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SOAP API Calls

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SOAP API Calls

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The calls in the Zuora SOAP API can be thought of as functioning much like verbs do in human languages: They are the actions that you perform. In human languages, verbs act upon objects, so in this case, the API calls are the actions you perform upon the Zuora SOAP API objects.

Zuora's SOAP API offers Create, Read, Update, and Delete (CRUD) capabilities. In this API, we use the term query instead of read.

Using the SOAP API Calls

The Zuora SOAP API calls can be thought of as verbs, because they perform the CRUD actions on the API objects. Using the calls, you can perform various tasks:

  • Logging into the Zuora server  Use login call to allow you receive information for subsequent calls
  • Creating, updating, and deleting various types of information. Use the create, update, or delete call
  • Querying account information. Use the query call

As an alternative, you can use the subscribe call, which is an all-in-one solution for creating a request to subscribe to a service.

If you have the Invoice Settlement feature enabled, Zuora does not support generating credit memos with the API calls.

The XML of your calls must follow this format:

  1. Header
  2. Body
  3. Operation (for example, create)
  4. Request
  5. Object name
  6. Fields for the object
  7. Additional operations

Except for the login call, use only one header per call.

Properties of the SOAP API Calls

All Zuora API calls are:

  • Service requests and responses: Using the SOAP API, your client application prepares and submits a service request to the Zuora Web service. The Web service processes that request and returns a response, which your client application handles.
  • Synchronous only (asynchronous calls are not supported): Once your client application makes a request, it waits until it receives a response from the service before taking further action.
  • Committed automatically: Every operation that writes to an object is committed automatically. This can be compared to the AUTOCOMMMIT setting in SQL. For create, update, and delete, if you attempt to write to more than one record in an object, the write operation for each record is treated as a separate transaction. For example, if a client application attempts to create two new accounts, those accounts are created using mutually exclusive insert operations that succeed or fail individually, not as a group.

Your client applications may need to handle failures if a requested operation could not be completed.

Concurrent Request Limits

See Concurrent Request Limits.

Limitation on Memo PDF

Up to 20,000 line items are allowed in a single memo PDF.

Limitation on Invoice PDF 

Zuora limits the sum total of certain line items up to a maximum number in a single invoice. For example, the sum total of line items for invoice items, taxation items, and usage items in a single invoice cannot exceed 20,000. 

Maximum sum total of 20,000 is allowed for the following line items:

  • invoice item
  • taxation item
  • usage item

Maximum sum total of 2,000 is allowed for the following line items:

  • credit balance adjustment
  • invoice adjustment
  • invoice item adjustment
  • payment
  • refund

Maximum sum total of 2,000 is allowed for the following line items:

  • subscription
  • rate plan

When generating an invoice PDF, if the maximum number is exceeded, an error message is generated.

Amendments per Subscription

Zuora recommends that you create no more than 100 amendments on a subscription to ensure high performance of the subscriptions. The limit of amendments allowed on a subscription is 1000. However, if you create more than 100 amendments, the performance may be severely degraded, depending on the products and charges set up in your subscription.

If the renewal term period of the latest version of the subscription is Day or Week, the limit of amendments allowed on a subscription is 100.

The 100 amendment limit does not apply to Orders. See Orders Performance Guidance for more information.

Limitations on Orders

Orders is now generally available as of Zuora Billing Release 284 (August 2019). You can access all the new capabilities in the Sandbox environment starting August 31, 2020. The Production deployment is September 10, 2020.

If you are an existing Zuora Subscribe and Amend customer and want to adopt Orders, see What is Orders Harmonization and join the Orders Harmonization community group for more information. If you want to enable Orders, submit a request at Zuora Global Support.

Zuora has the following limits on the Orders synchronous API to prevent performance degradation:

If you have an Order that exceeds any limits of the above, Zuora recommends you use the following asynchronous API operations:

Zuora has the following limits on the Orders asynchronous API operations to prevent performance degradation:

If you have a need for a large order that exceeds any limits of the above, you can request a limit increase for the Orders asynchronous API by submitting a request at Zuora Global Support.