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Zuora Collections Release Notes

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Zuora Collections Release Notes

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June 22, 2022 - Smart Retry functionality of Configurable Payment Retry has enhanced response code mappings

Now Smart Retry functionality of Configurable Payment Retry has enhanced response code mappings. When Smart Retry is enabled, you can stop retrying a payment for the response codes mapped to hard decline. To enable Smart Retry, in Configurable Payment Retry, navigate to the Customer Group with Smart Retry enabled and click Stop Retry on Hard Declines.

Previously, even when a payment is hard declined, the smart retry features continue retrying the payment. 

For more information, see Enable Smart Retry.

June 15, 2022 - Configurable Lockbox with multiple fields for Invoice or Account Number 

Configuring a New Lockbox feature with SWIFT Structured Format - MT 940 file format enables you to select Check Multiple Fields for Invoice or Account Number. By selecting the Check Multiple Fields for Invoice or Account Number checkbox, you can select multiple lockbox file header fields for Invoice, Account Number or both, which is required for automatic payment in the Zuora Payments Field.

Previously, only one lockbox header field could be selected for Invoice, Account Number or both.

For more information, see Step 1: Configure basic settings of a bank file format in Configure the Configurable Lockbox feature.

May 13, 2022 - Configurable Lockbox now supports key-based authentication

Configurable Lockbox now supports using key-based authentication to access SFTP servers. When configuring the SFTP Settings for a lockbox, you can choose to either use a password or a private key of the SFTP server as the credential. The key-based authentication helps reduce the potential security risk of the static authentication mechanism.

See Step 5: Configure additional lockbox settings in Configure the Configurable Lockbox feature for more information.

October 8, 2021 - Data of the Collections features available via Data Query

You can now use Data Query to report on the specific data of the following Collections features:

  • Advanced Payment Manager
  • Collections Window
  • Configurable Lockbox
  • Configurable Payment Retry
  • Notes

The following new tables are available in Data Query:

  • Table for Advanced Payment Manager
    • Collections_ApmPaymentRuns
  • Table for Collections Window
    • Collections_CollectionsWindowInfo
  • Tables for Configurable Lockbox
    • Collections_ConnectorExecutions
    • Collections_LockboxRecords
    • Collections_Lockboxes
    • Collections_LockboxPayment
  • Tables for Configurable Payment Retry
    • Collections_RetryAttempts
    • Collections_CustomerGroups
    • Collections_MetricSnapshots
    • Collections_RetryCycles
  • Tables for Notes
    • Collections_Groups
    • Collections_Note
    • Collections_Replies
    • Collections_Commentables

See Use Data Query to report on Collections features for more information.

October 5, 2021 - Enhancement on Configurable Payment Retry

The configuration process for Configurable Payment Retry has been improved by reducing manual effort. Previously, you had to manually configure the response code levels to determine whether codes or code descriptions should be used to identify payment errors for payment gateways. Now it is automatically done by Zuora in accordance with the following rules.

  • Code level is used for gateways that respond with unique error codes and code messages. 
  • Description level is used for gateways that respond with similar error codes but unique code messages.

September 21, 2021 - Enhancement on Configurable Lockbox

You can now review the payment records that are ingested according to the lockbox file format configuration before the payments are processed. After you enable this feature, the file processing will be paused for review before payments are made. You can determine whether to proceed or reject the file completely. If you select to proceed, all matched payments will be processed. If you select to reject the file, payments will not be made and there will be no records for payments including failed payments.

To enable this feature, when configuring payment options during the initial configuration of a lockbox file format, enable the File Processing Review setting. 

See Configure the Configurable Lockbox feature and Use the Configurable Lockbox feature for more information.

August 31, 2021 - Product Name Change Announcement

The product name “Collect AI” is now changed to “Collections”, which includes the AI-based smart payment retry functionality. Zuora Collect is now referred to as a new product line containing Collections, Payments, Reconciliation, and Gateway Integrations, complementing other product lines including Zuora Billing, Zuora Revenue, and Zuora Central Platform. This name change comes as a result of the Zuora’s growth and transformation into multi-product company.

August 19, 2021 - Configurable Payment Retry

The following REST APIs for Configurable Payment Retry are now available to support retrieving the retry process metrics:

See the API Reference for more information.

July 29, 2021

Updated metrics in Configurable Payment Retry

On the Dashboard page (also the home page) of Configurable Payment Retry, a group of updated metrics are presented for you to evaluate the performance of your retry process. The metrics now include:

  • Retry Success Rate - The percentage of the successful payment attempts
  • Document Success Rate - The percentage of billing documents that are successfully collected
  • Average Days Outstanding - The average number of days that billing documents are unpaid before collection
  • Amount Recovered by currency
  • Metrics for each Customer Group

Visual cues are also provided to indicate the change in metrics over the last 30 days, which is helpful to provide insights into the progress and efficiency of the retry strategies.

See Understand the metrics on the home page for details.

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.

