Zuora Product Catalog
This article presents an overview of Zuora's product catalog. It discusses how Zuora product catalog is built specifically for subscription businesses, what the different components of the product catalog are, and what the available charge models for creating custom price plans.
About Zuora Product Catalog
In Zuora Billing, you have one product catalog which you use to define the products your company sells and the pricing for those products. Zuora designed the Product Catalog specifically for subscription-based businesses, which is different from the product catalogs you may find in ERP, CRM, or accounting applications. Those applications were designed with physical goods in mind. For example, whereas a product in a traditional widget-based product catalog only has one price (for example, $9.99 per unit), prices for subscriptions are expressed as one or more price plans, with each price plan containing any number of fees, such as activation fees, monthly subscription fees, and usage based fees.
What makes Zuora's product catalog stand out is its flexible and easy-to-use interface and its support of sophisticated charge (pricing) models. You can add and remove products and services as your business grows and evolves. With a variety of charge models to choose from, you have the power to adapt your pricing to your customer and market needs, helping you grow your business and drive revenue in a shorter amount of time.
Key Concepts
Here are the key concepts to understand when building your product catalog:
- Products: These are the entries in the product catalog and represent the products or services your company sells on a subscription basis.
- Product Rate Plans: A rate plan represents a collection of charges that your customers may incur when buying your product and decides how a product is priced and invoiced. When a customer purchases a product, they can pick from one of the available rate plans. A product rate plan can contain one or more charges.
- Product Rate Plan Charges: These are the fees you charge for your rate plans. Sometimes, the actual price attached to a product or rate plan is on a sliding scale, such as volume discounts or tiered pricing.
- Charge (Pricing) Models: Zuora Billing supports a variety of charge models, including Flat Fee, Per Unit, Volume, Tiered, Overage, and Discount.
- Triggering Conditions: The triggering condition on a product rate plan charge controls when the charge becomes active and starts billing.
Additional Resources and Activities
To learn more about the Zuora product catalog:
- See the documentation on the Zuora Product Catalog.
- Access your company's Zuora test account on the Zuora API Sandbox. The API Sandbox is designated for use by Zuora customers for testing purposes. If your company does not have an API Sandbox account, you can request one.
In the API Sandbox, try the following:- Create a new product.
- For the product you create, add three product rate plan charges: a one-time charge, a recurring charge, and a usage charge.
- Clone the product and rate plan that you created.
Get in touch with our sales team through zuora.com for more information about accessing the Zuora Sandbox Environment.