by Clement Wang

This month we are rolling out a major improvement in our customers’ ability to determine billing rules, greater reporting and reconciliation capabilities on transactions tracked within our system, and improvements to our API for managing customers’ product catalogs. Here are some major highlights:

Transaction Custom Fields: Over the past few releases, we’ve rolled out Z-Payments 3.0, which allows customers to manage their entire invoice-to-cash process. This includes the ability to track the full range of transactions that typically come up in subscription businesses. As the transaction volume increases, it becomes increasingly desirable accurately categorize and report on transactions in the system (e.g. reason codes for refunds or adjustments, CSR or Salesperson responsible for handling or approving transactions, etc.). With this release we allow Z-customers to create custom fields on all transactions (including invoices, payments, refunds, invoice item adjustments, and invoice adjustments) to facilitate this tracking.

Improved Product Catalog API: We have enhanced our product catalog API’s to allow users to create new price plans or update existing ones in the product catalog via API. This is especially useful for customers who manage large product catalogs and need to do mass-scheduled price/plan updates.

Greater Billing Flexibility: With the November release, we’ve added a powerful feature which allows customers much greater flexibility in configuring how customers are billed. For example, if a customer subscribes to a service that is billed on a monthly basis on the first of the month, and then adds a second service on the 15th of the next month. Customers now have the option to charge that customer for a pro-rated partial month to bring the billing of the two services into alignment, or they may opt to bill the customer the entire month of the second service, effectively separating the billing (and payment) of the first and second service (i.e. the first service may continue to bill on the 1st of the month and the second service is billed on the 15th of the month).

Accounting Reconciliation Status: To aid in closing the books, Zuora now tracks the accounting reconciliation status on all transactions that may be tracked and integrated with an external accounting system. This allows transactions to be tracked throughout the reconciliation process and allows transactions that have been transferred to the accounting system to be locked down to ensure that the systems stay in synch.

Learn more about these features and others in our new release at our Live Monthly Release Webinar on Thursday, November 11 at Noon PST. Click on the link below to sign up:
http://info.zuora.com/NovemberCustomerWebinar-NewFeatures.html