Zuora Release 2024.03.R1

Enhancement in Orders API to support product quantity upsell

For a termed subscription, you can now use the "Create an order" API operation to perform an Add Product order action to make a product quantity upsell for per unit recurring charges. The benefit is that the charge added by this approach will be automatically combined with the original existing charge for which you want to upsell when the subscription is renewed.

The approach is as follows:

• Use an Add Product order action to add a charge that is of the same charge type, charge model, and charge end date as the existing per unit recurring charge for which you want to make a quantity upsell.
• In the preceding charge to add, use the upsellOriginChargeNumber field to specify the existing rate plan charge for which you want to make the quantity upsell.

Note that a termed subscription with such upsell charges can not be changed to an evergreen subscription.   

Enhancement in Orders API to support updating custom fields on rate plans and rate plan charges

When using the "Create an order" API operation to perform a Remove Product order action, you can now update the custom fields on the rate plans and rate plan charges that you are to remove.

Enhancement in Orders API to queue concurrent requests and serialize API call execution

When you make multiple Orders POST or PUT calls to the same subscription, an error could be returned reporting that the operation could not be complete due to locked resources. We have now enhanced the following Orders API operations to queue concurrent requests and serialize API call execution for a better developer experience: 

• Create an order
• Activate an order 

Support for previewing an existing subscription by subscription key through API

We added a new API operation called Preview a subscription by subscription key. You can use this API operation to preview an existing subscription. The preview response includes the invoice information associated with the subscription. 

UI enhancements to Delivery Adjustments

We enhanced the Delivery Adjustments feature to provide UI management. You can now manage delivery adjustments through UI, including creating, viewing, and canceling delivery adjustments. 

For more information, see Create delivery adjustments, View Delivery Adjustments, and Cancel a delivery adjustment.

Enhancement to Batch Update Price flow

We enhanced the Batch Update Price flow to support customers to define the subscription cohort more flexibly.

You can now define the subscription cohort in a CSV file as follows, and upload the file in the Subscription Cohort section on the Batch Update Price for Subscriptions page: 

• The file must include one column of subscription numbers instead of subscription IDs. 

• The subscriptions in the file can be under different subscription owners or invoice owners.

After you upload the file and finish the flow, the new price will be applied to the active subscriptions if the subscriptions are associated with the selected rate plan charge.

For more information, see Batch update price.

UI enhancements for Owner Transfer amendment

We enhanced the UI for the Owner Transfer amendment in the following tenants:

• Orders Harmonization tenant with Orders UI disabled

• Subscribe and Amend tenant

We added the Search Type dropdown lists in the Subscription Owner Account and Invoice Owner Account sections in the Owner Transfer dialog. 

You must now specify a matched search type from the dropdown lists when entering an account name or number. The default search type is Name. This enhancement speeds up your search.

UI enhancement on subscription details page

We enhanced the subscription details page in the following tenants:

• Orders tenant
• Orders Harmonization tenant

If more than 35 product rate plans are added to a subscription and you specify Product in the View BY dropdown list, the product rate plans are displayed in the paged list.

• The numbers on the left of the pipe ("|") indicate a range of the sequences of product rate plans displayed on the current page.
• The number on the right of the pipe ("|") indicates the total number of product rate plans in the subscription. 
• You can navigate to the start, previous, next, and end pages by clicking the corresponding arrow icons.

Resolved: Tax-related fields on order line items are not automatically populated in API

Previously, after you created an order line item and specified the productRatePlanChargeId field through the Create an order API operation, and then retrieved the order line item. The values of the taxCode and taxMode fields on the order line item were not automatically populated.

We have now enhanced the API behavior to be consistent with the UI. That is, the default values of the two fields are automatically populated from the same fields of the charge if the taxable field of the charge is true.

Note that when taxCode and taxMode are not NULL on the order line item,  its tax is calculated based on these field values on the order line item. If you want to update these field values before billing the order line item, update the fields on the order line item instead of on the charge. In this case, the field values on the order line item are no longer propagated from the charge during tax calculation.

This issue has been resolved.

