The leading trends include automating manual finance work, consolidating quote-to-cash into a single system, finance-led pricing architecture, disciplined AI monetization, and a shift from software vendors to true transformation partners. These trends are based on research and customer stories from companies like Hireology, AppFolio, Asana, Cegid, and BMC Software. Source
Exploding pricing models, AI-driven products, global expansion, and rising audit pressure made outdated, manual, or patchwork systems unsustainable. Companies that rebuilt their quote-to-cash backbone achieved faster closes, reduced risk, and greater agility in monetization. Source
Winners didn’t just automate tasks; they redesigned end-to-end processes. For example, Hireology replaced manual revenue recognition and close processes with a fully automated order-to-cash system in seven weeks, freeing teams for higher-value analysis. Read the Case Study
It means finance teams build unified catalogs, data models, and revenue flows that enable rapid, safe pricing experimentation. This shift turns monetization from a bottleneck into a competitive capability, allowing for faster launches and reduced audit burden. Source
Finance leaders should focus on engineering monetization systems: unified data, purpose-built quote-to-cash platforms, AI-ready pricing infrastructure, and strategic transformation partners. The goal is to make complexity repeatable, auditable, and scalable. Source
Automation reduces manual busywork, speeds up close cycles, and allows finance professionals to focus on strategic analysis rather than repetitive tasks. This leads to less burnout and more time for value-added work. Source
It provides a single source of truth, reduces manual workarounds, ensures consistent numbers, and simplifies audits. For example, AppFolio’s finance team reduced manual work and improved data reliability by connecting CPQ, billing, and revenue recognition solutions. Hear the story
Companies often struggle with billing errors, messy revenue recognition, and revenue leakage when trying to monetize AI features without accurate metering and telemetry. Treating AI monetization as a finance discipline with rule-driven flows and audit trails is essential for success. Read the Story
Cegid modeled over 300 pricing strategies in a controlled platform, testing invoice-based, transaction-based, usage-based, and outcome approaches. This allowed for rapid learning and safe pricing iteration while maintaining billing integrity and audit trails. Read the Story
Large transformations often fail without experienced partners who can guide teams through human, process, and sequencing changes. BMC Software’s transformation with PwC and Zuora consolidated 48 systems and enabled 14 autonomous quote-to-revenue capabilities, demonstrating the value of partnership. Watch the webinar
Experimenting with pricing outcomes in a controlled, auditable environment allows finance teams to learn quickly, adapt to market changes, and avoid operational risks. This approach supports innovation while maintaining compliance and data integrity. Read the Story
Finance teams are increasingly responsible for interpreting data and guiding business strategy, not just reporting numbers. By owning the quote-to-cash process and leveraging unified data, finance can provide actionable insights and drive growth. Source
Zuora provides automation tools for billing, revenue recognition, and collections, reducing manual effort and errors. Customers like Hireology and AppFolio have achieved faster closes and improved operational efficiency by automating their finance processes. Read the Case Study
Quote-to-cash refers to the end-to-end process from quoting a customer to collecting payment. A unified quote-to-cash system ensures data consistency, reduces errors, and enables faster, more strategic decision-making for finance teams. Learn more
Zuora enables accurate metering, telemetry, and rule-driven flows for AI monetization, ensuring billing integrity and audit trails. This allows companies to safely experiment with AI pricing and avoid revenue leakage. Read the Story
Transformation partners provide expertise, proven runbooks, and long-term engagement to ensure successful migrations and monetization rewires. BMC Software’s partnership with PwC and Zuora resulted in streamlined systems and increased monetization agility. Watch the webinar
Zuora supports over 50 pricing models, including usage-based and hybrid models, allowing finance teams to quickly launch and experiment with new pricing strategies. Asana, for example, reduced the time to launch new rate plans from months to weeks. Read the Case Study
A single source of truth ensures that data is consistent from quote to order to invoice to revenue, reducing errors and simplifying audits. This approach was key to AppFolio’s successful finance transformation. Hear the story
