions tab.
Click + New.
Select the customer, and enter the other details.
Choose the plan and addon.
In the subscription’s Start Date field under Subscription Term, enter the desired date. For example, If the subscription started on June 1st but today is July 15th, set the start date as June 1st.
Check the Create invoice for current billing cycle box, if required.
Click Continue and review the subscription details.
Click Create.

The subscription will now be created and future billing cycles will be aligned with the chosen start date.

Adding a One-Time Addon

A separate invoice will be raised for a one-time addon. Here’s how you can add a one-time addon to a subscription.

Navigate to the Sales module and go to the Customers tab.
Select the customer for whom a one-time addon has to be added.
Click the respective subscription in the Overview section from the Transactions tab.
Click the More dropdown in the top right corner and select Add One Time Addon. Do ensure the respective one-time addon is associated with the subscribed plan.

Adding a Charge

You can associate one-time charges to your customers’ subscriptions. These charges will be raised in a separate invoice:

Navigate to the Sales module and go to the Subscriptions tab.
Select the subscription for which you want to add the one-time charge.
Click the More dropdown in the top right corner and select Add Charge.
Enter the amount to be charged, along with the other necessary details.
Click Charge.

Applying a Coupon

A coupon can be applied for a subscription at any time. However, only one coupon can be applied to a subscription at any point.

To apply a coupon for a subscription, follow these steps.

Navigate to the Sales module and go to the Customers tab.
Select the customer for whom a one-time charge has to be added.
Click the respective subscription in the Overview section from the Transactions tab.
Click the More dropdown in the top right corner and select the Add Coupon button.
Select the coupon to be applied and click Save.

Discounts

Discounts are an essential tool used in businesses to attract new customers and improve sales. Salespersons often offer customised discounts to new customers, which adds a personal touch to their sale. Zoho ERP allows you to offer flat and percentage discounts to your customers both at the item-level and transaction-level according to your business needs.

Insight: Discounts are different from coupons. Coupons are often used for promotions and to provide standard discounts to customers, while you can use discounts to give competitive and personalised pricing to different customers.

To give discounts to your customers while creating a subscription:

Select the Discount Preference.

Option	Description
No Discounts	Select this option if you do not want to give discounts to your customers
Item-Level	You can apply different discounts for different items, plans, addons and coupons for the subscription.
Transaction-Level	You can apply an average discount for the entire subscription.

Select the Discount Redemption.

Option	Description
Once	The discount will be applied only for the first billing cycle. The upcoming cycles will be billed for the original amount.
Every Renewal	The discount will be applied to the subscription for all billing cycles.

Select Discount Type.
- If you select Transaction-Level in the Discount Preference, the discount type will be applicable for all the items.
  - Flat - The flat amount will be discounted from the total, irrespective of the total amount.
  - Percentage - The discount will be applied as a percentage of the total.
- If you select Item-Level in the Discount Preference, you can set different discount type for different items according to your needs.
  - Percentage - The discount will be applied as a percentage of the item’s price.
  - Flat - The flat amount will be discounted from the item’s price.

Note: If a discount is applied to a subscription, coupons cannot be applied to the subscription. If you want to apply a coupon to the subscription, you have to update the subscription and remove the discount.

Insight: You can also create custom API Hosted Payment Pages with associated discounts and share the personalised link with your customers for them to sign up.

Changing Subscription Details

You can change subscription details like billing information, contact person, reference numbers, card details, payment mode and notes.

Navigate to the Sales module and go to the Customers tab.
Select the customer for whom subscription details need to be changed.
Click the respective subscription in the Overview section from the Transactions tab.

Change next billing date

The next renewal date can be postponed. Here’s how:

Click Change next to Next Billing Date.
Select any future date and add a reason.
Click Save.
In the next page, select if you want to charge for the extension or just change the billing date.

The billing date will be changed. If the next billing date is changed from Jan 1st to Jan 10th, the subsequent billing date would be on Feb 10th.

Reference number You can add/update a reference number for the subscription at any time.

Manage customers When you click Manage Contacts, you can view the list of email IDs of customers and contact persons. Check the email IDs to which subscription related notifications need to be sent.

Notes Add a short note about the subscription.

Similarly, you can update subscription details as required before its next renewal.

Note: Generally, you cannot edit any details of a subscription on its renewal day. However, you can edit certain line items of subscriptions if the option mentioned below is enabled for your organisation.

Update Subscription Line Items on Its Renewal Day

You might sometimes need to update subscriptions on the day of its renewal due to last minute customer requests or other reasons. Zoho ERP allows you to process subscription updates on its renewal day. You can update certain subscription details such as plan, addons, prices and quantity.

