Skip to main content

Digital Signature

Zuora

Digital Signature

  1. Last updated
  2. Save as PDF

This Digital Signature feature allows you to sign PDF files for billing documents with numerous benefits, such as verifying document authenticity, ensuring data integrity, legal compliance, preventing denial of transactions, improving efficiency, and enhancing security. Billing documents include invoices, credit memos, and debit memos, and memos are available only if you have the Invoice Settlement feature enabled.

Note that Sovos is the exclusive e-invoicing service provider supporting the Digital Signature feature.

Availability

The Digital Signature feature is in the Early Adopter phase. We are actively soliciting feedback from a small set of early adopters before releasing it as generally available. If you want to join this early adopter program, submit a request at Zuora Global Support.

Enable the Digital Signature feature

To use the Digital Signature feature, perform the following steps:

  1. Ensure that you have the E-Invoicing feature enabled.
  2. Ensure that you have correctly configured the e-invoicing service provider.
    The Digital Signature feature utilizes the same authentication keys as the e-invoicing service provider.
  3. Submit a request at Zuora Global Support.

Overview

When signing PDF files for billing documents, you can choose between two signature formats:

  • PDF Signature, adhering to the CAdES-A standard
    CAdES stands for CMS Advanced Electronic Signatures.  
  • PAdES standard
    PAdES stands for PDF Advanced Electronic Signatures.

By default, the system is configured to use the PDF Signature format. CAdES-A offers unique advantages because it contains all the necessary information to validate the signature's authenticity when signing.

The standard setup includes a signature box that appears on the lower right of the first page of the PDF file generated for a billing document. However, you can customize the signature box's position according to your preferences. If you want to adjust the box position, submit a request at Zuora Global Support with information about the desired X and Y coordinates. For example, using coordinates (0,0) places the signature box in the lower left, while (595, 842) places the signature box in the upper right of an A4 page.

For additional information, see Sovos Signature.

How Digital Signature works

If the business region a billing document belongs to has the Digital Signature feature enabled, the uploaded PDF files are signed with a digital signature each for the billing document. The best practice is to upload PDF files only when the billing document is in Posted status and the e-invoicing process is successful.

It is best practice to use the E-Invoicing feature and Digital Signature feature as follows:

  1. Generate a billing document in Zuora, an invoice, a credit memo, or a debit memo.
  2. Post the billing document to trigger the e-invoice file generation process.
  3. If the e-invoice file generation process is successful, a custom event is generated to generate the PDF file externally.
    1. You can retrieve e-invoice file information and generate a PDF file for the billing document.
    2. You can use the Upload a file for an invoice API operation to upload the PDF file, which takes an unsigned PDF file as input and provides the file ID of the signed PDF file as output.
    3. Zuora determines whether to trigger the digital signature process for the billing document. If the corresponding business region has Digital Signature enabled, it proceeds to sign the PDF file. Otherwise, it does not sign the PDF file but just saves the PDF file.
    4. Zuora submits the document PDF file to Sovos for signature, receives the signed PDF file, and stores the file.
    5. The file ID of the signed PDF file is returned through the API.
    6. In the case of a digital signature process failure, you must have a retry.
  4. Download the signed PDF file based on the received file ID.

You can use the following API operations to upload externally generated PDF files for billing documents:

Restrictions and limitations 

When using the Digital Signature feature, keep the following restrictions and limitations in mind:

  • The Digital Signature feature is incompatible with the files generated from HTML Templates and Word templates for billing documents. Instead, this feature exclusively works for PDF files that are externally uploaded to Zuora for billing documents.
  • When the Digital Signature feature is enabled for a business region, you can only upload PDF files for billing documents under the following conditions:
    • The billing document must be in Posted status.
    • The e-invoice file status for the billing document must be in Success status.