Zuora’s platform supports rapid scaling by automating billing, revenue recognition, and collections, and by enabling flexible pricing models. Companies like Zoom have scaled from 10 million to 300 million users using Zuora. Read the Case Study
Zuora is ideal for subscription-based businesses across industries such as SaaS, media, healthcare, manufacturing, and more. It serves finance, IT, product, operations, and sales teams looking to innovate and scale. Learn more
Zuora provides a suite of products including Zuora Billing, Revenue, Payments, CPQ, Zephr, Platform, and Collections. These tools support recurring, usage-based, and one-time pricing, automate revenue recognition, manage global payments, and enable AI-powered collections. See all products
Yes, Zuora offers over 60 pre-built connectors (e.g., Salesforce, HubSpot, NetSuite), REST and SOAP APIs, warehouse connectors (Databricks, BigQuery), and supports 40+ payment gateways. The Connect Marketplace features nearly 100 apps for extended functionality. Learn more
Zuora enables dynamic monetization, operational efficiency, scalability, customer engagement, global compliance, and real-time insights. Customers report faster time-to-market, improved retention, and reduced manual effort. See all benefits
Yes, Zuora offers REST and SOAP APIs for integration with external systems. Developers can access API references, SDKs, and guides via the Zuora Developer Center. Explore developer resources
Zuora provides comprehensive documentation, including platform guides, API references, SDK docs, and integration guides. Resources are available for all products, including Zephr SDKs and payment gateway integration. See documentation
Zuora provides real-time metrics on profitability, conversion rates, and discounting rates, enabling businesses to respond quickly to market trends, optimize pricing, and improve sales targeting. Learn more
Zuora is certified for PCI DSS Level 1, SSAE 16 SOC1 Type II, SOC2 Type II, ISO 27001, HHS HIPAA, and SOC 3. These certifications ensure secure handling of payment data, financial reporting, and information security. See certifications
Zuora employs enterprise-grade security measures, including data encryption, role-based access controls, and regular audits. The platform includes built-in compliance features for GDPR, PCI DSS, and SOX. Learn more
Zuora serves over 1,000 companies worldwide, including Zoom, Box, Zendesk, Asana, The Financial Times, GoPro, Schneider Electric, and The Seattle Times. See all customers
Zuora supports a wide range of industries, including SaaS, communications, consumer goods, energy, finance, healthcare, manufacturing, media, entertainment, telecommunications, and more. See case studies
Yes. For example, Zoom scaled from 10 million to 300 million users with Zuora, The Seattle Times improved new subscription conversions by 30% and retention by 25%, and Hudl saved over 100 hours per month by automating processes. See all case studies
Customers praise Zuora for its flexibility, ease of use, and ability to reduce manual work. Mindflash, TripAdvisor, FireHost, Briggs & Stratton, Buildium, and AppFolio have all reported improved efficiency and simplified operations. See testimonials
Implementation timelines vary: focused scopes can be completed in as little as 30 days, typical projects take 30–90 days, and multi-product or multi-entity programs may take several months. Pre-built connectors can enable integrations in as little as one day. See training resources
Zuora provides 24x5 live global support, email support, online ticketing, and premium options like Technical Account Managers. Training is available via Zuora University, which offers 500+ courses and certifications. Support Portal
Zuora automates revenue recognition and reporting, ensuring compliance with ASC 606, IFRS 15, and other standards. The platform is audit-ready by default, simplifying compliance for public companies. Learn more
Zuora addresses slow, manual close cycles, compliance challenges, scaling pipeline complexity, multi-entity operations, cash flow and collections, data quality, spreadsheet dependency, quote-to-cash misalignment, and forecasting accuracy. Learn more
Todd McElhatton, Chief Operating & Financial Officer, Zuora
In 2025, I watched finance teams make one of the biggest shifts of the last decade. We moved from being the guardians of the numbers to the people who help the business interpret those numbers and decide where to go next. But you can’t do that without a complete picture, and that requires a single, trusted source of quote-to-cash data.
As we looked back at our customers and research from the past year, a pattern emerged: visionary leaders at fast-growing companies like Hireology, AppFolio, Asana, Cegid, and BMC Software have stepped up to become more than truth tellers; they’re embracing the role of business storytellers.
