Commitment

A commitment represents a minimum spend obligation that a customer agrees to meet over one or more time periods. Commitments can be prepaid over an installment, or post-paid with a true-up evaluation at the end of each period.

Commitment account

The commitment account is the customer account that owns the commitment and is responsible (as the invoice owner) for any true-up amounts or the prepayment.

When you create a commitment via Orders, Zuora uses the order account as the commitment account.

Applicable accounts

Applicable accounts are the accounts whose charges contribute to the commitment.

These can include the commitment account itself and, optionally, additional accounts such as child accounts in an account hierarchy or unrelated accounts selected via filters.

When you create a commitment, you can:

• Use the commitment account only, or

• Select other accounts using search and filter conditions (for example, direct child accounts, or accounts with a specific custom field value).

The selected accounts are fixed as of commitment creation time; later changes to account attributes do not retroactively change which accounts are applicable for that commitment.

Applicable charges

Applicable charges are the products and service charges whose billed amounts contribute toward the committed amount. (Also referred to as ‘contributing charges’, or ‘eligible charges’.)

You can either allow all charges on the applicable accounts to contribute, or restrict contribution to a subset of charges using search and filter conditions (for example, “specific rate plans on a specific subscription”, “recurring charges where a region custom field = US”).

The following charge types can contribute to a commitment:

• Subscription one-time charges.

• Subscription recurring charges, including Prepayment charges.

• Subscription usage charges, including Drawdown charges.

• Dynamic usage charges.

The following charge types do not contribute to a commitment:

• Legacy Commitment True-up charges used by the deprecated Minimum Commitment feature.

• Order line items (OLIs).

All applicable charges for a given commitment must use the same currency as the commitment. Multi-currency commitments, where the commitment currency differs from the charge currency, are not supported.

Commitment schedules and periods

A commitment can span multiple schedules, each of which is broken down into one or more commitment periods.

For example, a single commitment might include:

• $100 per month for 2025, and

• $500 per quarter for 2026.

Each commitment period has:

• A start date and an end date.

• A committed amount (in the commitment currency).

Each commitment must have at least one period with start date, end date, and committed amount. Commitment periods in a given commitment cannot overlap or have gaps, and each commitment must have a defined end date (evergreen commitments are not supported).

Charge contribution process

During a billing process such as a Bill Run, Zuora determines which charges contribute to a commitment and how the contribution is applied:

1. Identify whether a billed charge is associated with any commitments, based on the applicable accounts and applicable charges configuration.

2. Determine the contribution date:

   • One-time charge: charge start date

   • Recurring charge: billing period start date (billing in advance) or billing period end date (billing in arrears)

   • Usage / Dynamic usage: billing period end date (billing in arrears)

3. Apply a first-in, first-contribute order based on the contribution date (and charge number as a tie breaker).

4. Determine the target commitment period using the contribution date.

If the contribution date falls into a commitment period, the charge’s full amount for that billing period will contribute and reduce the period balance.

Discount treatment

Discounts that are applied to a contributing charge affect the contribution amount: both the service charge and applied discount charge contribute to the commitment. As a result, the net amount of the charge (after discount) is used to reduce the commitment balance.

Tax treatment

Commitments measure the value of services, not taxes. As a result:

• For tax-exclusive charges, the pre-tax amount is counted into the commitment.

• For tax-inclusive charges, the tax-inclusive amount, rather than carving out tax, is counted into the commitment.

Postpaid commitment true-up

Commitments are mainly evaluated as part of bill runs. You can also evaluate a single commitment using the UI and APIs.

A commitment period can be picked up by the billing process for evaluation when:

1. The billing target date falls on or after the commitment period end date.

2. All contributing charges have been billed through the commitment period end date.

Zuora compares the customer’s actual billed spend against the committed amount and generates a true-up invoice for any shortfall. If the customer spends more than the committed amount, the overage is billed through the service charges in the usual way.

Commitment balance

The commitment balance is the remaining committed amount in a given period that has not yet been satisfied by contributing charges. As charges are billed, their net amounts (after discounts and before tax for the tax-inclusive charges) reduce the balance for the relevant period.

You can retrieve commitment balances through:

• UI: Commitment detail page

• API: List periods for a commitment API

• Data Query and Reporting: Commitment Period object

Commitment contributions and change history

Zuora maintains commitment contribution details (also referred to as ‘commitment transactions’) that record all events affecting the balance in each period, including contributions from charges, true-ups for postpaid commitment, and balance expiration for prepaid commitment. The contribution details are available via Data Query.

Zuora also tracks a change history for each commitment, capturing creation, updates, and cancellations throughout the commitment lifecycle. The change history is available on the Commitment detail page and Retrieve a Commitment API.

Audit trail for commitments

If Audit Trail is enabled for your tenant, you can also track all changes to commitments using Zuora’s standard Audit Trail reports.

• Commitments, commitment periods, and related association objects (such as associated accounts and associated items) can be configured as auditable business objects.

• You can query audit events for these objects alongside other auditobjectchangeevent records, using filters such as date range, user, account, or object type.

• Each audit event captures who made the change, when it occurred, and the before-and-after values of key commitment fields.

Reporting, export, and integration support

Commitment data is available in the following Zuora data and analytics tools:

• Data Source Export and Exports: commitments and commitment periods can be included in exports for downstream analysis.

• Data Query and Object Query: you can query commitments, commitment periods, and contribution events using SQL-style queries.

• Reporting: commitment fields can be added to standard or custom reports.

• Notifications: you can configure notifications that are triggered by commitment balance thresholds or upcoming period end dates.

• Multi-Org and Multi-Entity: a commitment carries over the org label from the commitment account. It participates in the same multi-org and multi-entity data model as other Zuora Billing objects.