Zuora Release 2023.01.R2

Subscription Status History feature generally available

The Subscription Status History feature is now generally available to all customers. You can access the feature through data source and data query. 

All status history data for existing subscriptions on your tenants have been migrated except for the Central Sandbox environment. If you need to test in your Central Sandbox environment, you can request for a data copy from your Production environment. See Data copy guidelines on Zuora Central Sandbox environments.

Support for updating charge custom fields through Update Product order action in Billing Schedule

With the Billing Schedule feature, you can now use the Update Product order action to update the custom fields of rate plan charges that are associated with existing invoice schedules. Therefore, you can apply new information to upcoming invoices, for example, new tax evidence, PO number, and so on.

Support for retrieving invoice schedule IDs associated with orders or subscriptions through REST API

With the Billing Schedule feature, you can now use the following operations to retrieve the invoice schedule ID associated with a subscription or order.

• Retrieve an order
• List order metrics for an evergreen subscription
• List orders
• List orders of a subscription owner
• List orders by subscription number
• List orders of an invoice owner
• List pending orders by subscription number
• Retrieve a subscription by key
• Retrieve a subscription by key and version
• List subscriptions by account key

For a summary of specific API updates, see 2023 API Changelog (January 13, 2023).

Support for bill run optimization for large accounts in Flexible Billing

Flexible Billing is now compatible with the feature of bill run optimization for large accounts. When using the Flexible Billing feature, you can now bill customer accounts with a large number of subscriptions.

Support for retrieving more subscription-related information in Flexible Billing through REST API 

With the Flexible Billing feature, you can now use the following operations to retrieve the invoice template names and sequence set names associated with a specific subscription: 

• List subscriptions by account key
• Retrieve a subscription by key
• Retrieve a subscription by key and version

For a summary of specific API updates, see 2023 API Changelog (January 13, 2023).

New REST API operation available for deleting accounts asynchronously

A new REST API operation called "Delete an account" is now available for deleting accounts asynchronously. 

Because the existing CRUD: Delete an account operation is no longer recommended, you can now use the new operation instead to delete any unnecessary account. Then, you can use the Retrieve an operation job operation to retrieve the information about the account deletion operation job.

New REST API operation available for retrieving invoice information

A new REST API operation called "Retrieve an invoice" is now available for retrieving detailed information about a specific invoice. 

Compared with the existing CRUD: Retrieve an invoice operation no longer recommended, you can use the new operation instead to retrieve more invoice details.

Support for updating custom fields in invoice posting through REST API

You can now use the "Post invoices" operation to update custom fields while posting invoices. With this enhancement, you no longer need to separately update custom fields after an invoice posting operation is performed.

Support for multiple tax rates with Zuora Tax

You can now have multiple tax rate percentages when you use the tax inclusive tax mode. Previously, tax inclusive rates were not compatible with multiple tax rates.

For more information about the tax inclusive tax mode, see Use tax mode.

Rating Information Page available for displaying details of invoice amount calculation

With Rating Information Page, you can now view the detailed information about how the amount is calculated by clicking the amount of an invoice item in the Amount column under the Invoice Details section on the invoice details pages.

Rating Information Page provides you the information on calculation when it comes to complicated charges like proration. Due to the complexity, you can view more information by turning to another page if the intricate calculating processes exist. You might not have access to the details if the amount displayed is the full amount of the charge. Note that the calculation details present only on the generated invoices after this feature turns on. You cannot obtain the calculation information on the invoices that have already been generated.

 Back to Table of Contents

Support for updating Gateway State through Zuora UI

For users who have the Edit Payment Gateway Status user permission, you can now view and manually update the Gateway State field to any of the following values on the Payment Detail page:

• NotSubmitted
• Submitted
• Settled
• FailedToSettle

For more information, see the following articles:

• Review and edit payments
• Payment role

Updates on Vantiv Payment Method Updater and Gateway Reconciliation services

We have upgraded the production endpoints for Vantiv Payment Method Updater (PMU) and Gateway Reconciliation services to the following ones:

For more information about Vantiv Payment Method Updater and Gateway Reconciliation services, see Overview of Vantiv payment gateway integration.

Support for linking a payment schedule item with multiple payments

The Payment Schedules feature now supports paying for a single payment schedule item with more than one payment by linking the payments to the item. Previously, each payment schedule item could only be paid with a single payment.

