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Zuora Billing Release 306, July 2021

Zuora

Zuora Billing Release 306, July 2021

Welcome to the release notes for Zuora Billing Release 306 (R306), July 2021

For more information about the release notes of other Zuora products, see Zuora Release Notes.

Release schedule

Subscribe to Release Notifications in Zuora Community to receive notifications about Zuora Billing releases.

REST API

See API Changelog for a summary of REST API updates and documentation updates in the Zuora API Reference.

Product Catalog

Multi-Attribute Pricing charge model now supports one-time and recurring charges

The support for one-time and recurring charges is in the Early Adopter phase.

Previously, the Multi-Attribute Pricing charge model applied to usage charges only. Now, this charge model is extended to also support one-time and recurring charges. With this enhancement, the price of one-time and recurring charges can be also based on a formula and attributes on the billing account.

See Multi-Attribute Pricing charge model for more information.

Orders and Subscriptions

Order Line Items now available in Orders

The Order Line Items feature is now generally available. You need to enable the Orders or Orders Harmonization feature to access the Order Line Items feature. 

The Order Line Items feature is now available in Orders. With the release of Order Line Items, customers now have the ability to launch non-subscription and unified monetization business models in Zuora, in addition to subscription business models.

With the feature enabled, you can now use the Orders API and UI to send non subscription based transactional charges, such as one-time fees, physical goods, or professional service charges, from quoting through revenue recognition, without the need for a subscription. You can create an order with order line items only or an order with both order line items and subscriptions.

Metrics generation for order line items is supported through Order Delta Metrics

To enable the ability to perform a series of business processes, states are introduced on both orders and order line items. You can use the Order Line Items API, Orders API, and Orders UI to manage changes and status transitions to order line items.

See the following resources for more details.

Metrics calculation methodology upgraded for Orders

As of Zuora Billing Release 306, Zuora has upgraded the methodologies for calculating metrics in Orders. The new methodologies are reflected in the following Order Delta Metrics objects:

It is recommended that all customers use the new Order Delta Metrics. If you are an existing Order Metrics customer and want to migrate to Order Delta Metrics, submit a request at Zuora Global Support.

Whereas new customers, and existing customers not currently on Order Metrics, will no longer have access to Order Metrics, existing customers currently using Order Metrics will continue to be supported.

UI changes for the delete amendment function in the Orders Harmonization tenants

The Zuora UI has been changed for the Orders Harmonization tenants as follows:

  •  A delete button has been added to the Amendment details page so that you can directly remove an amendment that is created through the Subscribe and Amend APIs. This button is only visible for amendments created through the Subscribe and Amend APIs.

    For amendments of the type "Composite", as they are created through Orders, you must remove them through deleting the corresponding Order. For amendments created through the Subscribe and Amend APIs, in addition to the new delete button, you can still remove them through deleting the corresponding Order.

  • The Delete links for each of the amendments on the All Amendments page have been removed as amendment deletion is not supported through these links in the Orders Harmonization tenants.

Usage and Rating

General availability of usage rating by group

Usage rating by group is now generally available to all Zuora customers. This feature allows you to group usage records by a rating group option within a billing period. For more information, see Usage rating by group.

Usage rating by group provides a field called Rating Group when you create usage-based charges in your product catalog. For more information, see Create product rate plan charges. Usage rating by group also provides a corresponding Rating Group field in the Products & Charges area when you view a subscription.

Invoicing and Invoice Settlement

Unified Invoicing now available

The Unified Invoicing feature is generally available as of Zuora Billing Release 313, November 2021. New customers will have the feature enabled by default. If you are an existing customer and want to access to the feature, submit a request at Zuora Global Support for Unified Invoicing.

Unified Invoicing provides key capabilities to help companies grow subscription and non-subscription revenue by monetizing hybrid offerings within the Zuora ecosystem.

  • The standalone invoice allows you to sell physical goods, services, or other items on a non-recurring basis to your subscription customers. You can quickly create a standalone invoice under a customer account through the Zuora UI or REST API, without creating a subscription, an order, or even a product catalog.
  • The consolidated invoice allows you to unify the billing experience for both subscription and non-subscription transactions and to have a single view of your subscriber. You can generate a consolidated invoice through Orders or bill runs.

To enable the Unified Invoicing feature, perform the following steps:

  1. Submit a request at Zuora Global Support to request access to the Unified Invoicing feature. 
    Currently, it requires you to enable the Invoice Settlement feature first.
  2. Create a custom Billing user role with the following Billing permissions:
    • Create Standalone Invoice
    • Modify Invoice

See the following resources for more information:

Format numeric merge fields based on communication profile locales setting now available

The setting for formatting numeric merge fields based on communication profile locales is now available in billing rules. With this setting enabled, you can format numeric merge fields based on the locale of your customer’s communication profile when defining templates for invoices, credit memos, and debit memos.

