Active Rating Overview
This feature is no longer available for new users. You can check Advanced Billing Consumption if you are interested in our up-to-date billing consumption features, such as Prepaid with Drawdown and Unbilled Usage.
Zuora now provides a capability to actively rate or re-rate usage records in near real time for existing usage charge models. You can create usage records through the REST API, or import usage files through the Zuora UI and REST API.
With the Active Rating feature enabled, Zuora actively rates usage records in near real-time when the usage records are created or imported into Zuora. You can also retrieve usage consumption information through the Zuora UI and REST API any time after new usage records are submitted.
The Active Rating feature introduces two new objects: RatedUsage and RatedResult.
RatedUsage represents the rated amount when a usage record is rated against a charge.
- When a usage record is at the charge level, it has only one RatedUsage.
- When a usage record is at the account level or subscription level, it might have multiple RatedUsage.
RatedResult represents the total amount of the charge for a specific billing period. It sums up all rated usage within the billing period.
Supported Charge Models
When the Active Rating feature enabled, the following usage charge models are supported:
- Flat Fee
- Per Unit
- Volume Pricing
- Tiered Pricing
- Overage Pricing
- Tiered with Overage (excluding smoothing for tier with overage)
Key Functions
Once you have the Active Rating feature enabled, the following main functions are available:
- Submit, update, query, and delete usage records.
- Import usage data by uploading a usage import file.
- Retrieve the rating information about each usage record, such as the usage quantity, rating amount, and related account number.
- Retrieve the rating result of the usages by billing period.
- Retrieve the rating status of the usage records and usage import files.
- Retrieve billed amount and unbilled amount.
- Support re-rating.
- Support usage rating by Custom Group. This allows you to group usage records by the group ID that you defined.
- On-demand usage rating supports volume pricing usage charges.
Re-Rating
When re-rating occurs, the rating amount for rated usage records has to be recalculated. Meanwhile, the rated usage and rated results are also updated accordingly.
The following events trigger re-rating:
- Subscription amendments
- Deleting an amendment
- Billing cycle day (BCD) changes
- Deleting usage records
- Updating usage records
- Submitting usage records
Function Comparison
The following table lists comparisons between the Active Rating feature and core usage functions.
| Active Rating enabled | Core Usage functions |
|---|---|
| Zuora actively rates usage records in near real-time as usage records are created or usage data is imported. | Zuora rates usage after a bill run is executed. |
|
When ZIP files are used to import usage data, only one file can be included in one ZIP file. |
When ZIP files are used to import usage data, multiple files can be included in one ZIP file. |
| Account number changes are not supported after usage records are submitted to Zuora. | The account number can be changed for draft invoices, but cannot be changed for posted invoices. |
| The latest five usage records are displayed on the customer account details page. | All usage records are displayed on the customer account details page. |
| If subscriptions are created after usage records at the account level are submitted to Zuora, both rated results and billed results are unavailable for the new subscriptions. | If subscriptions are created after usage records at the account level are submitted to Zuora, billed results are available for the new subscriptions. |
| If an amendment is created to add a rate plan to a subscription after usage records at the account or subscription level are submitted to Zuora, the usage records existing before the amendment are not applied to the new rate plan. | If an amendment is created to add a rate plan to a subscription after usage records at the account or subscription level are submitted to Zuora, the usage records existing before the amendment are applied to the new rate plan. |
| You can make charge trigger condition changes when subscriptions are created, but the changes do not take effect. It indicates that usage re-rating is not triggered. | You can make charge trigger condition changes when subscriptions are created, and the changes take effect. |
| Proration setting changes do not impact rated usage. | Proration setting changes impact the usage that is billed after the changes. |
| The Usage data source is not supported. | The Usage data source is supported to export usage data. |
| If the Automatically renew auto-renew subscriptions that are up for renewal rule is set for bill runs, bill run results do not include the renew rated result. | If the Automatically renew auto-renew subscriptions that are up for renewal rule is set for bill runs, bill run results include the renew rated result. |
| Imported files cannot be deleted together with the corresponding imported records. | When an imported file is deleted, all the corresponding imported usage records are deleted simultaneously. |
Limitations
Currently, the Active Rating feature has certain limitations.
- You can only use the Set schema of Usage custom field definition operation to create custom field definitions.
- Discounts are excluded from the unbilled dollar amount. If you want to retrieve unbilled dollar amount and you want discounts to be reflected in it, you must use Get billing preview run instead.
- Previewing subscription is not supported to include actual usage when the Active Rating feature is enabled.
- Every month, the Usage service archives the usage records that were last updated more than one year ago. The archived data is still stored in Zuora, but it cannot be accessed through the Zuora UI or API anymore.