ChargeOver is a subscription and recurring billing software solution with built-in invoicing and reporting.
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Zuora
Score 8.1 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.
It's good for anyone who has customers, in my opinion. Whether you keep track of subscriptions, or just have one-time only invoices, it's just a wonderful way to keep track of everything in an organized way.
If your company processes a large volume of transactions, Zuora is well-suited for you. In addition, if you need to make changes to subscriptions to your customers frequently or track usage in order to bill clients, Zuora has the capability to do so. If your company goes through any kind of audits, Zuora's audit log may come in handy. Zuora does cost quite a bit so if your company doesn't process a large volume of transactions or make many changes to subscriptions, it may not be worth the investment.
It is VERY user-friendly. There are very few times I need to reach out to them for help, because it's easy to navigate and easy to figure out on my own. Everything is clear, clean, organized, and simple.
They have VERY friendly staff. The service is fantastic. I'm always answered within a reasonable time, and their answers are always open, honest, and helpful. They are always friendly.
It has a wonderful capacity to customize. If I need a specific report that isn't offered as a default report, it's incredibly easy to set up custom reports, have it send to my email upon certain events, and organize data in a way that I need for my company specifically.
Despite how simple it is, it's able to keep track of a large number of things. I can keep track of products, prices, descriptions, subscriptions, customers, contact information, payment information, integrations, reports, past due invoices, paused subscriptions, cancellations, inactive customers, and more.
It integrates with QuickBooks, which makes it easy for us to keep track of everything wherever we go.
They have automated emails! I cannot tell you how valuable this has been. ChargeOver will automatically send an email (that I can write) to a customer when payments go through, when an invoice is past due, when refunds are given, and more.
Flexibility with the product catalog. Once you understand the product catalog and its capabilities, the possibilities are endless. You are able to spin up new products quickly and test new ideas with minimal development time.
API focus. Zuora API focus allows us to step away from the Zuora UI and build our own platform over the top of Zuora reducing ambiguity for our customers and team
Constant upgrades - Zuora is continually adding to its product and listening to its customers to build a product that is leading the way in the subscription economy
The user interface is a disaster. There are many things that make no sense, such as clicking on a hyperlinked Subscription number that takes you to an invoice instead of the subscription.
Extremely limited customization capability to improve poor UI
Searching/reporting is very weak and difficult to use. The format of exported data is at least different than what many other systems tend to use. I find it unintuitive and difficult to manipulate or perform tasks such as vlookups and filtering; perhaps it's really smart and I just don't get it
The concept of a credit memo does not exist...yet. They keep promising it but have not delivered. Their solution has been Invoice Adjustments and Invoice Item Adjustments, which at least don't make sense for my business.
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.
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.
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.
I think ChargeOver is more flexible than any of its competitors. Our business involves both subscription and one-time billing, and most billing systems excel at only one or the other. ChargeOver is also at a great price point with its billing based on a number of customers. We are also able to realize low-cost ACH payments through their gateway integrations when their competitors only provide access to high-cost providers.
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.
Very positive because of their automatic invoice reminders and the ability for a customer to pay their own bill. Saves having an AR department or an inconvenient side job.
Positive impact: we're able to invoice our customers timely and correctly.
Positive impact: recurring payments are simple and accurate.
Negative impact: Zuora and the Customer Management System that my organization use are no longer integrated because of some issues in the past with double billing and things of that nature.
