Table of contents
Overview
Zuora allows you to manage customer accounts and send a variety of customer communications from within the Zuora application (invoice emails and payment receipts are two types of customer communications). Throughout the customer life cycle, the customer may move and require a change to their Bill To and/or Sold To address information. You can update the Bill To, Sold To or any other contact at anytime. Updating the customer's address in the Zuora customer account means that all future invoices will use the new address.
At times, a customer will require the address on a posted invoice to be updated in order to get the invoice paid. However, modifying the address (or other contact information) on a posted invoice is not recommended because those invoice items and tax items were created with the Bill To and Sold To address at the time the invoice was generated.
If you need to regenerate the invoice items and tax items with the updated Bill To and/or Sold To contact information, the posted invoice will need to be unposted, canceled, deleted (optional) and regenerated. Again, those steps are not recommended and often just the invoice presentation needs to be altered to include the updated Bill To and/or Sold To information instead of regenerating the invoice entirely. In such cases, the options to alter the invoice presentation with a different Bill To and/or Sold To address are outlined below.
Solution
Modify the Invoice Presentation Using the Invoice Word Document
A Microsoft (MS) Word version of the invoice will automatically regenerate each time the Invoice Word version is accessed. As soon as the user clicks on the link for the Invoice Word document (from within the invoice detail page), Zuora will regenerate the MS Word version of the invoice with the latest contact information from the customer account. The Invoice Word document was created specifically for the use case where a customer needs to have their Bill To and/or Sold To address updated without regenerating the invoice and tax items.
Step 1: Edit the contact information on the Customer Account.
Modify the Bill To and/or Sold To information on the customer account.
Step 2: Download the Invoice Word document.
On the invoice page, click the View button (top right) and click on the Invoice Word link to download an MS Word version of the invoice with the latest Bill To and Sold To contact information.
Taxation Implications
If your company uses Z-Taxation or another tax integration tool to apply taxes to your invoices, modifying the Sold To address on an invoice should be done with caution as there are tax implications since tax is applied based on this address. For example, if tax is calculated based on the original Sold To address in Texas and the new Sold To address is in California, the Invoice Word version that you are modifying will not reflect the tax in California. We recommend checking with your accounting team and billing manager before making any changes to posted invoices, including changes to the Invoice Word version of the invoice.
Regenerate the Invoice
Zuora gives users the flexibility to unpost, cancel, and delete an invoice (if the Accounting Period has not been locked), along with the ability for Z-Billing Administrators to control which users can unpost an invoice through user permissions. If an invoice is unposted, canceled, and deleted (optional), and a new invoice is generated, the new invoice will use the latest invoice template and Bill To/Sold To information, invoice items will be calculated based on the latest subscription charges, and tax items will be calculated using the latest Sold To address on the account.
Step 1: Edit the contact information on the Customer Account.
Modify the Bill To and/or Sold To information on the customer account.
Step 2: Unpost, cancel, and (optionally, delete) the Posted invoice.
If you want to use the updated Bill To and/or Sold To Contact information when regenerating the invoice items or the tax items, you need to unpost, cancel, and delete (optional) the existing invoice. Unposting an invoice will place the invoice in draft, and the action of canceling the invoice allows for the invoice information (contact information, charges, and tax items) to be refreshed and recalculated using the latest information from the account and subscriptions. To clarify, unposting an invoice and reposting the same invoice (without canceling the invoice) does not regenerate the invoice nor result in any changes to the invoice information.
As discussed earlier, it is not best practice to unpost, cancel, or delete posted invoices and this option require additional user permissions.
Step 3: Regenerate the invoice for the customer.
Create a bill run to generate a new invoice for the customer. All charges and taxes will be recalculated based on the updated address information when the invoice is regenerated.
Related
- Manage Invoice Rules and Templates
- With Z-Billing, you can easily create and manage your invoice templates. Invoice templates are used to generate PDF invoices for your bills.
- Invoices
- An invoice is generated from a bill run. Invoices are your bills that you are sending to your customers. Once your invoices are created, you can email the invoices in PDF format to your customers in batches or individually. You can also choose to print out your invoice(s) and send them to your customers via postal mail. You can change the format of your invoice (for example, by adding a logo or adding more fields to your invoice) by customizing your invoice template.
- Viewing Invoices
- You can view invoices in list or expanded view, and you can view invoices from your customer account.
- Invoice Delivery Methods
- Invoice delivery preferences refer to the method your customer has opted to receive their invoices. The available methods are Print and Email. You can specify these methods under the billing and payment terms for the customer account.
- Reviewing and Posting Bill Runs
- When reviewing a bill run, you can click into the individual invoices to verify that the proper amount is being billed. Once you have completed your review of the bill run, you can post it.
- Invoice Subscriptions to Different Accounts
- Using the Invoice Subscription to Different Accounts feature, you can configure a subscription in an account to be rated and billed by a billing run initiated from a different account. This is typically used to create a hierarchical billing situation for larger companies with many departments, divisions, or subsidiaries.
- Working with Invoices
- You can use the Zuora API to create, edit, and query invoices.
- Adjusting Invoices
- Zuora provides two methods that you can use to adjust Invoices: Adjusting a line item (a charge or tax) on an invoice. Adjusting the total of an invoice. To adjust a single a line item, use an InvoiceItemAdjustment (available as of version 23.0 of the API). See Invoice Item Adjustment Use Cases for more information and examples. To adjust an invoice, use an InvoiceAdjustment (available as of version 24.0 of the API). See Invoice Adjustment Use Cases for more information and examples.
- Generating an Invoice (Intermediate)
- Invoice Adjustment Use Cases (Intermediate)
- Invoice Item Adjustment Use Cases (Intermediate)
- Querying an Invoice Body Field (Intermediate)
- Applying Payments to an Invoice (Intermediate)
- How do I bill in advance?
- How do I customize the invoice template to show transactions, show payments, and create a statement?
- How do I edit a merge field on the invoice template?
- How do I handle a negative invoice?
- How do I handle free trials in Zuora?
- How do I know my invoice was sent to the recipient?
- How do I remove the Zuora logo from my invoice template?
- How do I turn on invoice editing within a customer account?
- How do I use an invoice number to find a payment?
- How do I verify the charges on my invoice are correct?
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