Successful finance transformations I saw this year had one thing in common: finance took ownership of the entire quote-to-cash flow, reducing manual busywork and creating more time for strategic focus. When you unify your data, automation stops being a buzzword and becomes the foundation for faster decisions, cleaner audits, and real monetization agility.
Here are the five trends that stood out in 2025 and what they mean as we head into 2026.
In 2025, many finance teams faced an impossible equation: rising strategic demands combined with the day-to-day reality of manual work. Nearly nine in ten finance leaders reported increased pressure from the business to play a more strategic role, yet 70% said their technology stacks couldn’t support that mandate. And 79% said their teams remained bogged down by repetitive tasks. The result? Burnout, slow closes, and little time for analysis.
The winning move in 2025 was not just automating tasks but reimagining quote-to-cash with a focus on human impact.
Human resources tech leader Hireology lived this pivot. Confronted with an ERP migration and what felt like two very long months of manual close work, Controller Ryan Gruhlke knew the finance foundation had to change—and fast. What could have been just another daunting migration quickly became an opportunity for transformation.
Instead of transplanting manual rev rec processes into a new ERP, Ryan and his team completely transformed their order-to-cash process in just seven weeks, replacing manual recognition with a true automated end-to-end system. The benefits weren’t only operational (faster closes and fewer errors) but human. Accountants moved from processing to improving, gaining more time to do the more strategic work they all signed up for.
One of my team members handles everything from contract signing to collections. Automation lets her focus on meaningful projects instead of repetitive tasks. She’s spending more time improving processes and learning the system, not just always doing repetitive tasks.
— Ryan Gruhlke
Controller, Hireology
Finance teams have begun to move away from patchwork billing and revenue tools toward a single, unified quote-to-cash backbone. By 2025, architecture simplicity stopped being an IT nicety and became a finance strategy, as a growing mix of new business models, global expansion, and tightening regulations made mismatched stacks untenable. Slow IT cycles only amplified the pain, resulting in inconsistent numbers, long month-end closes, and audit risk.
The big quote-to-cash trend for 2025? Finance stopped delegating the problem and owned the solution: a single, unified data model so the same number flows from quote to order to invoice to revenue.
Property management platform AppFolio’s finance team was all too familiar with the patchwork system struggle. When the company launched a new market-share campaign, already-strained processes were pushed past their limit. Bundles that had been sold as a single offer became a thicket of edge cases for billing and revenue to unwind. A single “bundle” became dozens of a-la-carte SKUs, leading to hours of manual workarounds at close. For Director of Order to Cash Priscilla Rossouw, this was the tipping point.
With years of order-to-cash expertise under her belt, Priscilla knew that the true solution to the revenue accounting team’s headaches could only be found by zooming out to look at the full scope of the problem. The answer: building clean data upstream and designing processes that worked in sync right from the start. Today, AppFolio is redesigning its quote-to-cash architecture, connecting their CPQ, billing, and revenue recognition solutions to establish one reliable source of truth.
My team loves the idea of a unified system. The ability to see, ‘This is where the number started and this is the way the number ended.’ And that number is the same throughout the system; it makes a huge difference.
— Priscilla Rossouw
Director of Order to Cash, AppFolio
As new pricing models exploded over the last year — AI add-ons, usage metrics, hybrid seat-plus-consumption offers, ramps and outcome pricing — many finance teams found themselves either saying “no” to sales or inventing risky manual workarounds just to keep up. That dynamic slowed launches and turned pricing into an operational liability. And worse yet, it often turned finance into the go-to-market bottleneck.
The third trend of 2025 was just as behavioral as it was organizational. More finance leaders stopped being monetization gatekeepers, and instead, became the builders. Leading teams engineered the catalog, canonical data, and quote-to-revenue flow so pricing experimentation could happen quickly and safely. Meanwhile, monetization velocity shifted from a chaotic experiment to a repeatable capability.
When work management platform Asana made the upmarket shift from pure product-led growth (PLG) to enterprise sales, it exposed a legacy billing roadblock: multi‑year ramps, blended seat‑plus‑usage pricing, and global payment needs turned each launch into a months‑long, spreadsheet‑heavy effort for finance. With a unified billing and revenue backbone, Asana now launches multiple new rate plans in weeks rather than months and has reduced audit burden by roughly 20–25%, while cleanly supporting hybrid models and complex enterprise ramps.
