Subscriptions
The Subscription is a pivotal record inside of NetSuite, offering a comprehensive statement of products and services purchased by a customer. It acts as the parent record to the Subscription Item, detailing specific items sold, billed, and charged.
Key Features:
Unified Structure: The Subscription and Subscription Item relationship are foundational for generating charges for items sold.
NetSuite Integration: Subscriptions are always linked to a native NetSuite Customer Record.
Master Contract Grouping: Subscriptions can be grouped under a Master Contract for easy management of shared contracts and charge schedules.
Charge Overview: Subscriptions provide a snapshot of billed, pending, and future charges.
Date Management: Both Start and End Dates are required, with the latter essential for projecting future charges.
Charge Schedules: drive the cadence or timing of when invoices should be generated.
Currency and Subsidiary Management: Subscriptions support multiple currencies and subsidiaries, ensuring compatibility with diverse customer needs.
Additional Features: From setting payment terms to attaching files, the Subscription offers a range of functionalities to enhance user experience.
Usage Based Pricing
Usage Based Billing in ZoneBilling revolves around the concept of billing customers based on their actual consumption of a product or service. Whether it's the number of text messages sent, the amount of data stored, or the volume of utilities consumed, ZoneBilling offers a precise and flexible billing solution.
Examples:
- A Telecom Company automatically sends phone usage data to ZoneBilling, ensuring customers are billed precisely for the minutes they've used
- A cloud storage provider integrates with ZoneBilling to bill customers based on the amount of storage space they consume each month.
- Streaming platforms utilize ZoneBilling to charge users based on the number of hours or movies watched.
- An IoT service provider leverages ZoneBilling to bill clients based on the number of data packets transmitted by their devices.
- A SaaS platform integrates with ZoneBilling to charge businesses based on the number of active users or features accessed each month.
Revenue Recognition
ZoneBilling, in collaboration with NetSuite, offers a transformative approach to revenue recognition, allowing businesses to scale efficiently. ZoneBilling's Revenue Management is a game-changer for businesses looking to automate and optimize their revenue recognition processes within NetSuite. With its powerful features and flexibility, ZoneBilling ensures accuracy, efficiency, and compliance in revenue recognition.
Key Features:
- Advanced Revenue Recognition: ZoneBilling simplifies the complexities of revenue recognition, especially for software companies with varying billing cadences and ramp-up examples.
- Automated Processes: ZoneBilling can automate several processes within the application. For instance, the "Update Revenue Details" process can be automated to run at set intervals, such as every three hours, mirroring NetSuite's native process.
- Customizable Billing Schedules: Unlike the manual process in NetSuite, ZoneBilling allows for more flexible billing schedules, accommodating scenarios like pre-negotiated escalations in service offerings.
- Revenue Configuration: ZoneBilling's revenue module uses Revenue Configuration records to group charges and build Revenue elements. This configuration ensures that revenue recognition aligns with ASC 606 and IFRS 15 rules.
- Revenue Details & Arrangements: Post the ""Update Revenue Details"" process, ZoneBilling creates Revenue Orders and Revenue Details, which act as precursors to revenue elements. This ensures accurate revenue recognition without manual intervention.
- Automation & Frequency: ZoneBilling's automation feature can be set up to run processes at specified intervals. This automation ensures timely updates and reduces manual oversight.
- Approval Processes: While automation is beneficial, ZoneBilling also offers the flexibility to insert review or approval processes at various stages, ensuring accuracy and compliance.
Integrations
ZoneBilling offers a robust API, known as the ZAB API, designed to seamlessly integrate outside systems with NetSuite elements and datasets. This API bridges the gap between various source systems (e.g., Salesforce, databases, servers) and NetSuite, enabling dynamic data addition, updates, or retrieval.
Key Features:
- Dynamic Interaction with NetSuite: The ZAB API facilitates dynamic data POST or GET operations between source systems and all NetSuite fields and records.
- Automated Data Transfer: For instance, a Telecom Company can automatically send phone usage data from their system to NetSuite, eliminating manual imports.
- Flexible Data Extraction: Customers can view their billing information on third-party websites, with data sourced directly from NetSuite via the ZAB API.
- Bulk Data Handling: The API can process and parse large datasets, triggering ZAB automation processes for increased efficiency.
- Data Retrieval: Users can leverage ZAB API exports to fetch and filter data based on saved searches in NetSuite.
- Enhanced Record Handling: The API supports record transformations, custom external keys, and interactions with sublists and subrecords.
- Consolidated Operations: Multiple operations can be executed in a single message request, enhancing scalability.
- Future-Proofing: Users can benefit from new product features or enhancements as they roll out.
- Efficient Communication: The ZAB API, being a REST endpoint, is faster and more efficient than traditional SOAP-based messaging.
- Universal Compatibility: As a standard http REST endpoint, the ZAB API is compatible with most middleware applications.
Prebuilt Workato Connector: Available in the Workato connector library, this integration tool is free for all Workato and ZoneBilling customers. It empowers users to harness the ZAB API for creating powerful integrations with minimal setup.
Capabilities of ZoneBilling Workato Connector:
- Versatile Record Interactions: Create, Update, Upsert records and interact with any Standard, ZoneBilling, or Custom record in NetSuite.
- Batch Operations: Handle high volumes of data for interactions with any NetSuite record.
- Data Retrieval: Extract specific records or datasets from saved searches via ZAB API Exports.
- File Access: Retrieve specific record print files or file attachments from NetSuite.
- Automation Triggers: Initiate configured ZAB Automation Processes and obtain results.