If you have the chance to offer customers a different pricing plan during COVID-19, there is a fast way to do that. With the need to stay from home, certain digital subscriptions will be in high demand web conferencing tools, homeschool educational offerings, internet packages, news apps, workout apps, and online entertainment are a few that we've already witnessed. Zoom, for example, removed usage limits for certain countries and opened up its platform to offer a free K-12 School Program for students learning from home.
If you're considering a similar response to COVID-19, learn how to take advantage of Zuora's pricing update capabilities. Early movers such as Zoom were able to quickly update pricing en masse and push new offerings to market.
On Tuesday, April 7th, Zuora hosted the third topic in our series of webcasts and open office hours on strategies and tactics for scaling customer engagement during the COVID-19:
How to Do Pricing Changes En Masse
Over 100 customer attendees joined experts from our customer success, global implementation, and Subscribed Institute strategy teams to demo best practices, answer questions, and facilitate peer-to-peer discussions. Attendees got the opportunity to:
- Learn how to immediately take advantage of this capability in Zuora
- Hear from subscription experts on the most effective ways to structure pricing changes
- Connect with peer subscription companies who are facing the same challenge and learn how they are addressing it
We started with a 30-minute general session presentation on the subject, and then broke out into smaller "rooms" for further discussion and Q&A.
Here you'll find:
- The slides that were presented in the general session
- The recording of the general session
- A written Q&A doc on the topic, summarizing questions that were asked and answered during and following the session (in comment below)
Thank you to those who took part, and we hope this was a useful topic and format for you. Please let us know any feedback.
Stay safe and well!
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How to Do Pricing Changes En Masse - Q&A
Revenue Recognition
Q: For revenue recognition, do we recognize the Gross Revenue based on original price, then a Discount revenue (20% discount for example) as a contra Revenue line?
A: The original invoice and discount amount will each have their own revenue schedules. For revenue, you can run the accounting period trial balance > download the revenue detail report to view each of the revenue schedules for the original charge, discount charges.
Workflow
Q: I see workflow in my sandbox but not in my production, why?
A: All sandboxes have workflow enabled. If you would like it enabled in Production it would be an add on application. Please contact your Account Manager for more information.
Mass update
Q: How can I mass update the price?
A: You can use Mass Order Entry, Workflow, Developer Tools, and API Callout.
Workflow and Developer Tools are add on applications, please contact your Account Manager for more information.
Discounts and Renewals
Q: If we have 3 months discount, and it spans a renewal - what will happen ? We want it to continue for the remaining periods, as opposed to re-adding another 3 months discount.
A: If the discount is set for fixed # of billing periods, and it has a renewal, it will not pick it up, you would have to add it again. Best practice is to break these out between terms.
Discounts
Q: Discounts that are active only for x billing periods, the configurations cease to be effective after x billing periods, but the rate plan will still show on the subscription. How do we remove this fixed discount?
A: Yes, even though the Discount Rate Plan shows up in the subscription, once it expires it is effectively not active. It could stay there or it could be removed later, via RemoveProduct amendment (or the corresponding Order Action).
Prorations
Q: How do we avoid prorations on invoices when we remove/add rate plans to subscriptions?
A: When you create the rate plan charge, you need to make sure that the trigger conditions are aligned to how you want it to start, this will affect prorations. Also, do not create invoices outside of the customers bill cycle date, if you do, this will cause a proration. Please review the Knowledge center article on trigger conditions and prorations and test this in your sandbox:
Trigger Conditions and Prorations