This enhancement introduces a Balance field on the Payment Schedule Item object. The Balance field represents the unpaid amount of the payment schedule item. Each time a payment is recorded against a payment schedule item, or when an existing payment is refunded, canceled, or voided, the Balance field is updated with the latest collectible amount. The status of the payment schedule item will change to Processed only when the balance of the item turns to 0.

You can check the linked payments for a payment schedule item on the UI, or by querying the newly introduced PSI Payment Doc object in Data Sources Exports.

Support for resetting the status of payment schedule items and payment schedules when the associated payments are updated 

The status of the payment schedule item or the payment schedule that contains the item will be updated based on the balance change of the payment schedule item caused by refund, void, or cancellation of the associated payments.

• When the Balance of a payment schedule item is less than its Amount, but greater than 0, the status of the item will be Pending.
• When Balance of a payment schedule item turns to 0, the status of the item will turn to Processed.
• If a payment of a processed payment schedule item has been refunded, voided, or canceled, the status of the item will turn back to Pending.
• For a payment schedule that is in the Completed status, if an associated payment has been refunded, voided, or canceled, the status of the payment schedule will turn back to Active.

Multiple AR Accounting Code feature

Multiple AR Accounting Code feature will allow you to set up multiple accounting codes with the ‘Accounts Receivable’ type. This will allow you to associate distinct AR accounting codes to product charges and segment their AR by product type.
Multiple AR Accounting Code features will now be enabled by default for all customers with Invoice Item Settlement enabled.

For more information, see Create an Accounting Code.

 Back to Table of Contents

Support for auditing changes of custom objects

To help you meet audit requirements and maintain compliance, Audit Trail now supports tracking changes of custom objects. These changes include creation, update, and deletion of the following objects:

• Custom object definitions
• Custom fields of a custom object definition
• Custom object records

You can use Data Query to run a report against the auditobjectchangeevent table to retrieve the records. For example, you can retrieve all custom object changes in Jan 2023 with the following query:

SELECT *
FROM auditobjectchangeevent
WHERE (objecttype = 'CustomObjectDefinition'
       OR objecttype = 'CustomObjectRecord')
       AND year = 2023
       AND month = 1

Administrators can enable or disable auditing changes of custom objects through Manage Audit Trail settings.

Support for canceling custom object jobs through API

A new API operation called "Cancel a custom object bulk job" is now available. You can use this operation to cancel submitted custom object jobs.

Note that you can cancel a custom object job only if the job status is accepted or pending.

For more information, see Custom object jobs.

Support for endpoint redirection in OAuth 2.0 Provider

You can now obtain access tokens with endpoints that have been redirected to other URLs in OAuth 2.0 Provider.

For example, an access-token endpoint A is redirected to B with a 301 permanent redirect. When specifying A or B as the Access Token EndPoint in OAuth 2.0 Provider, the results of obtaining access tokens are as follows:

For more information, see Add an OAuth 2.0 provider.

Resolved: Sending all notifications when custom scheduled events were triggered

Previously, when a custom scheduled event was triggered, Zuora sent all notifications defined on this event, regardless of the Days and Condition settings of the notifications.

This issue has been resolved. You can now create multiple notifications on a specific custom scheduled event. When this event is triggered, Zuora sends notifications only if the current date matches the event parameters.

More standard events available for System Health

You can now configure email or callout notifications based on the following System Health events:

• Bill Preview Run Long Running
• Bill Run Long Running
• Journal Run Long Running
• Payments Failures
• Payment Run Long Running
• Trial Balance Long Running
• Workflow Failures
• Workflow Performance

For example, you can define notifications as follows:

• If more than 50 percent of electronic payments fail over the last 60 minutes, an email notification is sent.
• If the execution time of a long-running job (for example, a bill-run job) is greater than or equal to 120 minutes, a callout notification is sent.

Note that notifications for long-running jobs are triggered on a job basis.

For more information, see Standard events for Zuora Central Platform.

Zuora Developer Sandbox is now available

Developer Sandbox will allow developers to work on a sandbox with the same configuration as production. It will allow them to copy/refresh only configuration/settings data and no transactional/dynamic data.

For more information, see Zuora Developer Sandbox.

Support for using OAuth to authenticate to Zuora Reporting API

The Reporting API now supports OAuth authentication. Previously, the Reporting API did not support OAuth.

Note that if you are planning to integrate with the Reporting API and to learn more about the Reporting API, see Reporting API Reference. The Reporting API is ideally suited for you if you want to manage report definitions programmatically to support cases like copying reports between Zuora Environments. The Reporting API is not recommended for data extraction use cases. For data extraction use cases, you can use Data Query.

 Back to Table of Contents