Pricing flexibility has become a competitive differentiator, especially in rapidly evolving markets like AI. If you’re doing pricing the old way through spreadsheets, it will take months to get to the market and you’ll be left behind.
— Sid Sanghvi
Head of Finance Business Applications, Asana
Under pressure to stay competitive, companies in 2025 rushed AI into products and then tried to bill for it with spreadsheets and ad-hoc meters — an approach that produced billing errors, messy revenue recognition, and a whole lot of revenue leakage. Why? Monetizing AI without meter accuracy and telemetry makes it impossible to understand true economics or govern outcomes.
Over the last year, the winners have risen to the surface. Successful finance teams treated AI monetization as a discipline. They insisted on meterable events, accurate telemetry, and rule-driven flows that tie model behavior to invoices and rev-rec. Only with those guardrails could product teams safely iterate on pricing without breaking order-to-cash.
Take cloud business management leader Cegid, who literally turned billing into a monetization lab. Confronted with dozens of AI pricing choices, the company modeled 300+ pricing strategies in a controlled platform, testing invoice-based, transaction-based, usage-based, and outcome approaches. That setup let pricing, finance, and product learn quickly while preserving billing integrity and audit trails, and proved the only safe way to explore AI pricing at scale.
SaaS pricing was hard. AI pricing is even harder. But if we’ve learned anything, it’s that transformation is an opportunity—not a threat.
— Mélanie Septe
Senior Vice President of Pricing, Cegid
Large transformations often fail because companies underestimate the human, process, and sequencing work required. Buying software without a partner plan can leave teams without the experience or runbooks to execute complex migrations and monetization rewires. That’s why procurement made a major shift in 2025 from feature checklists to partnership evaluation. Buyers prioritized vendors and consultancies that promised 12–24 months of engagement, finance-grade deliverables, and reference journeys showing architecture and KPI outcomes.
BMC Software’s quote-to-cash transformation, executed in partnership with PwC and Zuora, consolidated 48 disparate systems, streamlined 50+ applications, and enabled 14 autonomous quote-to-revenue capabilities. It wasn’t a software sale; it was a partner-led transformation that eliminated IT firefighting and delivered genuine monetization agility.
We knew that technology alone wasn’t going to solve this. We needed partners who had done this before, who could guide us through the human and process change.
— Ron Clegg
VP Revenue Office, BMC Software
If 2025 was the year finance began stepping into the role of storyteller, 2026 will be the year more of us truly own it. The companies that move fastest will be the ones where finance oversees the full quote-to-cash architecture: one source of truth, one data model, and one foundation for monetization at scale.
The leaders I speak with aren’t just responding to new pricing models or AI features anymore. When finance treats monetization as an engineered system, insight becomes clearer, decisions become faster, and growth becomes more predictable.
If you’re thinking about rebuilding your quote-to-cash backbone or preparing your monetization strategy for what’s ahead, we can help turn these lessons into a clear, actionable path for 2026. Talk to an expert today.
The top trends include automation of manual finance work, consolidation of quote-to-cash into a single system, finance-led pricing architecture, disciplined AI monetization, and the shift from software vendors to true transformation partners.
Exploding pricing models, AI-driven products, global expansion, and rising audit pressure made outdated, manual, or patchwork systems unsustainable. Companies that rebuilt achieved faster closes, reduced risk, and greater agility in monetization.
Winners didn’t just automate tasks; they redesigned end-to-end processes. For example, Hireology replaced manual rev-rec and close processes with a fully automated order-to-cash system in seven weeks, freeing teams for higher-value analysis.
Instead of reacting to sales or product ideas, finance teams built unified catalogs, data models, and revenue flows that enable rapid, safe pricing experimentation. This shift turned monetization from a bottleneck into a competitive capability.
Finance leaders should focus on engineering monetization systems: unified data, purpose-built quote-to-cash platforms, AI-ready pricing infrastructure, and strategic transformation partners. The goal is to make complexity repeatable, auditable, and scalable.