Zuora Revenue 37.005.00.00 Release Notes

Close Process Dashboard

This enhancement is currently available only to customers who use the Zuora Billing & Revenue integration with SSO enabled.

The month-end close process is high stakes and critical because it generates the revenue numbers on financial statements. In Zuora Revenue, the close process involves a lot of tedious and manual work across three major phases: upstream data validation, accounting reconciliation, and close processing. In this release, the month-end process starts to be optimized through the first version of the Close Process Dashboard, which addresses the data validation phase. After the dashboard is enabled, it serves as a central point for you to get the following real-time information and take appropriate actions from this dashboard if necessary:

• The number of exceptions in the staging tables for the current period
• The unprocessed events with the event effective date that falls into the current period
• The number of orphan transactions at the time of running the dashboard
• A summary of the booking data for the current period (number of sales order lines, total extended sell price in transactional currency, and total ordered quantity)
• A summary of the billing data for the current period (number of invoice lines, total invoice amount in transactional currency, and total billed quantity)

With this enhancement, you can quickly get a high-level understanding of the state of your upstream data for the current period, gain visibility into the data validation errors, and take immediate action to eliminate problems continuously throughout the month-end close process. For more information, see Close Process Dashboard.

Formula-based cost reversal issue

Previously, after the formula-based cost is overwritten with uploaded cost lines, the cost will be calculated based on the formula again for the line whenever there is an SO update collected in the revenue contract. Based on this behavior, the cost schedule for a line might be reversed if the recalculated amount becomes 0 even though the SO update is collected for another line in the same revenue contract.

From this release, this behavior is changed. After the formula-based cost is overwritten with uploaded cost lines, it will not be recalculated based on the formula for each SO update. To update the cost amount, either the SO update must contain the desired cost amount, or the cost lines are uploaded again.

New fields available in Billing Rollforward Report

In this release, the following fields are available for the Billing Rollforward Report and they are also added to the corresponding Line Staging tables. You can add these fields to your own report layout.

• Allocatable Ext Price (ALCTBL_XT_PRC)
• Allocatable Ext Price in functional currency (ALCTBL_FN_XT_PRC)
• Allocated Ext Price (ALCTD_XT_PRC)
• Batch ID (BATCH_ID)
• Billed - Released Revenue (BLD_REC_AMT)
• Billed - Unreleased Revenue (BLD_DEF_AMT)
• Contract Asset Account (CA_ACCOUNT)
• Company Code (COMPANY_CODE)
• Cumulative Allocated Amount (CUM_ALCTD_AMT)
• Cumulative Carves Amount (CUM_CV_AMT)
• Carves Adjustment (CV_AMT)
• Unreleased Revenue (DEF_AMT)
• Discount Amount (DISC_AMT)
• Ext List Price (EXT_LST_PRC)
• Ext Sell Price (EXT_SLL_PRC)
• Ext SSP Price (EXT_FV_PRC)
• SSP Price (FV_PRC)
• LT Contract Asset (LT_CA_ACCOUNT)
• Released Revenue (REC_AMT)
• Unit List Price (UNIT_LIST_PRC)
• Unit Sell Price (UNIT_SELL_PRC)
• Unreleased Carves Adjustment (UNSCHD_ADJ)

Improved CA/CL netting performance

Previously, during the CA/CL netting process, the CA/CL balance is calculated for each revenue contract even though the revenue contract does not have any activity in the current period. Besides, for multi-organization instances, the query to fetch the maximum period ID uses the incorrect plan.

In the release, the CA/CL netting performance is improved. If a revenue contract does not have any activity in the current period, the CA/CL balance will be copied from the last period without unnecessary calculation. The query to fetch the maximum period ID is corrected to improve efficiency. If there is only one organization in the system, the following query will be used to fetch the maximum period ID for CA/CL netting process:

SELECT MAX(prd_id) INTO g_prv_prd_id FROM rpro_rc_head_period WHERE prd_id < p_prd_id;

Data augmentation change

Previously, the data augmentation rule is triggered every time when data is collected. It will become a problem for the line that the data augmentation rule is applied to and then stopped in staging tables due to some data issue. The result will be inconsistent when the data issue is fixed for the line and it is collected again. 

From this release, the data augmentation rule will be applied to a line only once no matter whether the line is collected for the first time or it is collected again after data fix.