Change of UI for creating drawdown charge and credit commitment charge

We have made a change to the UI for creating a drawdown or credit commitment charge. We have deprecated the Charge Function field and replaced it with the following:

Billing Schedule supports ramp deals

The Billing Schedule feature allows you to create invoice schedules for a ramp deal. With this support, you can define an invoice schedule with the schedule items for generating invoices for your defined invoice amounts and dates, not necessarily aligning with each ramp deal interval. You can also change the subscription and define an invoice schedule specific to the change, for example, adding or replacing a product.

For more information, see Create invoice schedules for ramp deals.

Enhancement of Billing Schedule for Owner Transfer order action

Previously, when you performed the Owner Transfer order action, you had to transfer all the subscriptions associated with an invoice schedule to a new invoice owner account, regardless of the invoice schedule status. 

We enhanced the Billing Schedule feature for the Owner Transfer order action. Now, if all charges within an invoice schedule have been fully billed, you can transfer a subset of subscriptions associated with an invoice schedule to a new invoice owner account. However, if the charges haven't been fully billed, you must transfer all subscriptions as you did previously.

For more information, see Transfer owners of subscriptions associated with invoice schedules.

Enhancements on Invoicing Group

For the Invoicing Group feature, we enhanced the UI for grouping subscriptions or order line items under the same account by your specified invoice group numbers. When you bill your customer, invoices are generated for invoice groups indicated by the invoice group numbers.

The enhancements include the following: 

• Add the Invoice Group Number field to the Orders, Subscriptions, and Order Line Items UI. Previously, you could only specify theinvoiceGroupNumber through the API. You can now specify the invoice group number on the following pages:
  • Create Subscription
  • Edit Order Action
  • Renew Subscription
  • Update Terms and Conditions
  • Create Order Line Item
  • Edit Order Line Item
• Add the Invoice Group Number field to the following objects in data sources and data queries:
  • Subscription
  • Order Action
  • Order Line Item
  • Invoice
  • Credit Memo
  • Debit Memo

For more information, see Create invoice groups for subscriptions or order line items.

Avalara for Brazil tax engine

You can now easily manage tax configurations and ensure compliance with local tax laws in Brazil through the seamless integration of Zuora Billing with Avalara tax engine. With the Avalara Brazil tax engine, you can streamline tax configuration within the Zuora platform, eliminating the need for dual configurations in Zuora Connect and Zuora Billing. Experience enhanced security, increased flexibility, and monitor tax configurations through System Health. For more information, see Avalara for Brazil App.

E-Invoicing support for PEPPOL

You can now export billing document data in XML PEPPOL (Pan-European Public Procurement Online) v3.0 format. This enables custom e-invoice integration tailored to countries utilizing the PEPPOL standard or its derivatives. This also provides extensive flexibility for customizing e-invoice templates to accommodate country-specific mappings and customer-specific configurations. 

Additionally, we have already supported electronic invoices through integration with partners that have a local presence, where required, which guarantees compliance with local invoice regulations. 

UI Enhancements to E-Invoicing

We made the following enhancements to the E-Invoicing feature.

UI Enhancements to E-Invoicing template editor

We made the following enhancements to the template editor 

• Added a refresh icon in the Preview mode in the template editor. You can click this icon to ensure the data in your template is up-to-date, for example, after updating a custom field on the invoice details page.
• Added a refresh icon in the Preview Settings section. You can click this icon to ensure the options in the Account and Invoice dropdown lists are up-to-date after any account and invoice configurations.
• Added the display of the following information and actions in the template editor for failed submission of the invoices, credit memos, and debit memos
  • Information:
    • E-Invoice Status
    • E-Invoice Error Code
    • E-Invoice Error Message
  • Action:
    • Download Log link
    • Regenerate E-Invoice Action: The action is displayed when the E-invoice status is Failed.

UI Enhancement to E-Invoicing profile

Added the Business Category dropdown list in the E-Invoice > Business Profile section on the account details page. You can select one of the following options from the list to indicate your business category: 

• B2B (Business to Business)
• B2C (Business to Consumer)
• B2G (Business to Government)

For more information, see Configure e-invoice file templates for billing documents and Configure e-invoicing profiles for accounts.

