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Reconcile Transactions Before Closing an Accounting Period

Zuora

Reconcile Transactions Before Closing an Accounting Period

After running a trial balance, the Action Needed tab shows the items that you must clear before you can close the accounting period. Open the Action Needed tab to view more information about the items.

Draft invoices, draft payments, processing payments, processing refunds, draft credit memos, and draft debit memos must be cleared before you can close the accounting period.

Credit memos and debit memos are only available if you enable the Invoice Settlement feature.

Unprocessed charges are also displayed on the Actions Needed tab, but they will not prevent you from closing the accounting period. You can review those charges and choose whether to process them. The Unprocessed charges will not be available if you have the Only Generate Action Required in Trial Balance feature enabled. Unprocessed charges will include any rate plan charges which have not been billed to the end subscriber at the end of the current accounting period.

You can review those charges and choose whether to process them. To process these charges, you can initiate a bill run that will generate invoices for Unprocessed charges.

The Unprocessed charges will not be available if you have the Only Generate Action Required in Trial Balance feature enabled.

Unprocessed charges 

The unprocessed charges are the ones that have yet to be invoiced for the accounting period when the trial balance was run. Zuora notifies users of these charges so they can generate invoices for them. You can also ignore them and close the accounting period anyway. In that case, these charges will not be invoiced for this accounting period. Unprocessed charges will not include any discount charges.

Unprocessed charges will be included in the following criteria:

  • The unprocessed charge is included if it has never been billed, its effective start date is <= Accounting Period End Date, and its effective end date is > Accounting Period Start Date.
  • If the charge has previously been billed, it is not a one-time charge, and Is Processed is checked, the unprocessed charge is included when the charge's charge through date <= Accounting Period End Date and the charge's effective end date is null or >= Accounting Period Start Date.
    You can export corresponding fields from the Rate Plan Charge object. For more information, see Rate Plan Charge Data Source.

What kind of transactions, and what do I do about them?

Unprocessed charges and draft invoices are the most common items that people encounter when trying to close their books. You don't have to take care of unprocessed charges on your balance sheet, but you do have to clear draft invoices.

You can use a bill run to clear unprocessed charges, and you can clear draft invoices by either posting or cancelling them. If you decide to do a bill run, be sure to do it before you run another trial balance or you risk generating draft invoices.

Steps

In the Accounting Period detail page, the Action Needed tab displays four types of invoice and payment processes, defined as either Required or Optional.  The Optional items will not be available if you have the Only Generate Action Required in Trial Balance feature enabled.

The following sections describe how to fix these issues:

After you have taken care of any required actions, run a trial balance again. If there are no more required actions, you can close your accounting period. 

Required: Clear a draft invoice

Each draft invoice must be posted or cancelled before closing the accounting period.

  1. In the Action Needed tab, click the Transaction Number of the invoice to view the invoice details.
  2. In the invoice detail page, click Post Invoice to post the invoice and clear the issue. Alternatively, you can cancel the invoice by selecting more > Cancel Invoice.
  3. Re-run the trial balance to confirm that the issue is fixed. 

Required: Clear a draft payment

Draft payments are uncompleted payments created in Zuora through an old API call, and must be deleted before closing the accounting period. Draft payments have no financial impact on your accounting system. 

  1. In the Action Needed tab, click the Transaction Number of the invoice to view the invoice details. 
  2. Click the delete this payment option from the more dropdown list. A confirmation dialog box opens.
  3. Click the Yes button to delete the payment. 
  4. Re-run the trial balance to confirm that the issue is fixed. 

Required: Clear a processing payment

A payment is in the Processing state when Zuora tries to collect an electronic payment through a payment gateway and the gateway fails to report whether the payment was successful. Work with your payment gateway to find the correct status of the payment, and contact Zuora Global Support to update the payment status.

Required: Clear a processing refund

A refund is in the Processing state when Zuora attempts to process an electronic refund through a payment gateway and the gateway fails to report whether the refund was successful or not. Work with your payment gateway to find the correct status of the refund, and contact Zuora Global Support to update the refund status.

Required: Clear a draft credit memo

Each draft credit memo must be posted or cancelled before closing the accounting period. 

Note that credit memos are only available if you enable the Invoice Settlement feature.

  1. In the Action Needed tab, click the Transaction Number of the credit memo to view the credit memo details.
  2. In the credit memo detail page, click post to post the credit memo and clear the issue. Alternatively, you can click cancel to cancel the credit memo.
  3. Re-run the trial balance to confirm that the issue is fixed. 

Required: Clear a draft debit memo

Each draft debit memo must be posted or cancelled before closing the accounting period.

Note that debit memos are only available if you enable the Invoice Settlement feature.

  1. In the Action Needed tab, click the Transaction Number of the debit memo to view the debit memo details.
  2. In the debit memo detail page, click post to post the debit memo and clear the issue. Alternatively, you can click cancel to cancel the debit memo.
  3. Re-run the trial balance to confirm that the issue is fixed. 

Optional: Clear unprocessed charges

If you have any unprocessed charges, you can decide whether to resolve these and include them in the current accounting period. 

Click the click here to download link to download a comma-separated value (.csv) report that gives you more information about the charges, including the account number, subscription number, charge type, and charge dates. 

Why should I process these charges?

In most cases, you will want to resolve unprocessed charges in this billing period, even if the service spans across multiple billing periods. If you need to spread unprocessed charges over multiple accounting periods, charge for the amount that you want to include in the current accounting period before closing it. 

For example, if you are using monthly billing periods, and you are charging for a service that began in January and continues into February, Zuora recommends that you create a bill run for unprocessed charges in the January billing period before you close the books for January. This ensures that the January accounting period will accurately reflect all of the income generated for that month. 

If you process usage charges, make sure that you have loaded all of the usage information for the service period, or only process recurring and one-time charges.