Scenarios and behaviours
Explains how price updates trigger new entries in the rate card, detailing scenarios with effective dates and their outcomes.
Each price update triggers a new row insertion in the rate card with the new effective date. This ensures multiple time-based prices are maintained for the same charge.
Scenario | Behaviour | Result |
|---|---|---|
| No effective date provided | System picks the current UTC timestamp | New row created effective immediately |
| Future effective date provided | User-defined datetime used | New row will be effective in the future |
Existing row is updated with a past | Zuora rejects the update request in the UI and API. | No new row is created. The user sees the error message: |
Existing row is updated with a past | Zuora allows the update. | The rate card row is updated with the specified past |
There is no change to existing future-pricing behavior. Each price update still creates a new row in the rate card with the applicable effective date. If no effective date is provided, Zuora uses the current UTC timestamp and creates a row that is effective immediately. If a future effective date is provided, Zuora creates a row that becomes effective in the future.
Rate card row retirement scenarios
You can use Ineligible to retire a rate card row without deleting it. Zuora applies the same effective-dating behavior used for other price updates.
Action | Result |
|---|---|
Set an active row's price to Ineligible | The existing row is end-dated with its original price preserved, and a new row is created with a price of Ineligible and an effective date based on the current timestamp. |
Update an existing Ineligible row | The existing Ineligible row is end-dated, and a new row is created with the updated values and a new effective date. |
Set Ineligible with a future effective date | Zuora schedules the row retirement for that future date. |
For the active period of an Ineligible row, pricing evaluation skips that row. Historical and future evaluations remain deterministic because the row history is preserved.
A rate card contains a row with Region = US, Term = 12 months, Price = $100, and Effective Date = 2025-01-01. If an admin sets the price to Ineligible effective 2026-06-23, Zuora preserves the original row for the period from 2025-01-01 to 2026-06-23 and creates a new row from 2026-06-23 onward with the price set to Ineligible. Pricing requests after that date do not match the row, but lookups for earlier dates still resolve to the historical $100 price.