On February 8th, Nikki Wong, Sr. Director of Product Management and Vivek Ganesan, Sr. Product Manager held a Community Table Talk where they shared their best practices for Zuora Revenue reports, and journal entries. Nikki also included a few practice examples to demonstrate the reporting concepts.
Review: Presentation | Full Video
Revenue Tool Tip: Implication of Delink Method
Watch video to learn more
The Delink Method will contribute to allocation impact, especially if you are delinking an RC that is in revision period.
Options:
- Delink By RC - this will allow the system to retain the accounting result and history of the RC and move them to the linked RC.
- Delink By POB or By Lines - this will cause an immediate retrospective allocation to kick off upon delinking as the system is detecting Total Contract Value (TCV) of the revenue contract has changed.
Reporting Best Practices
As a prerequisite to Revenue reporting is reporting summarization. There are multiple jobs in Zuora Revenue that covers reporting summarization which the chart below covers.
Watch video to learn more
|
Feature
|
Recommendation
|
Benefits
|
|
Reporting Summarization
|
Real Time Mode
|
No need to manually run the job ‘Reporting Summarize Current Period’. It is automated as part of every system process
|
|
Period Open & Close Summarization
(Reporting Period Close / Reporting Period Open)
|
Perform Close from Close Dashboard (CPD)
|
No manual activity. 1-click close & open next period.
Zuora Revenue will automatically submit the period close & open summarization jobs as part of Close from CPD
|
|
Next Period Summarization
(37.016 release)
|
Run one a week, if your period open takes > 1 hour
|
Reduce period open summarization time around 90%.
Applicable for high Volume customers.
|
|
Post Period Summarization
(Current Period Post Summarize Data)
|
Use only if applicable
|
Required only if you use Trial Balance Report or any other report with ‘Aggregate Flag’ enabled in the layout.
|
|
Report Layouts
|
Limit to 30 columns or lower
|
Faster running reports.
Review and remove columns that are not required from the specific report layout.
|
|
Reporting Performance
|
37.016 Release
|
Expect 1.5 - 2x improvement on report run times with 37.016 release. The Row count has been moved to the Report Footer
|
Revenue Reporting
Watch video to learn more
No matter which system you go with, a majority of the financial reporting needs to be reconciled to the General Ledger and is based on accounting journal entries.
- All Zuora Revenue Financial Reports are summarized view of journal entries
- Accounting Report or Journal Entries in the RC Workbench is where the journal entries live.
Journal Entries
The following reviews account types, schedules types, and data points.
Account Types
Watch video to learn more
Zuora Revenue allows customers to use attributes to segmentate the reporting instead of using traditional GL accounts by Account Type where each Account Type can be related to multiple GL accounts.
GL account numbers can be ingested through the transactions. The internal system hierarchy is defined as a transaction level account > Account Setup defined account. The Account Type setup allows the user to define which accounting type the account is related to.
Schedules Type
Watch video to learn more
Data Points
Watch video to learn more
Other data points related to journal entries to help user to understand the relationship between the reporting columns:
Sample Journal Entry
Practice Examples
Example #1: Today, I would like to find out the total invoice that has been ingested into Zuora Revenue. I have not done any transfer accounting for the period. What should we filter for?
Watch video for example walkthrough and explanation
Example #2: Today is 2/8/24, I am working on Jan 2024 close. I performed transfer accounting and posted to the GL already. I would like to find out how much adjustment revenue is being recognized. My account number for revenue is 4200 for any revenue. What should we filter for?
Watch video for example walkthrough and explanation
YOUR TURN - Example #3: Today is 2/8/24, I am working on Jan 2024 close. I performed transfer accounting and posted to the GL already. I would like to find out the CA/CL reclass entry that hit the Contract Asset account, but I also want to know from which Contract Liability accounts it is reclassing from. What should we filter for?
Answer key provided below.
Stay Up-To-Date with Revenue Releases and Maintenance
By joining the Zuora Revenue Notifications community, you will receive emails about Revenue Maintenance and Release Notifications including deployment schedules, the release window, and issues fixed. Future sessions are announced monthly in the Community News where you can also hear about other product updates and other exciting events.
Please subscribe by following these steps.