How Quality Evaluation and Systems Team Pvt Ltd moved crore-scale inspection billing out of Excel and into one connected Zoho system.(Case study).

₹29 Cr single PO billed in parts

4 Zoho apps working as one

5 billing units supported

6 wks core Zoho rollout

AT A GLANCE

Client	Quality Evaluation and Systems Team Pvt Ltd (QUEST)
Industry	Third-party inspection & quality evaluation services
Location	Benglore, India
Team	About 90 users on Zoho Mail
Zoho products	Zoho CRM, Zoho Books, Zoho Creator, Zoho Mail (Zoho One)
Partner	Techtron Global Services Pvt Ltd
Project	Aug 2026: 6-week core rollout, plus a 2-month custom Creator billing app

 01  Overview

 

QUEST carries out quality inspections for government undertakings and private enterprises. Its contracts are large and long-running: a single purchase order from a customer such as BHEL can be worth around ₹29 crore, billed in partial instalments of roughly ₹1 crore as inspections are completed.

Before Zoho, invoices and lead registers lived in Excel sheets. Billing was delayed, and the team could not easily see which client was due for invoicing. Techtron implemented Zoho CRM, Zoho Books and Zoho Mail, and built a custom billing application on Zoho Creator. All of it is integrated, so QUEST works in what feels like a single application.

02  Executive Summary

 

Quality Evaluation and Systems Team Pvt Ltd (QUEST) provides third-party inspection services to public sector undertakings and private companies. Customers issue purchase orders for inspection work, QUEST assigns its inspection engineers to customer and vendor sites, and billing happens in stages as inspections are completed.

Our inspection work for government and private companies runs on large, long-term purchase orders, billed in stages over many months. We needed one system that could keep every order, every inspection and every bill connected, and that is what Zoho and Techtron gave us.

— Guruswamy H M, Director – Finance & Admin, QUEST

03  Problem Statement & Key Challenges

QUEST's billing does not follow the usual pattern of converting a sales order into a single invoice. A purchase order worth tens of crores is fulfilled through many inspections over months, each billed separately, and QUEST needed to see which employees worked on each order and what that work earned and cost.

Billing run on Excel Invoices and lead registers were kept in Excel. Time was lost every billing cycle, with no clear view of which client was due for invoicing.	Partial billing at crore scale A ₹29 crore order is billed in ₹1 crore instalments. Standard sales-order-to-invoice conversion could not handle partial amount and quantity at this scale.
Mixed units of measure QUEST bills by man-day, man-month, weekly, monthly and actuals, and one tender can combine several of them.	Manual annexures Every bill needs an annexure listing the employees, hours and days worked on the inspections. These were prepared by hand.
Untracked inspection expenses Travel, accommodation and food costs from inspection visits were not always billed back to the right customer.	No order-level profitability There was no employee-wise view of income and expenses, so profit and loss per sales order could not be calculated.

Before Zoho, our invoices and lead registers were all in Excel. With orders billed by man-day, man-month and actuals, it was hard to know which client was due for billing, and we were losing time every billing cycle.

— Guruswamy H M, Director – Finance & Admin, QUEST

04  Evaluation of the Problem

Techtron began with a requirement-gathering phase to document QUEST's full process, from receiving a tender to collecting payment on the final partial invoice. The team mapped how purchase orders arrive, how inspections are assigned to employees, and how each inspection batch becomes a bill.

Zoho CRM, Books and Mail covered QUEST's sales, accounting and communication needs well. The gap was the billing layer between sales orders and invoices, which was specific to QUEST's business and needed a custom build. Techtron proposed Zoho One for the core platform and a purpose-built Zoho Creator billing application, integrated with both CRM and Books.

05  Proposed Solution

 

Zoho CRM Tenders & orders	■     Central record of tender details and customer purchase orders. ■     Sales orders created against each purchase order and passed to billing. ■     Custom modules, workflow automation and sales dashboards.
Zoho Creator Custom billing app	■     Partial billing of amount and quantity against high-value sales orders. ■     Supports man-day, man-month, weekly, monthly and actuals, including mixed tenders. ■     Automatic annexures listing employees, hours and days worked. ■     Live capture of travel, accommodation and food expenses, billed to the customer. ■     Employee-wise income, expenses, P&L per sales order and performance reports. ■     Automated monthly invoicing follow-ups with customers.
Zoho Books Finance	■     Chart of accounts, GST setup and compliance alignment. ■     Opening balances and customer and vendor master data imported. ■     Recurring invoices and automated payment reminders.
Zoho Mail Communication	■     Domain setup and mailboxes for about 90 users. ■     Group inboxes, user permissions and CRM email tracking.

 

06  Implementation

 

The scope of work was signed on 13 August 2026. Techtron delivered the core rollout on a 6-week plan across three milestones: Zoho CRM, then Zoho Books, then Zoho Mail.

Phase	Deliverables	Timeline
Requirement gathering	Process understanding and documentation	Week 1
Application setup	Zoho CRM and Zoho Mail	Weeks 2–3
Customization	Workflows and templates	Weeks 3–4
Integration	Apps, email and website links connected	Weeks 4–5
Testing & training	UAT, user documentation and training	Week 6
Creator billing app	Partial billing, annexures, units, expenses, follow-ups	About 2 months

After the original scope was agreed, QUEST asked for support for its specific billing model. Techtron built the Zoho Creator billing application in about two months (1 month and 3 weeks) and integrated it with Zoho CRM and Zoho Books. The main complexity was billing both amount and quantity on orders worth crores while keeping every bill tied to the right sales order and employees. Billing logic was kept in Creator, with CRM and Books remaining the systems of record.

Techtron trained QUEST's team both online and in person at the client's premises, so every user was comfortable with the new billing process before go-live.

07  Results

 

QUEST has moved its billing out of Excel and now runs the full order-to-billing cycle in one connected system, from tender to final partial invoice.

Clear view of who to bill Recurring invoices are scheduled in Zoho Books, and monthly follow-ups are automated in Zoho Creator.	Partial billing that fits Large purchase orders are billed in stages against the correct sales order, across every unit of measure.
Annexures in minutes Employee, hours and days details for each bill are generated automatically instead of by hand.	Every expense billed Travel, accommodation and food costs are captured live and billed to the right customer.
Profit per sales order Employee-wise income and expenses show exactly how profitable each order is.	One source of truth Tenders, orders, bills and accounts sit in integrated Zoho apps instead of separate sheets.

Now the system tells us who to bill and follows up with customers automatically. Annexures, employee hours and travel expenses are all captured against the right order, and we can see the profit on every sales order. Techtron's training at our office made the switch easy for the whole team.

— Guruswamy H M, Director – Finance & Admin, QUEST

Techtron Global Services Pvt Ltd

Zoho Advanced Partner Contact : support@techtronserv.com

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