Overview of Zuora Collections
Zuora Collections is the complete solution for optimizing recurring collections in the Subscription Economy. With Collections, you can track unpaid invoices and delinquent accounts, manage automated business processes and intelligent retry logic, and customize payment runs.
Collections is purpose-built for recurring and usage-based business models to help you achieve these benefits:
- Maximizing subscription revenue by collecting more cash and recovering more failed payments
- Minimizing passive churn by retaining subscribers with AI-driven retries
Collections utilizes machine learning to assist you in establishing an effective retry strategy and maximizing success in payment collection. The machine learning model evaluates over 15 characteristics of a transaction including payment gateway response codes, region, time of payment, etc, and ingests new data on a daily basis to leverage the latest trends that impact payment success.
Features
Collections consists of the following features. Each feature is a Marketplace app.
- Advanced Payment Manager
Advanced Payment Manager increases the success of first-time payments by providing the flexibility to use different payment methods for different subscriptions within the same account. You can customize various aspects of payment runs, including specifying subscription-based payment gateways and payment methods, as well as whether to apply credit balances.
To learn about how to configure and use Advanced Payment Manager, see Advanced Payment Manager. - Collections Window
Collections Window provides a single location for your collections agents to view the collection status and payment history of your customer accounts. Your collections agents can use the internal communication tools to document their collection attempts.
To learn about how to configure and use Collections Window, see Collections Window. - Configurable Lockbox
Configurable Lockbox improves operational efficiency by automating payment to invoice matching for checks received from the lockbox bank provider.
Configurable Lockbox can be purchased as a feature of Collections, or as a standalone app outside of Collections.
To learn about how to configure and use Configurable Lockbox, see Configurable Lockbox. - Configurable Payment Retry
Configurable Payment Retry increases the payment recovery rate with either custom retry logic or AI-driven smart retry. You can configure the payment retry logic for specific groups of customers and payment gateway response codes.
To learn about how to configure and use Configurable Payment Retry, see Configurable Payment Retry. - Notes
The Notes app adds commenting functionality to the Collections Window feature. With Notes, you can add or reply comments, mention users or upload files in comments in the Collections Window app. Notes and comments generated in this feature can be exported.
To learn about how to configure and use Notes, see Notes. - Statement Generator
With Statement Generator, you can create statements to show subscribers any activity that has taken place on their account. You can create statements with a specified time range on a recurring basis or as needed.
To learn about how to configure and use Statement Generator, see Statement Generator. - Workflow
With Workflow, you can define automated business workflows, such as suspending service for customers who are delinquent and resuming service when you receive payment or coupling AI-driven retry schedules with automated dunning workflows to reduce the outstanding invoices.
To learn about how to configure and use Workflow, see Workflow.
Zuora Collections includes a limited number of workflow tasks. You can purchase additional workflow tasks if required. See Zuora Editions for more information.
Installation
You can install all the Collections features at once. See Install Zuora Collections features for more information.
Ensure you have only one active instance of any of the features that were previously installed in the environment. Multiple instances of the same feature in the environment may cause integration issues.
Configuration
Perform the initial configuration for each feature before you start using it:
- Advanced Payment Manager - See Configure the Advanced Payment Manager Feature
- Collections Window - See Configure the Collections Window Feature
- Configurable Lockbox - See Configure the Configurable Lockbox Feature
- Configurable Payment Retry - See Configure the Configurable Payment Retry Feature
- Notes - See Configure the Notes Feature
- Statement Generator - See Configure the Statement Generator Feature
- Workflow - To integrate Workflow with Collections Window and Configurable Payment Retry, you need to create dedicated workflows and configure the settings on both sides. For details, see Integrate Workflow with Other Zuora Products.
The user interface of the feature is displayed in the language aligned with the Language setting in your user profile. To check or update the Language setting, click your username in the upper right of the Zuora UI, and then navigate to Profile > Manage Your Profile.
Start using Zuora Collections
After you have configured each feature of Zuora Collections, your collections agents can start to use the Collections Window to track the collect status of their assigned accounts, document their collection attempts, and approve automated processes.
When you are ready for your collections agents to start using the Collections Window, perform a bill run for all accounts in your Zuora tenant, then perform a payment run.
The Configurable Payment Retry feature will detect the payment run and start to apply your payment retry logic. However, your collections agents will not see any collect statuses until the Collections Window refreshes for the day. The Collections Window will refresh at the time you specified when configuring the Collections Window.
For more information about using Zuora Collections features, see the landing page of each feature in this Knowledge Center.
Other resources
The following useful resources are available to help resolve various problems that you might have with Zuora Collections:
- To get information about all public Zuora Collections APIs and download API specifications, go to Zuora Collections API Reference.
- To raise a question regarding Collections and get an answer from other users, start a topic in the Collect Forum of Zuora Community.
- To raise a ticket and get assistance from Zuora Support team, log in to Support Center.
- To find training materials that can help you get started with Zuora Collections, go to Zuora University.
We would love to hear your feedback on our documentation. If you have questions or requests, please let us know by sending an email to docs@zuora.com