How to configure Subscriptions in Limio Offers with Initial Price and Zuora Rate Plans

In this user guide, you will learn how to setup a Rate Plan in Zuora that is compatible with a Limio Offer and leveraging Limio's capabilities to hold the promotional price information. As a reminder,

• A Zuora Rate Plan is the price defined in the Zuora Billing Product Catalog, which can include the one or multiple Rate Plan Charges incurred by the customer.
  • A Subscription will use a Zuora Product and Rate Plan, as well as an Initial Term and a Renewal Term.
• A Limio Offer is an 'enriched' view of the Zuora Rate Plan, including Display, Billing, and eCommerce Behaviour fields.

There are two primary ways you can configure a Limio Offer to work with Zuora:

Initial Price Price held in Limio and Zuora

External Price Price fully held in Zuora

Limio will define the price for the Initial Term. Limio calls this 'Initial Price'. The Initial Price in Limio will override any pricing held in Zuora but only for the Initial Term. Once the Initial Term is over, the subscription will renew to the Rate Plan charges defined in the Zuora Product and Rate Plan. Why use this method? This is helpful when managing promotional pricing in Limio and using Limio for Salesforce. It reduces product variations in the Zuora catalog by storing only list prices or standard prices in Zuora, while keeping promotional pricing in Limio. The promotional pricing will still be included in each Zuora Subscription, so reporting remains unaffected. Since pricing is managed in Limio, it enables improved web performance during checkout. When to avoid this method?  Initial Price only works with Zuora's Flat Fee Pricing and Per Unit Pricing. If you are using other charges models that have a complex pricing setup in Zuora (for example usage-based with tiers), you cannot set the Initial Price in Limio. Check What Zuora charge models can Limio support? .

Limio will let Zuora fully drive the prices, for both the Initial and Renewal Terms. In this case, Limio Offers will not hold any pricing information and will only refers to the Zuora Product and Rate Plan. This is called External Pricing. Why use this method? This is particularly useful for complex pricing (e.g. tiered pricing). It also makes sense if third-party applications relies on the full catalog to be in Zuora, for example if you use Zuora CPQ. External pricing is also compatible with all charge models in Zuora. When to avoid this method?  When your pricing is simple (e.g. 10€ per month) and your customers are very sensitive on performance (as external pricing requires extra API calls to preview the pricing, which will impact loading times).

⚠️This article will focus on Initial Price for subscription products. 

• For External Price documentation, including how to create tiered pricing, go to Using solely Zuora Pricing for Limio Offers (External Pricing).
• For other types of products:
  • One-Offs: How to configure a One-Time Offer
  • Gifts: How to sell gift products with Limio and Zuora
  • Discounts (%): How to create a Discount offer
  • Add-On: What are Add-Ons and how to configure them

This article will cover:

1. Baseline configuration of Zuora

2. Sync the Zuora Catalog in Limio

3. Configure a Limio Offer with Initial Price

1. Baseline configuration of Zuora

We will explain how the Zuora Product, Rate Plan, and Rate Plan Charge needs to be configured to support Initial Price in Limio.

For Initial Pricing to work in Limio, you must:

• Use Termed Subscriptions for the initial term (learn more on Zuora)
  • The subscription can renew to Evergreen if desired, but cannot start Evergreen.
• Define the fields List Price, Billing Period, and Price Change on Subscription Renewal on the Zuora Rate Plan

On the Zuora Rate Plan, there are 3 important fields to configure in Zuora to work well with Limio Initial Price: 

1. List Price: This will be used as the Renewal Price. With Initial Price set in Limio, it is expected that this is the full list price, after any promotions has been applied.
2. Billing Period: This should match the Initial Price frequency in Limio. For example, if the promotion will be $1 every 4 weeks for 52 weeks in Limio, then the billing frequency must be 4 weeks in Zuora.
   • Limio can now support a change in billing frequency (e.g. $100 per year for the first year, then $15 per month). Read How to create an offer with a different initial billing frequency from the renewal billing frequency (Beta).
3. Price Change on Subscription Renewal settings must be set to 'Use Latest Product Catalog Pricing'.
   • This will allow to revert to the List Price set in Zuora after the initial pricing set in Limio.
   • If you don't see this field on your Zuora Rate Plan, please read Automated Price Change (Uplift) for Renewed Subscriptions.

Other fields are not relevant to Limio's functionalities. See an example of a Zuora rate plan configured to work with a Limio Offer:

2. Sync the Zuora Catalog in Limio

Please refer to Catalog sync between Limio and Zuora. 

