A strong product with only a few limitations for those who provide more than cloud services.
November 30, 2016
A strong product with only a few limitations for those who provide more than cloud services.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Zuora
Zuora is used mainly by our finance and accounting departments to manage invoicing and our product catalog. Previously, we used our accounting software, so invoicing and creating quotes was cumbersome. Implementing Zuora cut down the time it would take to process the bill run and has also allowed us to manage our AR aging much more effectively but automating the past-due notification on aging accounts. The system, implemented alongside Salesforce, has also decreased the number of errors in quotes generated by our sales team. Because the quotes are now being generated in Salesforce with ZQuotes, our quotes are now consistent and have very few errors, if any.
- Before implementing Zuora, managing the deferred revenue required us to maintain a spreadsheet and reconcile it monthly against our accounting system. After implementing Zuora, our deferred revenue is now managed by Z-Finance and has greatly decreased the closing process. It has allowed our staff to focus on other areas, rather than spending a couple hours making sure that all deferred revenue has been posted properly.
- Before implementing Zuora, we had to manually create invoices for clients based on the information the sales team generated in an Excel spreadsheet. This spreadsheet was our old way of presenting quotes to clients. However, this would often produce many errors in the calculations, etc. After implementing Zuora, we were able to control the pricing and presentation of quotes in the backend, while the sales team only had to focus on getting the sale. This has allowed us to focus more time on making sure that more opportunities are being won, rather than worrying if the numbers are correct.
- Accepting payments from our customers wasn't too bad when it came to methods other than credit cards. However, anytime a customer would like to make a credit card payment, the process was always time-consuming and required multiple forms. Now with Zuora, I can enter the credit card information pretty quickly and Zuora stores the information safely, allowing the customer to just send us a notification that we can process their payment, rather than having them fill out multiple forms every time.
- I wish there was a more straight-forward way of processing write-offs. I've had to change our method a few times because of how the transactions were affecting our revenues. I've had to create my own way, outside of the knowledge center, that now works for us. However, this took some experience and testing to finally figure out.
- I would like to see Zuora set up the product catalog to allow for physical items that are sold. This way, I don't have to create a "rate plan" for a printer. I realize that Zuora is used mainly for cloud-based and subscription services, however, I feel that there are enough companies that might provide a physical item along with a service/software.
- I wish the invoice and email templates were a little more visual (without the need for only HTML or Text.) Word mailmerge for designing templates is very cumbersome that requires testing for multiple use cases to make sure the generated invoice/PDF will display correctly.
Zuora has been extremely helpful in our accounting close. We are able to quickly enter the journal entries generated by the system and get reports of all the transactions that created that entry. On top of that, managing invoices, recurring payments, and automated bill runs has freed up so much time for our finance department. Previously, it would take an entire day to calculate usage, create invoices manually, and send manual past-due notifications. After implementing Zuora, many of these tasks are automated, so we can now focus on pricing analysis and generating revenue.