July 20, 2021 - Collections internationalization

All the following Collections features have been enhanced to support feature internationalization. The user interface of the feature is displayed in the language aligned with the Language setting in your user profile.

  • Advanced Payment Manager
  • Collections Window
  • Configurable Lockbox
  • Configurable Payment Retry
  • Notes
  • Statement Generator

To check or update the Language setting, click your username in the upper right of the Zuora UI, and then navigate to Profile > Manage Your Profile. The following languages are supported with English as the default.

  • English
  • Japanese
  • French
  • German
  • Spanish

June 11, 2021 - Collections Window

We have implemented the integration of Collections Window and Zuora Custom Objects for reporting invoice collection status. With an opt-in feature enabled, you can now define collection statuses for invoices in Collections Window or in Custom Object, and then apply the custom statuses to any invoices that meet the critical invoice conditions.

To enable this feature, in Collections Window, navigate to Settings > Collections Statuses and click Enable Invoice Statuses. Once this feature is enabled, a custom object called Collections Status will be created. The creation of this custom object will count towards the limit of the custom objects allowed in your tenant.

See Configure the Collections Window feature and Use the Collections Window feature for details.

To see this update, ensure that your Collections Window instance is associated with OAuth credentials. See Verify and update OAuth credentials for Collections features for more information.

June 8, 2021 - Configurable Payment Retry

A suite of REST APIs for the Configurable Payment Retry feature has now been released to support the following operations:

  • Retrieve the information of active retry cycles for a billing document or an account.
  • Retrieve the information of all retry cycles for a billing document or an account.
  • Schedule the next payment retry attempt for all active retry cycles associated with a billing document and/or an account.
  • Stop active retry cycles.
  • Submit a failed payment into the retry cycle.

See the API Reference for more information.

May 20, 2021 - UI refreshment in Configurable Payment Retry

The user interface of the Configurable Payment Retry feature has been refreshed with a new look and feel. The functionality is not changed, while the flows of configuring the feature are streamlined and consistent user experience aligned with other Collections features is offered.

The Configurable Payment Retry feature must be created using OAuth credentials to view the updated UI.

See Configure the Configurable Payment Retry Feature for more information.

May 18, 2021 - One-click deployment of Zuora Collections features

You can now install the following Collections features at once. If you installed any of these features previously, the existing features will not be recreated. Only the features that have not been installed will be created and deployed during the installation process.

  • Advanced Payment Manager
  • Collections Window
  • Configurable Lockbox
  • Configurable Payment Retry
  • Notes
  • Statement Generator
  • Workflow

See Install Zuora Collections features for more information.

May 12, 2021

Verify and update your OAuth credential if needed

All Collections features use OAuth to authenticate to your Zuora tenant. To avoid service disruption to the deployment of future enhancements of the Collections features, ensure that all features in all your environments were created by using OAuth credentials. Complete the following steps to verify and update the OAuth credential if needed.

  1. Navigate to Settings > Connect.
  2. Locate the desired tenant instance.
  3. Hover over the instance, and click Edit. 
  4. Ensure that the OAuth credential is included in the Target field. 

If you need to update this field, follow the instructions in Create an OAuth Tenant Login in Zuora Connect to create an OAuth credential, and then select the created OAuth credential from the Target dropdown list.

To avoid potential disruption to service, please complete the verification and update by June 1st, 2021.

When you install a new feature, ensure that you follow the instructions in Install Zuora Collections features.

Enhancement on Collections Window

We have improved the mechanism of API token identification for the integration of Collections Window and Workflow. When you configure the system integration in Collections Window, you do not need to enter the API tokens for the integration with Workflow anymore. The Workflow integration box is no longer displayed on the System Integrations tab.

See Configure the Collections Window feature for details.

May 11, 2021 - Configurable Lockbox

If the Invoice Settlement feature is enabled in the tenant, when you configure the payment options for a Lockbox, you can now select to apply the payment made at the account level as an unapplied payment that is not attached to any billing documents. The new option is available in the Account Document Processing Option list if you select Account Only or Account and Invoice for the Process Option field.

See Configure the Configurable Lockbox feature for details.

April 21, 2021 - Zuora Collect AI General Availability

Zuora Collect AI is now generally available to Zuora customers once it is purchased. It is generally available to all existing Collect customers. Collect AI is the newest addition to the subscription management suite of applications, with the following enhancements to the previous version of Zuora Collect.

The newly introduced Smart Retry feature in Configurable Payment Retry offers an AI-driven alternative to the existing retry logic configuration. Smart Retry leverages machine learning to retry failed customer payments at optimal times. The machine learning model evaluates over 15 characteristics of a transaction including payment gateway response codes, region, time of payment, etc,  and ingests new data on a daily basis to leverage the latest trends that impact payment success.

You can now select to either configure the retry logic manually based on the payment gateway response codes as before or use the AI-driven Smart Retry.