New reports available for automated reconciliation

This enhancement is applicable only if you use Billing - Revenue Integration.

To ease the effort for reconciliation between Zuora Billing and Zuora Revenue, the following reports have been introduced in Zuora Revenue:

• Billing to Revenue Booking Report
• Billing to Revenue Billing Report

With these configurable reports, you can easily identify the data mismatch between Zuora Billing and Zuora Revenue. 

See Data Reconciliation between Zuora Billing and Zuora Revenue for more information.

New custom field mappings available for owner transfer scenario

This enhancement is applicable only if you use Billing - Revenue Integration.

In the owner transfer scenario, you might need to reference Account-level custom fields that are specific to InvoiceOwner or SubscriptionOwner. Now, you can use the following fields to define custom field mappings in the mapping templates of all transaction types:

• For custom fields related to SubscriptionOwner, use CreatorAccount.<BillingCustomField>.
• For custom fields related to InvoiceOwner, use CreatorInvoiceOwner.<BillingCustomField>.

Validation introduced in Billing settings syncing process

This enhancement is applicable only if you use Billing - Revenue Integration.

A back-end validation service has been introduced in the RevPro3.0 Billing Settings Sync Process program. It can help you identify and correct the misconfiguration in the RevPro3.0 Sync Object Mapping program that is run during the Billing settings sync process. Specifically, the following settings are checked:

• Order Enabled
• Invoice Settle Enabled
• Credit Balance Enabled

If a mismatch is detected between the configuration and the actual Billing settings, an error message will pop up.

Error message displayed when Revenue Sync filter returns null

This enhancement is applicable only if you use the Billing - Revenue Integration.

When no result is returned based on the specified filter in the Revenue Sync UI, an error message is now displayed to help you troubleshoot. Previously, no error message was displayed nor could you launch the Revenue Sync job in the same scenario.

Support for using the exchange rate on a specific date

This enhancement is applicable only if you use the Billing - Revenue Integration.

You now have the flexibility to use the exchange rate for both Functional Currency and Reporting Currency on the SO date or Invoice date. A new profile named BILLING_EXCHANGE_RATE_DATE is now available for configuration with the following options:

• Latest Rate Available (default)
• Rate On Specified Date

With the Rate On Specified Date option specified, the rate on the SO date will be used for SO transactions and the rate on the invoice date will be used for billing transactions. If the exchange rate on the SO date or invoice date is not available, an error message will be displayed.

See Sync currency exchange rate from Zuora Billing into Zuora Revenue for more information.

Consistent evergreen subscription CCV calculation for different billing timings

This enhancement is applicable only if you use Billing - Revenue Integration.

Zuora Billing allows for two billing timings: Bill in arrears and Bill in advance. Previously, for evergreen subscriptions, the CCV for Bill in arrears charges was different from that of the Bill in advance charges, which was confusing. 

Therefore, Billing - Revenue Integration has calibrated the CCV calculation for evergreen subscriptions. The CCVs are now the same between the two billing timings.

See CCV calculation for evergreen subscriptions for more information.

Editing seeded templates disabled

This enhancement is applicable only if you use Billing - Revenue Integration.

The Zuora Revenue UI has been enhanced to disable editing pre-populated transaction templates and grouping templates. It is to ensure that the standard templates are always in place, and updates are applied to only custom templates.

Changes to BI views 

In this release, the following changes are made to the Zuora Revenue BI views. To download the spreadsheet that contains the columns in each BI view and their sources, see Data entry details.

• New columns are added to the following BI views:
  • RPRO_BI3_RC_LN_COST_V
  • RPRO_BI3_RC_LNS_V
• Data type is changed for some columns in the following BI views:
  • RPRO_BI3_LN_ACCT_SUMM_V
  • RPRO_BI3_RC_BILL_V
  • RPRO_BI3_BOOK_V
  • RPRO_BI3_RC_LN_COST_V
  • RPRO_BI3_RC_HEAD_V
  • RPRO_BI3_RC_HOLD_V
  • RPRO_BI3_RC_LNS_V
  • RPRO_BI3_MJE_V
  • RPRO_BI3_RC_POB_V
  • RPRO_BI3_RC_SCHD_V
  • RPRO_BI3_WF_SUMM_V
• The column called ZBILL_TRUE_UP_FLAG is deprecated in RPRO_BI3_RC_BILL_V.