UI enhancements for external tax engines available for Production

You can now create or modify tax partner integrations conveniently in a centralized location within your production Zuora tenants. The Production environment has been updated with the following enhancements:

• Auth Types, such as None, Taxamo-Private-Token, HMAC-SovosTaxware, and BearerId are now categorized as Private Token.
• Sabrix is now called OneSource SOAP, and the Vertex is referred to as Vertex SOAP.
• SureTax REST and SOAP have been split into two engines.
• A new troubleshooting tool for Liquid templates has been introduced, providing basic syntax validation and auto-complete features.

Asynchronous updating for statistical fields on bill runs

For better performance and greater stability, the following statistical fields on bill runs are now updated asynchronously during bill run processing:

• NumberOfAccounts
• NumberOfInvoices
• NumberOfCreditMemos

You can find these statistical data on the bill run detailed page in Zuora UI or through Data Query or Data Source Exports.

Since the update process is asynchronous, there might be a delay in aligning the statistical fields with the actual data when bill runs are still in processing, especially when processing a large number of accounts.

Zuora guarantees the values of these fields are up-to-date when bill runs become one of the following statuses:

• Completed
• Posted
• Canceled

Previously, these fields were updated in real time as each billing document or account was processed.

Changes to availability of currency field 

All customers can now access the currency field on billing documents through the following API operations:

• Retrieve an invoice
• Retrieve a credit memo
• Retrieve a debit memo
• List billing documents for an account
• List credit memos
• List debit memos

Previously, the currency field on a billing document was only available when the Multiple Currencies feature was enabled.

Note that the currency on billing documents matches the default currency set on the associated account by default.

Support for listing all PDF files of credit memos and debit memos

We added the following API operations:

• The "List all files of a credit memo" operation: You can use this operation to retrieve the information about all PDF files of a specified credit memo.
• The "List all files of a debit memo" operation: You can use this operation to retrieve the information about all PDF files of a specified debit memo.

API enhancement in Multiple Currencies to support multiple currencies on order line items

We have enhanced the Multiple Currencies feature to support multiple currencies on order line items through API. You can now use the "Create an order" operation to specify a currency when creating an order line item. Note that all order line items in one order must be of the same currency type. The UI support of this enhancement will be available in future releases.

Support for duplicated region names and ISO codes

When creating or updating countries or regions, you can now use names or ISO-2 or ISO-3 codes of existing countries or regions that are inactive.

Note that names or ISO codes of active countries or regions are not allowed.

Since the changes become effective immediately for historical references when an existing country or region is updated, this feature allows you to keep historical references unchanged by creating a new country or region with the same name or ISO codes.

For more information, see Manage countries and regions.

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Actions required for re-authentication of GoCardless Real-Time Reconciliation credentials

Zuora is implementing an infrastructure update to improve the user experience of Real-Time Reconciliation enablement across all available integrations. This update might impact the reconciliation of transaction data from GoCardless on certain tenants. Re-authentication of the account credentials associated with GoCardless Real-Time Reconciliation can prevent potential service disruption.

If you are using the GoCardless Real-Time Reconciliation service and see the Required Action on your GoCardless Account banner on the Payments Settings page, take the following actions within the specified timeframe.

Support for creating tokenized ACH payment methods on Stripe v2 with existing tokens

To create tokenized ACH payment methods on Stripe v2 payment gateway integrations, you can now use the Create a payment method API operation and pass in existing tokens along with the masked account number.

For more information, see ACH tokenization.

Enhancements to Payment Gateway Routing

We have made the following enhancements to the Payment Gateway Routing feature:

• You can now create Payment Gateway Routing rules by using the following pre-defined templates. For more information, see Create and manage Payment Gateway Routing rules.
  • Route to Backup Gateways
  • Route by Currency
  • Route by Splitting Traffic
  • Route on Multiple Conditions
• Log information on the transaction processed through the assigned payment gateway is now available. You can click the Assign Gateway Action when reviewing rule execution and use the log information for transaction troubleshooting or reviewing. For more information, see Review rule execution.