Previously, you had to submit a request at Zuora Global Support to enable this feature.

See Define billing rules and Define date and numeric formats for mail merge fields for more information.

New billing rule for allowing indistinct mapping from memo/invoice item adjustment tax items to invoice tax items

A new billing rule called Allow indistinct mapping from Memo / Invoice Item Adjustment (IIA) Tax Items to Invoice Tax Items? is added to Billing Settings > Define Billing Rules. By default, this billing rule is set to No, and Zuora will associate the tax items using distinct mapping. If set to Yes, Zuora will try distinct mapping first and then might revert to indistinct mapping, ensuring that each tax item on a Memo / IIA can be associated with a tax item on the corresponding invoice.

See Define billing rules and Mapping from memo or invoice item adjustment tax items to invoice tax items for more information.

Emails sent from the Statement Generator now require a verified sender email address

Before you can use the Statement Generator to send statements to your customers via email, you must now configure a verified sender email address. This ensures that statements appear to be from your organization. For more information, see Configure a verified sender email address for the Statement Generator.

Previously, the default sender email address was no-reply-statement-generator@zuora.com. If you are already sending statements from this address, you can continue to use this address. However, Zuora strongly recommends that you configure a verified sender email address for your organization and use that address instead.

If Zuora has previously assisted you in configuring a sender email address, Zuora will continue to use your configured sender email address when generating statements. No additional configuration is required.

Payments

Support for creating and processing standalone payments

The support for standalone payments is in the Early Adopter phase. If you want to use this feature, submit a request to Zuora Global Support to enable it. You also need to have Invoice Settlement enabled to access this feature.

A standalone payment is now introduced in Zuora as an electronic payment that is created and processed in Zuora through a Zuora gateway integration but is settled outside of Zuora. For a standalone payment, you can specify a currency that is enabled in your tenant but is different from the payment currency in the customer account settings.

A new field called “standalone” is introduced to specify if the payment is a standalone payment. 

Both the Zuora UI and Payments APIs have been enhanced to support the following operations for standalone payments:

  • Create a standalone payment
  • View the information of a standalone payment
  • Update a standalone payment
  • Cancel a standalone payment
  • Create a refund for a standalone payment
  • View/Update/Cancel/Delete a refund of a standalone payment
  • Delete a standalone payment
  • View the record for rejected/reversed standalone payment and the rejected refund of a standalone payment on the Gateway Reconciliation page

Payment settlement data, such as financial information, is not available for a standalone payment. All settlement operations such as applying, unapplying, and transferring payments are not supported by the standalone payment.

Support for setting up custom payment gateways and payment methods

This feature is in the Early Adopter phase. If you want to use this feature, submit a request to Zuora Global Support to enable the Universal Payment Connector and Open Payment Method services that support this feature.

Zuora has developed and implemented Universal Payment Connector (UPC) and Open Payment Method (OPM) services to support the creation of custom payment gateways and payment methods in a dynamic and flexible manner. You can set up and integrate your custom payment gateway and payment method to Zuora subscription, billing, and revenue management by following this procedure.

  1. Prepare a definition file for your custom payment method type. All the fields and validation rules of the custom payment method are defined in this file.
  2. Submit a request to Zuora Global Support to enable UPC and OPM services. In your request, enclose the definition file you created and the information of the target environment.
  3. Set up a web server outside of Zuora as the payment hub to process requests and responses between the customer payment gateway and the external payment gateway.
  4. Create and configure your custom payment gateway in Zuora.
  5. Enable your custom payment method type in Zuora.
  6. Create your custom payment method of the defined type in Zuora.

After the custom payment gateway and payment method of the defined type are successfully set up, you can then process payments and refunds with them in Zuora.

The custom payment method of the defined type can only be used with the custom payment gateway. It cannot be used with the Zuora out-of-box gateway integrations such as GoCardless, Stripe, etc.

See Set up custom payment gateways and payment methods for more information.

CyberSource v2.0 now supports invoice item level gateway options during payment method creation

The CyberSource, Payment API v2.0 gateway integration now supports sending the following gateway option fields in payment method creation requests:

  • productName
  • quantity
  • productSKU
  • unitPrice

These fields can be used on the invoice item level to provide invoice item details, which facilitates fraud detection on the gateway side. A maximum of 100 invoice items can be included in each request.

See CyberSource payment gateway for more information.

Ingenico ePayments now supports 1-Step Refunds with ACH

To support the 1-Step Refunds with ACH feature of Ingenico, Zuora has enhanced the Ingenico ePayments gateway integration by adding additional ACH fields in refund requests. No additional effort is required from you to enable this feature.

SOAP API

Current WSDL version: 110

See Zuora WSDL for information on how to check your version and download the latest version.

SOAP API change history

See Zuora SOAP API Version History for a summary of updates made to the SOAP API in recent Zuora releases.