Note that the rate plan name will be used to link the Zuora rate plan to the Limio Offer. Changing the name might cause issues, please refer to: Known Issue: Limio Catalog Sync and editing Product or Rate Plan names in Zuora

3. Configure a Limio Offer with Initial Price

To make Initial Price fully work, you will need to configure the following on a Limio Offer:

• Initial Price (what the customer will be charged during the initial term)
• Zuora Product and Rate Plans 
• Initial Term 
• Renewal Term 
• Auto Renew (whether a subscription will automatically renew until cancelled)
• (Optional) Allow Multibuy (whether a subscription allows multiple purchases, e.g. a per unit fee)

Initial Price 

Within the Limio Initial Price field, you can set the charges that will be due for the initial period before any Zuora renewal. The options below are fully compatible with Zuora's Flat Fee Pricing model.

Setup	Limio Example	Zuora setup
One continuous recurring charge, for example $189 for the first year or $189 per month for the first 6 months. The number of charges can be 1 or more. One one-off charge, for example $50. This create a Termed subscription or an Evergreen subscription. Learn more here.		Rate Plan Charge must be of type Recurring Charges / Period or One-Time Charges.
Two overlapping charges of different types, for example £29 one-off joining fee and £9 recurring fee.		There must be 1 Rate Plan with 2 Rate Plan Charges that matches the respective charges in Limio, e.g. One-Time and Recurring

Known limitations

Initial Price is flexible, but does not work with every Zuora charge models. Here are some key limitations: 

• Changes in billing frequency: Zuora does not support this out-of-the-box (documented here). You must activate a specific feature in Limio to activate it. Refer to How to create an offer with a different initial billing frequency from the renewal billing frequency (Beta).
• Per unit pricing: Limio can support per unit pricing, either one-off or recurring. Configure the rate plan in Zuora to use per unit pricing, then in Limio, use either One-Off (Termed), One-Off (Evergreen) or Recurring as the Type of Charge. You must also activate quantity. How to activate the quantity field to sell multiple subscriptions/items at once
• Other pricing model (e.g. Volume, Tiered): You must use External Pricing for other use case. Refer to What Zuora charge models can Limio support?.
• Deal ramp: Deal ramps are supported in Limio, with the following limitations:
  • Deal Ramp Offers will only work for New Subscription. It cannot be used for a Switch Offer (Downgrade or Upgrade). If you want to offer a Deal Ramp, you will need to Cancel the old subscription and process a New Subscription.
  • The Deal Ramp intervals are not visible in Limio Self-Service or Limio for Salesforce.

Setup	Limio Example	Zuora setup
Multiple sequential charges of the same type, for example $19 for the first 12 weeks, then $45 for the following 16 x 12 weeks.	This will trigger a Deal Ramp in Zuora. To trigger it, you must use two charges. Charge 2 must use the Charge Trigger 'Delayed' and the Delay Interval must be after the end of Charge 1.	You must enable ramps in Zuora to use this feature. There is a setting in the Limio App settings that must also be enabled to process Ramp Offers. It is found in: Limio Settings > General settings > Zuora

Zuora Product and Rate Plan

With Initial Price, the Zuora Rate Plan will be the price applied at renewal, after the initial term.

On the Limio Offer, go to Products. Select the Limio Product you have setup in How to configure Zuora Product Code (SKU) in Limio. Add a rate plan to it.

If you use Initial Price, set the split to 100%. If you are creating a bundle, then the split will differ. See How To Add A Product Bundle.

Initial / Renewal Term

You can set it the Initial and Renewal Terms to two options:

• Termed, which can then be set to a number of days, weeks, months, or years. You must use Termed this for the Initial Term.
• Evergreen. You can use this for Renewal Term.

For renewal terms, you may also set whether you want the renewal to happen at the time of the initial order via Trigger Type:

• External: Renewal will happen in Zuora at the end of Initial Term
• Order: Renewal will be executed by Limio at the time of order (i.e. at the start of the Initial Term)

Auto Renew

If the Auto Renew field is turned on, then the subscription will be set to auto-renew on the Zuora Rate Plan. If not, it will not auto-renew in Zuora.

(Optional) Allow Multibuy

If Allow Multibuy is on, the customer can purchase multiple subscriptions and the Zuora order will set a quantity on the subscription. This is used for the Per Unit Pricing.

Deprecated behaviour

⚠️ Legacy experience: Before the Winter 2021 release, the Zuora Rate Plan was specified on the Offers attribute tab, through the attribute rate_plan__zuora (lease be aware this could have been labelled differently in your environment by your Limio Admin, for example renewal price). This legacy attribute is still backward compatible in current Limio version and users can still specify the Zuora rate plan on that attribute. However, we encourage to use the new experience as it allows additional flexibility such as defining bundles.