Zuora’s April ‘14 release adds configuration options for customers to bill and collect more effectively

October 10, 2014

The latest release adds more configuration options for billing, additional permissions controls for batch processes, and client side credit card validations.

Foster City, CA – April 30, 2014

Zuora, the subscription billing, commerce and finance leader announces the availability of its April ‘14 release.

This release includes a strong focus on customer-facing capabilities and more control over billing, payment and accounting operations. Client-side credit card validation allows streamlined, accurate collection on payment pages. New added merge fields on invoices give customers clear, accurate information on this critical customer touch point. Advanced user permission settings mean more control over billing and payment ops for Zuora users. And, the ability to add or delete usage records in a closed accounting period means more flexibility.

The highlights of this release include:

    • Client-side credit card validation on hosted payment pages

Because B2C companies acquire most customers through online webstores, it is increasingly important to gather accurate payment information and streamline the user experience on Zuora’s hosted payment pages. Zuora introduces the option to turn on client-side credit card validations to reduce the number of user input errors during the payment process. This validation checks credit card numbers and credit card types before a payment is submitted to the payment gateway.

    • Additional merge field options to customize your invoice template

An invoice serves as a critical touchpoint between a company and its customers. To avoid misunderstandings or friction in a customer relationship, it is important to provide customers with detailed and accurate information in every invoice. With this release, Zuora adds additional merge fields to invoice templates, including usage summary and invoice item level fields, to provide more invoice presentation options for its customers.

    • Advanced user permission settings for billing and payment ops

Larger companies often need granular control over who is allowed to manage bill runs or payment ops in the organization. Companies will now be able to further align Zuora permissions with the unique needs of its billing and payment operations. Permissions can be assigned per individual user to determine whether a user can create, edit, or remove bill runs, payment runs, and payment methods.

    • New option to create or delete usage records in a closed accounting period

While it would be great for billing cycles to be perfectly in sync with accounting close cycles, this is often not the case at many companies. Usage data may not be reported until weeks or months after the monthly financial close, and customers need a way to add this usage data into Zuora. Starting this month, customers now have the flexibility to add or delete usage from a closed accounting period.

All of Zuora’s hundreds of customers automatically received this product update with no negative impact to existing configurations and customizations. This is only possible with the modern, multi-tenant SaaS architecture found in Zuora’s Z-Business platform. Customers can read about the details of the April ‘14 release here.

Commentary:

Sr. Vice President of Product Strategy and Product Management at Zuora, Guillaume Vives commented:
“For Zuora users, April is all about giving users more control over client facing billing and payment operations and flexibility in how data is treated in closed accounting periods. Tools that help streamline the back-end processes while simultaneously allowing companies to focus on delivering a great customer experience – that is the idea behind this month’s release. Our aim is to give you more control with more advanced settings and configurations, so you can stay focused on adding real value to your business.”