Streamlining Real Estate Installments s Invoicing with Zoho CRM: A Comprehensive Guide

Real estate is one industry that thrives on secure financial management, especially when it comes to installment payments and invoicing. Although securing the booking amount might be an essential first step, managing the collections at various stages of construction, such as first-floor completion of possession, efficiently could be quite an overwhelming task.

Most real estate businesses struggle to track these staggered payments, raise timely invoices, and maintain consolidated visibility into the financials. But what if there was a way to integrate it all and automate this whole process within your CRM, say Zoho CRM?

The good news is, there is! In this blog post, we will walk you through an efficient solution that lets you seamlessly manage your real estate installments and invoicing using Zoho CRM and Zoho Books to ensure efficiency, accuracy, and better communication with your customers.

The Challenge: Managing Staged Payments in Real Estate

Consider a property dealing in stages, such as booking, completion of the first floor, second floor, third, and possession. Each stage calls for a certain percentage of the payment. Tracking the stages manually, calculating the amounts due, sending invoices, and following up on them can be laborious and prone to errors. This often results in:

• Missed Deadlines for Payments: Resulting in cash flow
• Inaccurate Records: These cause discrepancies and
• Manual Overheads: Consuming precious time required for sales and customer
• Lack of Transparency: To the business and to the

The Solution: A Consolidated Approach with Zoho CRM s Zoho Books

Our proposed solution combines a custom development approach within Zoho CRM and implements a powerful system for managing installment schedules, thereby automating invoicing. Here is how it works.

Step 1: Lead qualification s deal conversion

The journey starts when a lead is qualified, and the initial property booking amount is collected; it moves a lead to a “Deal” stage in Zoho CRM.

Step 2: Master Installment Data in Property Module

We’ll create “master data” for the installment stages to maintain standardization and efficiency. Inside your property module in Zoho CRM, where you manage property details, you’ll be able to define a standard installment schedule for different types of properties, e.g., Property A, Property

• Stage Name: (Example, “First Floor Completion,” “Roof Slab Casting”)
• Associated Percentage of the Total Value
• This serves as a blueprint for all subsequent transactions that pertain to the same

Step 3: Auto-Populating Installments in the Deal Module

Now, for magic! When a new Deal is created and linked to a specific property, our custom development fetches the predefined installment stages from the Property module automatically. It instantiates these stages within a dedicated Sub form within the Deal module, specifically designed for “Installments.”

This sub form will work like a dynamic table, capturing every important detail for each installment:

• Stage: g. “Booking,” “First Floor Completion”
• Payment Date: The date intended for the
• Invoice Date: When should the invoice be
• Due date: The date on which final payment is
• Amount: Computed amount that applies to that
• Interest: For delayed payments, if
• And other relevant columns you might need!

Step 4: Automated Invoicing with Zoho Books Integration

This is where things really get efficient! In the “Installments” sub form, we simply add another dropdown field next to each stage that reads: “Raise Invoice (Yes/No).”

When “Yes” is selected for any stage, an automated action will take place:

• An invoice in Zoho Books is
• The invoice is auto populated with customer name, property, installment stage, amount, and due date.
• And the invoice is sent to the customer automatically via email!

This eliminates the data entry aspect, errored invoices, and is always dispatched on time!

Step 5: Seamless Payment Tracking s Updates

After a payment has been received and logged in Zoho Books, the integration diverts the initial process:

• The “Installments” sub form in your Deal module gets updated to identify the payment status (i.e., “Paid,” “Partially Paid”).
• You can see real-time statuses of outstanding payments, amounts received, and any balance still outstanding directly in the Deal

Step 6: Smart Reminders s Notifications

In addition to tracking, the system may also be set up to send automated reminders:

• Payment Due Notifications: Customers receive email and SMS reminders prior to an installment payment due
• Past Due Payment Notices: Proactive alerts are sent to customers for any past due payments, including calculated interest if
• Internal Reminders: Alerts for your employees on upcoming or past due

The Benefits for Your Real Estate Business

Adopting a unified solution offers several benefits:

• Better Cash Flow: Invoicing and reminders enable you to collect payments
• Improved Accuracy: Automating invoicing minimizes the risk of calculation and manual record-keeping
• Greater Efficiency: Reduce manual workload and your team’s effort can be used for strategy or critical
• Better Client Experience: Clients with a clear schedule and automated reminders help build
• Real-time Financial Visibility: A single view of your installment payments and outstanding
• Scalability: You can manage more properties and transactions without adding administrative

Ready to Transform Your Real Estate Operations? 

Managing invoices and installment payments shouldn’t be difficult. Using Zoho CRM with some customized development and integration with Zoho Books can create a streamlined, effective, efficient and SIMPLE system to benefit both your business and your clients.

If you are looking for a solution to optimize your real estate payment collection process, the Zoho integrated solution will be a game changer!