Insight: The renewal time for subscriptions is generally 06:00 AM in your organisation’s configured time zone. The renewal will be completed in as soon as a minute or might take longer depending on the volume of subscription data.

When you update a subscription on its renewal day, it will be immediately renewed and the renewal invoice with the updated changes will be sent to your customer.

Note: Renewal invoices for metered billing enabled subscriptions will be generated in the Sent or Paid status instead of the Pending status.

Extending a Subscription

When a subscription is about to expire, you can extend the billing cycle(s) instead of creating a new subscription for the customer.

To extend a subscription for your customer, just change the number of billing cycles and the subscription will be updated. This can be done easily from the subscription’s overview page.

Navigate to the Sales module and go to the Subscriptions tab.
Select a Subscription.
In the Overview tab, click the Edit icon below renewals remaining.
Change the number of billing cycles left, or select Never Expires if you want the subscription to renew automatically until you cancel it manually.
Click Save.

Note: You will not be able to extend the following types of subscriptions:

Cancelled subscriptions
Subscriptions cancelled at renewal
Subscriptions in dunning
Expired subscriptions
Subscriptions set to renew forever

For Offline Subscriptions

If you have already received the payment for extending a subscription, you can record the payment here.

After entering the number of billing cycles, check Have you received payments for the renewal? and enter the details.
Click Save.

This option is only applicable for offline subscriptions. Also, the payment will be recorded as Excess payments under that customer.

If you want to apply the excess amount to the invoices automatically upon its renewal, enable the Apply excess payments to offline Subscriptions under Billing Preferences. After enabling, these excess payments will be applied automatically to invoices that are raised during the next renewal.

Generate Draft Invoices in Subscriptions

By default, when you create a subscription for a customer in Zoho ERP, an invoice will be created and sent to the customer when the subscription is Live, or when the subscription is renewed. However, there might be cases when you would like to review the invoices or make changes to the invoices according to your needs before sending them to your customers. Zoho ERP allows you to generate invoices in the Draft status when a subscription is created, updated, or renewed. You can review or edit them and then send them to your customers.

Note: You can enable this feature only for subscriptions that are autocharge-disabled.

Enable Draft Invoices for All Subscriptions

You can set all autocharge-disabled subscriptions to generate draft invoices in your organisation. Here’s how:

Navigate to Settings and select Billing Preferences under Subscriptions.
Scroll down to the Invoice Preferences for Subscriptions Without Autocharge section.
Select Generate invoices as drafts.
- Select Receive an email notification when a draft invoice has been generated if you want to receive email notifications when draft invoices are generated.
Click Save.

Now, draft invoices will be generated for all autocharge-disabled subscriptions when they are live, updated, or renewed.

Note: Once you enable this feature for your organisation, draft invoices will be generated for your existing autocharge-disabled subscriptions as well. If you want to generate invoices in the Draft status for specific subscriptions, you can enable or disable them individually or bulk-update them.

Generate Draft Invoices for Individual Subscriptions

If you want to generate draft invoices for specific subscriptions, you can choose the preference while creating or editing autocharge-disabled subscriptions.

To create a subscription with draft invoices:

Navigate to the Sales module and go to the Subscriptions tab.
Click + New.
Select a customer and fill all the other details.
Scroll down to the Other Preferences section.
Select Create Invoices as Drafts from the Invoicing Preferences dropdown.
Click Continue.
Click Create in the following screen.

Now, a draft invoice will be generated when the subscription is moved to the Live status, which can be edited and sent to the customer.

To generate draft invoices in existing subscriptions:

Navigate to the Sales module and go to the Subscriptions tab.
Select a subscription.
Click Edit.
Scroll down to the Other Preferences section.
Select Create Invoices as Drafts from the Invoicing Preferences dropdown.
Click Continue.
Click Update in the following screen.

Now, draft invoices will be generated for the subscription at the beginning of the next billing cycle, which can be edited and sent to the customer.

Note: When you enable or disable generating draft invoices for individual subscriptions, the organisation-wide preferences will be ignored for the subscriptions.

Disable Draft Invoices for All Subscriptions

If you want to disable generating draft invoices for all autocharge-disabled subscriptions in your organisation, follow the steps mentioned below:

Navigate to Settings and select Billing Preferences under Subscriptions.
Scroll down to the Invoice Preferences for Subscriptions Without Autocharge section.
Select Create and send invoices.
Click Save.

Now, invoices will be created and sent to your customers for payment whenever an autocharge-disabled subscription is Live, updated, or renewed.

Pause and Resume Subscriptions

If your customer wants to suspend their subscription temporarily, but doesn’t necessarily want to cancel it, pausing and resuming subscriptions is the way to go. This way, your customer will not be charged for their subscription while it is paused, and can pay for their subscription when they’re ready to resume it.

