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Process payments with the Collections features

Zuora

Process payments with the Collections features

In Collections, the Advanced Payment Manager (APM) feature offers payment flexibility at the subscription level to increase the success rate of first-time payments, and the Configurable Payment Retry (CPR) feature enables customizable retry logic for recovering failed electronic payments. This article describes the logic and difference of payment processing with these two features. For instructions about configuring and using the features, see Advanced Payment Manager and Configurable Payment Retry.

Process payments with APM

The APM feature of Collections allows payment information to be stored at the subscription level. When APM is triggered to create a payment run, it will gather the information from the subscription custom fields to indicate the desired payment method and gateway to be used for processing. If either custom fieldPayment Method Id (PaymentMethodId__c) or Payment Gateway (PaymentGateway___c) are empty, the system will use the default payment information for processing.

To trigger the APM payment run, the APM account custom field (APM___c) must be set to True and the Account Auto-Pay flag set to False. The settings of these two fields ensure that the account is included in APM payment runs and excluded from Zuora out-of-box payment run. 

If the functionality of APM is not being used, the APM account custom field should be set to False. The APM account custom field can be removed but must be recreated prior to use of APM. 

Process payments with CPR

The CPR feature of Collections executes a retry strategy based on either gateway response codes or Zuora AI machine learning model, Smart Retry. Before each payment attempt, CPR will obtain the default payment method and gateway that are indicated on the account, and the invoice balance.

If the invoice balance is 0, CPR will recognize the invoice as paid, update the associated custom fields, and end the retry cycle. If the invoice balance is greater than 0, CPR will obtain the default payment method and gateway information and execute the payment attempts. This process continues until all attempts have been executed through the configured CPR retry logic. 

Process payments with APM and CPR

APM has the ability to trigger the CPR feature to execute any retry attempts on failed payments from the APM payment run. When APM completes the payment run, any failed payments with their indicated payment method and payment gateway are passed to CPR for further processing.

When CPR executes its retry attempts, it will confirm whether the APM account custom field is set to True and utilize the payment information from the original APM payment run transaction. CPR will not re-query the subscription payment information that is identified in the APM subscription custom fields. The only scenario where CPR will modify the ingested payment information is when an Account Updater native to Zuora updates the payment method. However, if the updater makes a modification, the associated Payment Method Id or Payment Gateway custom field on the subscription must also be modified. This can be done with manual modifications or Workflow. Failure to modify the custom fields after the update will result in the processing of the original payment information. 

The best practice is to ensure the APM account custom field is set to False if the APM feature is not being used in payment processing. Manipulation of the APM account custom field during the retry process will disrupt service.