Support for asynchronous payment processing in Zuora Finance

The Asynchronous Payment Statuses feature is now supported in Zuora Finance. You can enable it in the Define Payment Rules setting. For more information, see Electronic payment processing.

Enhancements on Chase Payment Method Updater

To avoid duplicate charges and increase the success rate when updating the Credit Card payment methods through Chase Payment Method Updater, we have improved this Payment Method Updater (PMU) service. All the records for the same card received from the gateway will be updated to ensure that duplicate card update requests are identified and handled appropriately. 

Additionally, we have also removed a specific condition that previously resulted in a job being marked with the "Error" status. Previously, Zuora set the PMU job status to "Completed" if the percentage of responses for duplicate records exceeded 99%. Now the job status is no longer affected by the count of non-response records exceeding 1% of the total records submitted.

Support for passing identity number when creating Credit Card payment method through REST APIs

When creating Credit Card payment methods through the following REST API operations, you can now pass in the identity number of the cardholder through the identityNumber field. The identity number is required for making Credit Card payments in certain countries such as Brazil.

• Create a payment method
• Create an account
• Create an order
• Create an order asynchronously

Support for creating Credit Card payment methods in Brazil on Ebanx integrations through REST APIs

On Ebanx payment gateway integrations, you can now create Credit Card payment methods in Brazil through any of the following REST API operations:

• Create a payment method
• Create an account
• Create an order
• Create an order asynchronously

Deprecation of legacy CyberSource payment gateway integrations

We have deprecated the following payment gateway integrations, following the changes to Cybersource's authentication standards:

• CyberSource Enterprise Gateway, API v1.97
• CyberSource Enterprise Gateway, API v1.28

If you are on one of the preceding integrations, migrate to the CyberSource, Payment API v2.0 payment gateway integration by following this migration guide.

Invoice Settlement Harmonization

If you are an existing customer using Zuora’s legacy AR functionality (Invoice Adjustments/Invoice Item Adjustments/Credit Balance Adjustments) and want to leverage Invoice Settlement, then Invoice Settlement Harmonization provides you with a gradual, phased, and controlled approach to help you adopt Invoice Settlement using the Invoice Settlement-Invoice Item Adjustment coexistence approach easily. ISH enables you to gain access to advanced credit management and other new capabilities supported by Invoice Settlement.

For customers currently using Legacy AR functionalities, Zuora will conduct a silent payment migration in line with the Invoice Settlement Payments data model. The migration activity is not expected to have any impact on your regular business processes or your experience of using Zuora. This activity is being conducted to reduce the time required to enable Invoice Settlement Harmonization, should you choose to do so. If you want to opt out of this migration activity, contact Zuora Global Support.

For more information, see Invoice Settlement Harmonization.

Enhancements to Journal Run

Performance enhancements have been made to Zuora's Journal run by adding advanced computation for data generated on a daily basis and using multi-threading to process GL segmentation data. This enhancement will be available to customers by default if they have enabled Journal run V2.

If you are a Nine edition Zuora customer or are on 'Performance Booster' and would like to enable the enhanced Journal run in your environment, please submit a ticket to Zuora support.

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Restriction imposed on notification histories in Multi-Org enabled tenants

If you have the Multi-Org feature enabled, you can now view or resend callout and email notification histories only if they belong to the Org Units you have access to.

This restriction applies when viewing or resending notification histories via the following features and services:

• Email History & Callout History tabs in the Zuora UI
• Data Query
• Data Source Exports
• Reporting
• AQuA
• Resend callout notifications & Resend email notifications API operations

If you have access to more than one Org Unit, you can use the Org Context Switcher to toggle access for notification histories across different Org Units. For more information, see Overview of Multi-Org.

Support for highlighting custom events created by Zuora

You can now use the newly introduced "Zuora Custom Event" event type to distinguish custom events created by Zuora from the ones created by tenant users in the Zuora UI.

The following table shows the changes in the Type column on the "Setup Profiles, Notifications and Email Templates" page before and after the release:

Note that some events are available only if you have particular features enabled in your tenant. For more information, see Zuora custom events.

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