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Zuora Billing Release 311, October 2021

Zuora

Zuora Billing Release 311, October 2021

Welcome to the release notes for Zuora Billing Release 311 (R311), October 2021

For more information about the release notes of other Zuora products, see Zuora Release Notes.

Release schedule

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REST API

See API Changelog for a summary of REST API updates and documentation updates in the Zuora API Reference.

New error category code now available

Previously, when calling Zuora REST API, you would get an internal error if you did not specify a required query parameter. It was difficult for you to identify the root cause based on the returned error message. Therefore, Zuora has introduced the 23 error category code to indicate that a required parameter is missing. For example, if you do not specify the required startDate parameter when calling the List order metrics for an evergreen subscription operation, you would get the following error:

{
  ...
  "reasons": 
   [{      
      "code": 50000023,      
      "message": "Required String parameter 'startDate' is not present"
   }]
}

See Error Category Code for more information.

Invoicing and Invoice Settlement

Support for mapping taxation items across tax engines

Zuora has enhanced the Allow indistinct mapping from Memo / Invoice Item Adjustment tax item to invoice item tax billing rule by supporting a new use case. If you switch to a different tax engine when creating credit memos from invoices, you can enable this setting to map taxation items from credit memo items to invoice items across the tax engines.

See Mapping from memo or invoice item adjustment tax items to invoice tax items for more information.

Enhancements on tax solutions to deal with taxability changes

To enable the enhancements, submit a request at Zuora Global Support.

Zuora has enhanced how tax is handled in the following scenarios:

  • Refunding cancellations
    If your customer cancels a subscription and the corresponding product rate plan charge has changed from taxable to not taxable, you can now refund the customer with one credit item, such as a credit memo if you have the Invoice Settlement feature enabled. Previously, you had to take extra steps such as creating a separate credit memo to refund the tax.
  • Charging for subscription upgrades or downgrades
    If your customer modifies a subscription (for example, purchase more units) and the taxability of the corresponding product rate plan charge has changed (for example, from not taxable to taxable), you can use the Tax Selection for Calculation feature to specify how to handle taxes when charging for the subscription update. 
    See Tax Selection for Calculation and Define billing rules for more information.

Unified Invoicing supports Invoice Item Adjustments and Credit Balance

This feature is available only if you have the Unified Invoicing feature enabled. The Unified Invoicing feature is generally available as of Zuora Billing Release 313, November 2021. If you want to have access to the feature, submit a request at Zuora Global Support.

With this release, Unified Invoicing now supports Invoice Item Adjustments and Credit Balance. Therefore, Invoice Settlement is no longer a precondition to using the Unified Invoicing feature. In addition, Zuora Finance now supports the invoice item adjustments created from standalone invoices.

Payments

Support for creating standalone payments in batches through the Zuora REST API

The support for standalone payments is in the Early Adopter phase. If you want to use this feature, submit a request at Zuora Global Support to enable it. You also need to have Invoice Settlement enabled to access this feature.

A standalone payment is an electronic payment that is created in Zuora through a Zuora gateway integration but will be settled outside of Zuora. Previously, the individual standalone payment could be created through the Zuora UI or the Create a payment API operation. The Create a payment run API operation has now been enhanced to support standalone payments. You can use this operation to create multiple standalone payments with a single API request. Two new nested fields called standalone and currency are introduced in the data field to support this enhancement.

See Create custom payment runs through Zuora REST API for more information.

Support for passing customized metadata to the Stripe payment gateway 

This feature is in the Early Adopter phase. If you want to use this feature, submit a request to Zuora Global Support to enable it.

Zuora has enhanced the Stripe v2 gateway integration to support passing customized metadata for the following objects to the Stripe payment gateway:

  • Payment
  • Payment Method

You can define your customized fields for each object on the New Gateway or Edit Gateway page when you configure a Stripe v2 payment gateway. Your self-defined fields will be added to the metadata tag in the request body and passed to the Stripe payment gateway for payment transactions or payment method validation. You can use this data for further analysis, reporting, or building custom Stripe Radar rules to enhance your fraud protection.

See Additional metadata for Stripe v2 for more information.

Tenant Management

New Billing permission to control access to attachments

Zuora platform administrators can now use the new “Manage Attachments” Billing permission to control access to attachments.

If a user has a Billing role that includes the Manage Attachments permission, the user can:

  • View attachments for the objects that support attachments (i.e., accounts, subscriptions, invoices, credit memos, and debit memos).
  • Add and edit attachments for objects that support attachments.
  • If the Billing role also includes the Delete Attachments permission, remove attachments for the objects that support attachments.
  • Use the REST API to create, update, list, and retrieve attachments. If the Billing role also includes the Delete Attachments permission, the user can use the REST API to delete attachments. For details of which REST API operations are affected, see API Changelog.

If the user has a Billing role that does not include the Manage Attachments permission, the user cannot perform the actions listed.

The Manage Attachments permission is included in the Zuora Billing Standard User role. In addition, to ensure that existing users can continue to manage attachments, Zuora has included the Manage Attachments permission in all existing Billing roles. Zuora platform administrators can remove the Manage Attachments permission from Billing roles as required.

See Billing roles for more information about assigning Billing roles to users. See Attachments for more information about working with attachments.

SOAP API

Current WSDL version: 111

See Zuora WSDL for information on how to check your version and download the latest version.

SOAP API change history

See Zuora SOAP API Version History for a summary of updates made to the SOAP API in recent Zuora releases.