When should you pause subscriptions instead of cancelling them?

Pausing subscriptions is recommended over temporarily cancelling and reactivating them, because pausing subscriptions won’t affect your churn reports. However, it should not be seen as an alternative to actually cancelling subscriptions when your customers ask you to do so.

Scenario: Larissa gets a box of groceries delivered to her every week on a subscription basis. With the holiday season approaching, she decides to go out of town on a vacation for three weeks. However, she doesn’t want to pay for her grocery subscription during this time and notifies her grocer about this. Her grocer, who uses Zoho ERP, simply sets a pause and resume schedule for Larissa’s subscription. Now, Larissa’s weekly grocery box will not be delivered to her when she’s out of town and will automatically resume when she’s back.

To enable pause and resume subscriptions:

Navigate to Settings.
Select General under Subscriptions.
Enable the Pause and Resume option.
Select the Bill Unbilled Charges dropdown and select the desired option:

Option	Description
Later	The associated unbilled charges will not be invoiced automatically when subscriptions are paused. You can invoice them manually if required.
Immediately	When pausing subscriptions, a consolidated invoice will be generated for the associated unbilled charges.

Enable the Generate a credit note for subscriptions’ paused period option.

Insight: You can issue credits to your customers for the number of days their subscription remains paused during its billing cycle. This option can also be disabled at the subscription-level, if required.

Click Save.

Now, the feature has been enabled and you’re ready to pause subscriptions.

In this section:

Pause Subscriptions

When a subscription is in the Paused status, it will not be renewed on its billing date and invoices will not be raised for it.

Points to note about pausing subscriptions:

If a subscription has unbilled charges associated with it, the charges will not be invoiced automatically when the subscription has been paused. You will still be able to invoice them manually.
End-of-term changes to subscriptions, if any, will be discarded if the subscription is paused before its billing date.

Pro Tip: You can view the end-of-term changes by going to a subscription’s details page and clicking View Changes.

Paused subscriptions cannot be edited.
You will not be able to add additional charges or one-time add-ons to paused subscriptions.

To pause a subscription:

Go to Sales > Subscriptions.
Select the subscription which you want to pause.
Click the More dropdown in the top right corner and select Pause Subscription.
Select one of the following options to pause your subscription:
- Immediately: The subscription will be paused immediately.
- On Scheduled Date: You will be able to set a date on which the subscription should be paused.
- On Next Renewal Date: The subscription will be paused on the next renewal date, however, it will not be renewed.
Select the date on which you want the subscription to resume.

Warning: The resume date while pausing a subscription is optional. However, by leaving it empty, the subscription will be paused indefinitely, until you resume it manually.

Enter a reason for pausing your subscription. This reason will be displayed in the Recent Activities section.
Click Save.

Now, the subscription will be paused according to the schedule that you’ve configured.

Warning: Subscriptions can only be paused if they are in the Live status. If a subscription’s status changes on the day that it’s scheduled to pause, the subscription will not be paused. For example, if a subscription’s status changes from Live to Non-renewing or Dunning, on its scheduled pause date, the subscription will not be paused.

Resume Subscriptions

Points to note about resuming subscriptions:

If a subscription is resumed after its next billing date:
- An invoice will be raised for the current cycle’s subscription renewal charges, along with any unbilled charges that were supposed to be invoiced when the subscription was paused.
- The subscription’s billing date will be changed to the date on which you resume your subscription.
- If the subscription is auto-charge enabled, an invoice will be raised for the current cycle’s subscription renewal charges, along with any unbilled charges that were supposed to be invoiced when the subscription was paused and a payment attempt will be made. If the payment attempt is successful, the subscription will move to the Live status, if not, the subscription will move to the Past Due status and your Retry Settings will come into play.
If a subscription is resumed before its next billing date, there will be no change to its billing date and invoices will be raised normally.

If you had set a resume date while pausing your subscription, your subscription will resume automatically on this date. However, if you did not do this, and your subscription is paused indefinitely, you will be able to resume the subscription manually. Here’s how:

Go to Sales > Subscriptions.

Pro Tip: Select the Paused Subscriptions view filter from the view filter dropdown to easily identify your paused subscriptions.

Select the subscription which you want to resume.
Click the More dropdown in the top right corner and select Resume Subscription.
Configure when you want to resume your subscription. You can choose to resume it immediately or set a date on which it should resume.
Click Save.

Your subscription will resume according to the schedule that you’ve configured.

Change Pause and Resume Schedules

You can change the pause and resume schedules for your subscription at any time.

Go to Sales > Subscriptions and select a subscription.
Click Change Schedule in the subscription’s details page.

Here, you will be able to change your pause and resume schedules. You can also delete the schedule entirely by clicking Delete Schedule.

