PayPal Point of Sale, formerly known as Zettle or PayPal Here, is a POS and payment processing system that includes either a mobile card reader or a chip reader (hardware).
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Zuora
Score 7.9 out of 10
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Zuora is one of the best-known subscription billing platforms. Zuora is an enterprise-level product and, as such, provides comprehensive metrics, tax automation, and support for multiple currencies. It also offers Salesforce and NetSuite integration out-of the-box. It often replaces cumbersome ERP (enterprise resource planning) systems that does not focus exclusively on billing.
I recommend PayPal Zettle quite a bit, actually. Its flexibility is easy enough to use for people who are not used to technology. Square has good traits, too, but since so many people already have PayPal accounts, it makes it much easier to use. It is perfect for everyday use of bot large and small transactions.
Zuora is great for smaller subscription businesses that have a limited number of simple or basic products. As more products are added to the catalog, the ability to report on specific product performance has become more challenging. Similarly, as our number of customers has grown significantly over the past few years, the extraction of data through export files is more of a challenge to capture all data points.
The PayPal Here hardware connection is very effective, my mobile device recognizes it immediately and the PayPal Here application to receive payments also recognizes it immediately. I don't have to wait a long time like some other POS.
Transactions are made instantly, you just have to pass the NFC chip inside the PayPal Here system, and in a second the transaction will be carried out and it will be shown in the history of the PayPal account registered in the POS.
It is very easy to provide a receipt to the customer when they use their card within our PayPal Here POS system, as it allows us to digitally send a ticket to the customer and also allows us to send the invoice by email.
The implementation of Zuora is very helpful. Their interactive training guides are one of the best I've used. It is very thorough and any salesperson can learn how to use it very quickly.
Their subscription management offers many ways to sell a subscription. These subscriptions can be evergreen (renewing every month) or termed subscriptions. The subscriptions can be amended to add/remove products very easily.
The ability to quickly pass through large amounts of usage data for our clients is allowing us to perform billing in a time-effective manner. Once usage data is loaded, a few clicks and all of the invoices for our client base can be generated. Invoices are clean and detailed which help us maintain a good customer experience even with our somewhat complex billing model. The reporting is extremely helpful in calculating the end of month commissions, recognizing and deferring revenue, and overall bookkeeping.
While swiped payments are easy, manual entry of payment information often fails. This is a major roadblock when you are in the service industry because not everyone who is making payment is on site.
In almost every instance of accepting a payment, we have to call in and reverify every piece of information about our business before we are successful.
Whatever system they use to determine how high risk your business is can limit your usage if they get it wrong.
Customer service is inconsistent at best. Sometimes issues are handled quickly and easily, other time you have to jump through hoops.
User Interface - Zuora's UI is still a weak point, however, this is negated through the use of its API's. Zuora has done a lot of work in releasing new products to limit its UI experience and the addition of Orders allows for more functionality to reduce the UI issue.
Complex system - This is both a pro and a con, but in this instance, it is a con because we may not have taken the time to truly understand the implications of all the options that were available. the Flexibility is great however if you do not take the time to understand the product and what problem you are trying to solve, you can make life difficult for yourself later down the track. Take the time to map out your approach end to end and ensure your assumptions at the start are robust.
Reporting - reporting is weak as such we have moved away to our own reporting data warehouse.
Our business is now, more than ever, focused on our core business rather than homegrown support tools for quoting, contracts, billing, invoicing, payments and the rest of the subscription economy. We evaluated other solutions and found this the best and most viable solution given the strong ties to Salesforce and it's integration. Zuora works, and it works well.
Very easy to use for both the business owner and the customer. We feel confident using it because we know that our customers information and payments are protected. And our customers know that if anything happens with their orders or they need protection for their purchases it is going to be there with PayPal Zettle. We tried several less remembered names, and it just didn't garner orders like when we switched to PayPal Zettle.
I had 20+ years of accounting experience before taking on the revenue role. I had several things to [learn] but was able to easily master the software in a matter of weeks. Zuora is our preferred billing platform that we currently use - very efficient and much more automated than our other platform/process.
There have only been a few days/instances in the past 2.5 years of using zuora that I, personally have had issues or been notified of issues relating to Zuora.
Zuora does a superb job for all the tasks I use it for. Billing - it is trustworthy and accurate. Customer data- it holds it and keeps past records for even cancelled accounts, and subscription builds - it has the ability to make very difficult subscriptions seem easy.
Support hasn't been needed in the 2 years of using PayPal but I have received calls from the company in the past asking about my experience with the device that was sent to me and they were pretty helpful with advice. Support is all over the internet if needed but for emergencies, so it is best to contact them during business hours.
A support request is emailed to their support team, then an automated response is sent to you in a couple hours saying "Hey, someone will take a look at your support request soon". Then somewhere around 12-18 hours later, an actual support member responds with "Have you checked out our tutorials? Here's one that sounds like it might help you". I don't want a tutorial given to me that I've already read through that only exists because of the terrible user design of Zuora's user interface
I think Zuora did a great job. However, they could have provided more guidance on how to deal with out Payment Gateway and Processor provider, as well as guidance around providing a Mobile Responsive experience for sites using the Zuora HPM.
The main selection criteria were ease of use and the presence of a plugin for WooCommerce. However, in practice it turned out that an important factor is also the availability of the product for purchase in a small batch and at an affordable price. I chose PayPal Zettle because I was able to easily and simply purchase it in my country.
Zuora provides way more functionality than Recurly or SaaSOptics as a billing engine. However, it is not a general ledger system like NetSuite ERP, it is still designed to be primarily a billing function that feeds into a general ledger via automated general entries. It has simplified our invoice management and automated billing while connecting with Salesforce for high-powered reporting and cross-departmental collaboration. The automation of revenue recognition has the potential to significantly reduce the time spent on accounting close by a few days.
Everything about this solution is great, I really can't think of a single complaint. There is even a Phone App so you can check in on your sales remotely.
