Revenue holds and transfer holds
Learn about revenue and transfer holds in Zuora Revenue, including their types, levels, release, and expiry processes.
Introduction
Holds are critical operational controls used to pause revenue processing due to data discrepancies, pending approvals, or unmet business milestones. When deciding how to configure and apply a hold, the primary business consideration is downstream revenue visibility and reporting.
The purpose of holds is to prevent revenue release and/or revenue recognition when data discrepancies occur. When a hold is applied, the revenue user with appropriate privileges must intervene and take action accordingly.
Hold-related actions are controlled through role privileges. Depending on how your organization assigns roles, users may have access to configure hold templates, view holds, apply holds, release holds, or run hold-related mass actions. Apply and release are controlled separately.
Work with your administrator to assign the appropriate privileges when configuring roles. For information about roles, privileges, and user assignment, see User access.
Common business use cases
The core business purpose of the holds feature is exception management. When certain contract characteristics are present, the revenue processing is paused until a human reviews and explicitly releases it. Instead of auditing every transaction manually, finance teams can define rules once and let the system flag only the contracts that need attention.
Common scenarios where automated holds are applied include:
Risk and Compliance: Holding entire contracts (RC-level) for new customers pending creditworthiness checks, or flagging high-value contracts that require executive approval.
Non-standard terms: Isolating specific transaction lines (Line-level) that contain custom acceptance clauses, special payment terms, or rights of return.
Complex deliverables: Placing milestone-based holds (POB-level) on professional services or custom deliverables until a project manager explicitly confirms completion.
Intercompany reconciliation: Flagging cross-entity transactions (Line-level) until accounting teams can complete their internal reconciliation processes.
For any of these scenarios, the choice between applying a revenue hold or a transfer hold comes down to your reporting and visibility needs: choose a Revenue Hold if you want a conservative approach to block actual revenue schedules creation, or a Transfer Hold if you need the schedules calculated for reporting visibility while holding back the final GL posting.