See the following articles for more information:

April 19, 2021 - Advanced Payment Manager and Configurable Payment Retry

We have implemented the integration of Collect and the support for creating payment runs at scale for Advanced Payment Manager and Configurable Payment Retry. 

With this enhancement, when a payment run is created in Advanced Payment Manager or a retry attempt is executed in Configurable Payment Retry, an associated payment run is also created and visible in Payment Runs of Zuora Payments. 

In Configurable Payment Retry, retry attempts are executed in batch on the hour rather than continually being executed. A maximum of 24 payment runs can be made in a day. Hence, the retry logic cannot be set to retrying sooner than every hour.

With this enhancement, the system settings of Configurable Payment Retry are also aligned to the parameters of Advanced Payment Manager and Zuora Payment Runs. You can now configure Configurable Payment Retry to use credit memos, unapplied payments, or closed payment methods.

To support this enhancement, please ensure that out-of-box payment retry is not running in Zuora environment, and the Callout Notification setting for Configurable Payment Retry is configured. Failure to disable the out-of-box payment retry while running Configurable Payment Retry might result in disruption to the service. See Configure the Configurable Payment Retry feature for details.

April 16, 2021 - Statement Generator 

The following account data are now available in the "Summary account and statement information" statement to provide more account information:

  • Account: Balance
  • Account: CommunicationProfileId

See Account and statement information summary CSV file for more information.

April 12, 2021- Configurable Lockbox

Enhancement for identifying the reasons for failed payments

An enhancement for identifying the reasons for failed payments has now been released. Previously, the failure reason was only contained on the details page of each payment record. You need to open the page one by one to check the message. Now the reasons for all failed payments are also included in the failed record report. To access the failed record report, on the Run tab, click the menu icon and then click Generate Failed Payments.

See Using the Configurable Lockbox feature for more information.

Improved user experience in displaying payment records

Previously, when you processed a payment that was applied to multiple billing documents in Configurable Lockbox, a payment record was created for each document that the payment was applied to. We have now condensed the record display by showing only one payment record for all the applied documents.

March 2, 2021- Collections Window

If the Invoice Settlement feature is enabled in the tenant, the information of debit memos is now available on the account details page in Collections Window. You can view debit memos of an account in addition to the invoice details, payments, and retry status as previously provided.

See Manage accounts in collections for more information.

February 16, 2021 - Configurable Payment Retry

Starting from February 16, 2021, Configurable Payment Retry no longer provides native support for changing payment gateways as part of the retry logic. The default payment gateway and payment method identified on the account are now used for payment retry attempts.

You can still change gateways for payment retry and manage the corresponding logic through an external system such as Workflow, instead of Configurable Payment Retry. If you do not update your existing configuration to remove this changing gateway logic, the application will ignore the request of changing gateways and continue to retry at the designated time. 

See Configure the Configurable Payment Retry feature for more information.

February 10, 2021 - Collections Window

The Update account agent API operation for Collections Window is now available. It allows you to update the collections agent that is displayed within the Collections Window UI, and the custom field for the agent displayed in account details within the Zuora UI.

To learn about the available API operations, see the Collections Window section in the Collect API Reference.

February 9, 2021 - Configurable Lockbox

We have enhanced the Configurable Lockbox feature to support payment processing against debit memos for the Account Only process.

The following processing options are now available in the Account Document Processing Options setting if you have the Invoice Settlement feature enabled in your Zuora tenant:

  • Debit Memos Only
  • Debit Memo First Then Invoices
  • Invoices First Then Debit Memos
  • Find Next Oldest Invoice or Debit Memo 

This enhancement will not impact your current processing. If you want to include debit memo support in your existing lockbox files, you have to modify your configurations for the particular lockbox file format. 

For more information, see Configure the Configurable Lockbox feature.

January 21, 2021 - Statement Generator and Notes

We released several enhancements to Statement Generator and Notes.

Statement Generator

  • Statement Generator now supports the following merge fields:
    • Account.UnappliedBalance
    • Account.UnappliedCreditMemoAmount
    • Account.UnappliedDebitMemoAmount
    • Payment.UnappliedPayment 
    • For details, see Merge fields supported by Statement Generator.
  • A new field called attach_to_account is now available in the request body of the Create an ad hoc statement run API operation. This field is used to indicate whether the generated statement is attached to the account. 
  • The Create an ad hoc statement run API operation now pulls credit memo data based on the specified time range. The start date and end date are taken into consideration to determine the credit memos that will be extracted. Previously, this operation would pull all credit memos instead of those ones within the indicated date range.  

Notes

We have enhanced the Notes feature to support a specific date range within which the notes will be exported. The changes include:

  • In the Export tab of the Notes UI, the following fields have been added:
    • Start Date
    • End Date
  • In the Get Comments API operation, the following query parameters are now supported:
    • start_date
    • end_date

You can use either UI or API to set the start date and end date. If you do not specify them, all notes will be exported.
For more information, see Using the Notes feature and Collect API Reference.

Release Notes in 2019