Insight: By deleting the schedule, only the configured pause and resume dates will be deleted, and your subscription’s status will remain unchanged. For example, if your subscription is paused and you delete the schedule for your resume date, the subscription will remain paused.

Events for Paused and Resumed Subscriptions

You can use automation workflows, to let your business systems know that a subscription has been paused or resumed in Zoho ERP.

You can create webhooks that are triggered when a subscription has been paused or resumed, using the Subscription Paused and Subscription Resumed events, respectively.

These events can also be used to trigger email alerts, which can be useful to notify your customers when a subscription has been paused or resumed.

Cancelling a Subscription

Churn is inevitable, but knowing and tracking the reasons for cancellations is a crucial measure. Zoho ERP lets you configure various reasons that your customers might have for cancelling their subscription, and they can share this feedback when cancelling through the Customer Portal.

Where this helps

The churned subscriptions report, non-renewing profiles, and more let you visualise your cancelled subscriptions and their details. Searching and filtering subscriptions by date or cancellation reason can give you insights into your business.

A subscription can be cancelled either by you or by your customer.

By you:

Navigate to the Sales module and go to the Subscriptions tab.
Select the subscription that you want to cancel.
Click the More button at the top and select Cancel Subscription from the dropdown.
In the pop-up, choose to cancel the subscription immediately or on the next renewal using the Cancel Immediately or Cancel on Next Renewal options respectively.

By your customers:

A subscription can only be cancelled from the Customer Portal if the cancel subscription option is enabled for them in the portal settings.

To enable the cancel subscription option for your customers:

Navigate to Settings > Customer Portal > Subscription Management and enable the Cancel Subscription option using the checkboxes.
Choose to allow customers to cancel the subscription either immediately or on the next renewal using the checkboxes provided.

For your customers to cancel a subscription from the Customer Portal:

Log in to the Customer Portal and go to the Subscriptions tab.
From the subscription list, select the subscription that has to be cancelled.
In the subscription’s details page, click the Cancel button in the top-right corner to cancel the subscription.

Pro Tip:

Cancel Immediately: This cancels the subscription right away.
Cancel on Next Renewal: This cancels the subscription at the end of the current term, that is, the next billing date.

Reactivating a Subscription

If the subscription was cancelled using Cancel on next renewal, here’s how you can reactivate the subscription before the term ends.

Navigate to the Sales module and go to the Customers tab.
Select the respective customer.
Select the required subscription and click the Reactivate Subscription button.

If the subscription was cancelled using the Cancel Immediately option, follow the steps below to reactivate the subscription.

Navigate to the Sales module and go to the Customers tab.
Select the respective customer.
Select the required subscription and click the Change Subscription button.
Make sure the required plan and addons are selected before charging the customer.

Reactivating an Expired Subscription

Reactivating an expired subscription allows you to create the same subscription for the same customer without having the need to add the plans, coupons and add-ons again. You can also choose to edit the plans, coupons and add-ons if you wish to.

To reactivate the expired subscription, follow the steps below:

Navigate to the expired subscription which you would want to reactivate and click the Edit button.
In the Subscription details page, make the necessary changes to the subscription, and click Continue.
Next, click Update in the Subscription Preview page to reactivate the subscription.

Deleting a Subscription

A subscription in any state can be deleted at any time. To delete a subscription:

Navigate to the subscription details page of the subscription you want to delete.
Click More > Delete Subscription.

Views

Views let you display only the subscription information that’s relevant to you by creating a set of rules.

Scenario:

When the default Active filter is used, it displays information such as Date, Customer Name, Email, Status, and more. Sometimes, you might not need all this information for subscriptions that are in the Active state. Instead, you can create a view and display only the columns that you need. For instance, you can remove the Activated On column or any other column that you feel is irrelevant.

Similarly, you can create a view to list the subscriptions involving a particular salesperson, or list the subscriptions that were cancelled on a particular date.

Learn how to:

Create a View

To create a view:

Go to the Subscriptions tab in the Sales module.
Click the dropdown button at the top of the subscription list and click + New View.
In the following screen, enter a name for the view. Checking Mark as Favorite will display the view at the top of the filter list.
Specify the criteria and column preferences.
Choose to share this view with other organisation users by clicking Everyone under the Share this with section, or select Only Me to keep it to yourself.
Click Save.

Edit a View

To edit a view:

Go to the Subscriptions tab in the Sales module.
Select the view that you want to edit from the filter list.
Next, click the Edit icon that appears next to the view title.
Make the changes and click Save.

Delete a View

To delete a view:

Go to the Subscriptions tab in the Sales module.
Select the view that you want to edit from the filter list.
Next, click the Edit icon that appears next to the view title.
In the following screen, click Delete at the bottom-right corner.