Advance Billing

There are cases when you would want to create invoices and bill your customers before the renewal of their subscriptions to ensure smooth and timely payments. With Zoho Billing, you can bill your customers in advance, before the beginning of a subscription’s billing cycle.

Enable Advance Billing

To enable Advance Billing for your organization:

• Navigate to Settings and click Advance Billing under Subscriptions.
• Click Enable Advance Billing.

• Select the Advance Billing Method.

  Option	Description
  Advance Payment Request	A payment request will be generated for your customer before the renewal date, according to your configuration. Upon receiving payment, an invoice will be generated for the customer in advance.
  Advance Invoice	An invoice will be generated for your customer’s subscription before the renewal date, according to your configuration.

• Click Automate advance billing to generate advance invoices automatically for all subscriptions.

• Select the Advance Period for the Subscription Frequencies, that is, how many days before renewal you want the advance invoice to be generated for each of the billing frequencies.

  Frequency	Maximum Period for Advance Billing
  Weekly	The Advance Billing period should be less than 6 days for weekly subscriptions.
  Monthly	The Advance Billing period should be less than 26 days for monthly subscriptions.
  Yearly	The Advance Billing period should be less than 364 days for yearly subscriptions.

  Note: The schedule you select here will be applicable to all subscriptions by default. However, you can configure the schedule for individual subscriptions from their Overview page.

  

• Click Save.

Generate Advance Invoice Manually

You can generate advance invoices manually for 1 term or multiple terms for a subscription from the subscription’s Overview page.

To generate a manual advance invoice:

• Navigate to the Subscriptions module under Sales.
• Select a subscription.
• Click More at the top.
• Select Generate Advance Invoice.
• Enter the number of cycles for which you want to generate the advance invoice.
• Click Preview to preview the invoice before generating.
  • Click Show PDF View to view the advance invoice PDF.
• Click Generate.

An advance invoice will be generated for the selected cycles, which can be viewed from the Invoices module under Sales. You can manually send the invoice to your customers or mark it as Sent.

Generate Advance Payment Request

You can generate an advance payment request and send it to your customers.Once payment is completed, an invoice will be generated for the subscription’s next billing cycle.

To generate an advance payment request manually:

• Navigate to the Subscriptions module under Sales.
• Select a subscription.
• Click More at the top.
• Select Receive Advance Payment.
  • Select Proceed With Existing Subscription to receive advance payment without any changes to the existing subscription.
  • Select Edit Subscription & Proceed to receive advance payment after making changes to the subscription.
• Select how you want to record the advance payment.
  • Record Payment Manually - If you have received the payment already, you can choose to record the payment manually. To do this, enter the requireddetails and click Save.
  • Generate Payment Page URL - If you want to generate and send a hosted payment page link to your customers, you can click Generate Payment Page URL.
    • Click Copy to copy the URL and send it to your customers. You can also send the link to your customers through email:
    • Click Preview and Send Email.
    • Make the necessary changes in the email.
    • Click Send.

Once your customers make the payment, an invoice will automatically be generated for the upcoming cycles in the Paid status.

Configure Advance Billing for Individual Subscriptions

You can enable,disable or change the advance period for individual subscriptions from their Overview page or from the subscription’s creation and edit pages.

To configure advance billing for a subscription from the Overview page:

• Navigate to the Subscriptions module under Sales.
• Select a subscription.
• Click the gear icon next to the Advance Billing section in the Overview page.
• Make the necessary changes.
• Click Save & Confirm.

To configure advance billing for a subscription from the creation and edit pages:

• Navigate to the Subscriptions module under Sales.
• Create or edit a subscription.
• Enter the required details.
• Navigate to the Other Preferences section.
• Click the Edit icon next to Advance Billing.
• Make the necessary changes in the popup that appears.
• Click Save & Confirm.

The advance billing preferences for the subscription will be updated, and it will override the organization preferences.

Dunning Management for Advance Billing

The dunning management settings configured for your organization also apply to advance invoices. If a payment fails at the end of the dunning period, the final action will be taken on the transaction at the end of the billing cycle.

If the dunning period extends into the next billing cycle, the subscription will remain in Past Due status until the payment is successful. If payment does not succeed, the final action will occur immediately after the last retry.

Was this document helpful?

Yes

No

Let us know where we can improve

We can wait. Take your time to draft us your question.

Umm.. where do we send the response?

By clicking Submit, you agree to our Privacy Policy.

Submit Cancel

Thank you for your feedback!