Overview of Unified Invoicing
Unified Invoicing provides key capabilities to help companies grow subscription and non-subscription revenue by monetizing hybrid offerings within the Zuora ecosystem.
- The standalone invoice allows you to sell physical goods, services, or other items on a non-recurring basis to your subscription customers. You can quickly create a standalone invoice under a customer account through the Zuora UI or REST API, without creating a subscription, an order, or even a product catalog.
- The consolidated invoice allows you to unify the billing experience for both subscription and non-subscription transactions and to have a single view of your subscriber. You can generate a consolidated invoice through Orders or bill runs.
Any users in a custom Billing user role with the following Billing permissions can use the Unified Invoicing feature:
- Create Standalone Invoice
- Modify Invoice
As of Zuora Release 2022.06.R3, all existing and new Billing standard users will have the “Create Standalone Invoice” permission enabled by default.
Tutorials
Click into each tutorial to see how standalone and consolidated invoices apply to your common business scenarios.
- Create standalone invoices
- Edit due dates of draft standalone invoices
- Edit invoice item prices and custom fields of draft standalone invoices
- Generate consolidated invoices through bill runs
- Generate consolidated invoices through Orders
- Import external invoices as standalone invoices
- View standalone charge line item details in Zuora Billing
Working with other features
The following table lists how Unified Invoicing works with other features.
| Feature | Compatibility |
|---|---|
| Invoice Settlement |
Invoice Settlement supports both standalone and consolidated invoices for AR operations. If you enable both Invoice Settlement and Unified Invoicing, you can perform the common operations on standalone or consolidated invoices: |
| Data Query |
Data Query supports both standalone and consolidated invoices, and can retrieve some new fields added on the InvoiceItem object:
See a sample query in the View standalone charge line item details in Zuora Billing tutorial. |
| Zuora 360+ | Zuora 360+ supports synchronizing standalone and consolidated invoice data to Salesforce in real time. |
| Zuora Finance |
If you enable both Zuora Finance and Unified Invoicing, a new finance setting called Manage Non-Subscription Items is available on the Finance Settings page. You can define the default accounting codes and revenue recognition rule for non-subscription invoice items. See Manage Non-Subscription Items for more information. |
Notes on billing document templates for standalone invoices
Standalone invoices can be created without a subscription, an order, or even a product catalog. Therefore, subscription-related and product-related merge fields in billing document templates are correspondingly impacted for standalone invoices.
See the following articles for more information about the specific impacts:
Subscription-related merge fields
A standalone invoice is on a one-time basis without a subscription associated. The invoice item is not associated with a subscription rate plan charge. Similarly, when a credit or debit memo is created from a standalone invoice, the memo item is not associated with a subscription rate plan change.
The subscription-related data fields from the following objects become irrelevant and will be empty on the corresponding billing documents, including invoices, credit memos, and debit memos.
- Subscription
- Subscription rate plan
- Subscription rate plan charge
- Subscription owner
Product-related merge fields
A standalone invoice can be created from an existing product rate plan charge in the Zuora product catalog. It can also be created without the product catalog as the product can be in an external system or even ad-hoc.
In this case, the invoice item is not associated with a product rate plan charge. Similarly, when a credit or debit memo is created from a standalone invoice, the memo item is not associated with a product rate plan change.
The product-related data fields from the following objects become irrelevant and will be empty on the corresponding billing documents, including invoices, credit memos, and debit memos.
- Product
- Product rate plan
- Product rate plan charge
Notes on tax app templates for standalone invoices
Similar to billing document templates, tax app templates can also be impacted if you enable Unified Invoicing. See Context object for rendering tax app templates for more information.
Known limitations
Currently, the Unified Invoicing feature has the following known limitations:
- When you create a standalone invoice, the maximum number of invoice items supported is 1,000 if you use the Zuora REST API; and 20 if you use the Zuora UI.
- When you edit a standalone invoice, the maximum number of invoice items supported is 1,000 if you use the Zuora REST API; and 100 if you use the Zuora UI.
- When adding an existing charge to a standalone invoice through the Zuora UI or REST API, the product rate plan charge must be in the Flat Fee or Per Unit charge model.
- The UI pages of creating and editing standalone invoices do not support Data Access Control.
- Standalone or consolidated invoices cannot be split.
- The Invoice/Credit Memo generation rule billing rule is not supported in Unified Invoicing. The system does not allow a negative amount invoice and will not generate a credit memo for the negative amount charges.