Heads up on the awesome 03/12 Ordway platform release: 

• Release Schedule Change
• Pre-Release Environment
• Feature Enhancements
  • Payments
    • Failed Payment Retry Enhancements
  • Email Configuration
  • Workflow Automation
    • Email History
    • Log Optimization
  • Configuration Migration Tool
  • Payment Terms
    • Early Pay Discounts
  • NetSuite - Phase Two
    • Invoices, Credits, Payments, & Refunds
  • Reports
    • Deferred Revenue Waterfall Report
  • API URL Reminder
  • Help Center Documentation
    • New
    • Updated

Release Schedule Change

Starting with our March release, we are updating our release schedule to improve stability and minimize impact.  Production releases will now occur on Saturdays instead of Wednesdays. 

Pre-Release Environment

The March '22 Ordway Platform Release is now available on the Pre-Release environment. The following teams are enabled for access to the Pre-Release environment:

• Sales Team
• Customer Success
• Sales Engineering
• Technical Support

Note: The environment does not include its own set of customer data. Users will need to upload or create their own data.

• Access the pre-release environment here: https://canary.ordwaylabs.com/users/sign_in
• Sign up to create companies or you can be added by other users to access created companies. 
• Sign up to create companies here: https://canary.ordwaylabs.com/users/sign_up
• CSP access has not yet been granted for this environment. Reach out to the Operations team should you require CSP access.

Feature Enhancements

Payments

Failed Payment Retry Enhancements

• When a failed payment is retried in the dunning process, a new payment record is created and linked to previous failed payment attempts. The linked payment retries are displayed in a Payment Retry History table on the Payment Detail page.

• The Re-tried Attempts field has been removed from the payment detail page.
• Updated setting labels for clarity.

• When Custom Payment Run is selected for the Payment Retry Schedule, payment run processing options are shown for greater customization.

Read more regarding Failed Payment Retry Rules. 

Email Configuration

In addition to configuring the From address on emails sent from Ordway, users can now update the Reply-To email address to personalize outbound emails. Since Ordway sends these emails on behalf of customers and their company domain, it is important to implement authentication methods and follow security best practices to ensure you benefit from the following:

• Personalize email messages sent from Ordway with your own organizations’ domain.
• Increase deliverability and reduce business risk from your invoice or collections emails being marked as spam.
• Protect your brand and domain against phishing and spoofing.

Read more about Email Configuration and Setup DKIM & SPF steps before changing Reply-to email addresses.

Then read Change From and Reply-to Address in Templates. 

Workflow Automation

Email History

• We now track and display a history of all emails sent via workflow. Check the status of emails and maintain an audit trail of client communications sent from a workflow. Just like the customer email history, you can view the status, date, subject, and recipients of an email, as well as the workflow that created the email. 
• You can find the email history by going to Menu > Platform > Workflow Automation > More > See All Emails.
  
  Note: All emails generated from a billing or payment run, even those within your workflow; will appear in your customer’s email history. Only emails generated via the Send an Email option in a workflow are visible in this list.

Log Optimization

In an effort to reduce risk associated with increasing workflow logs storage, we’ve made a couple changes to limit the amount of redundant information stored in child logs. Specifically, the flow details and workflow definition will be available in the parent log and not the child log.

Configuration Migration Tool

Our March release includes an “Alpha” version of our new migration tool which will give CSP users the ability to migrate client configurations from one environment to another. Here are a few use cases / benefits:

• Automate a portion of the client Go-Live process
• Refresh sandbox test accounts with live (prod) configurations
• Migrate custom fields from one company to another

We will provide documentation, instructions, and training once this feature is fully released to Production.

Payment Terms

Early Pay Discounts

• Ability to configure Payment Terms with support for Early Pay Discounts.
• Automatically apply an early pay discount to an invoice based on a set number of days prior to an invoice’s due date.
• Add an Invoice Display Name for how you would like the discount to be displayed on PDF and HTML templates.
• Select your Default Credit Account and Default Product to be used for the Credit that is auto-generated when an early payment has been applied to an eligible invoice.

• In addition to adding Early Pay Discounts, users can now set a Payment Term due date to be a specific date in the month following the invoice date.

NetSuite - Phase Two

Invoices, Credits, Payments, & Refunds - Coming Soon!

Reports

Deferred Revenue Waterfall Report

Deferred Revenue Waterfall includes Orders/Contract Transactions, Manual Journal Entries and excludes Draft Subscriptions (Report Correction & Remediation - 02/17/22):

• A hotfix was applied on 02/17/22 with several updates to the Deferred Revenue Waterfall, as outlined below.
• For contracts set up to post to Deferred Revenue accounts on the Order Date / Contract Effective Date (as in the example below), the report now includes journal entries beyond the “As of" date associated with Orders/Contract transactions.

• The report now includes manual deferred revenue journal entries in future periods beyond the “As of” date.
• The default view for the report now has a filter to exclude Draft Subscriptions.

Deferred Revenue Waterfall toggle to include only invoiced amounts

• We’ve added a toggle to the Deferred Revenue Waterfall labeled Exclude Future Invoices. When this toggle is enabled, the report shows only invoiced Billing Schedule amounts and their associated Revenue Schedules. 
• This toggle is enabled by default and only applies for Products which impact a Deferred Revenue account on Invoice Posting.

Revised grouping by Parent Customer

• When grouping by Parent Customer, any values for the Parent Customer themselves will now be included in this grouping. Previously these values would be grouped together under a blank Parent Customer Name. This revised grouping logic will be applied for all Standard Reports. 
• See the example below from the Aging Report displaying this change in grouping behavior.

Current:

New with March ‘22 Release:

API URL Reminder

On January 14th we communicated with our clients that our API URL has changed. Please bookmark & use this link: https://ordwaylabs.stoplight.io/

Help Center Documentation

Check out these new & updated articles since 02/09/22!

New:

• 2022 Avalara Tax Changes - Software Edition
  
• Avalara Basics 
  
• Software Taxes
  
• Change From & Reply-To Addresses in Template
  
• Email Configuration
  
• Setup DKIM & SPF
  
• [Internal] Setup Client Email Authentication
• Access Ordway's API

Updated:

• Deferred Revenue Waterfall Report - included draft status filter. 
• Schedule a Custom Report - new edits based on Schedule a Report article. 
• Quickbooks Integration Steps - added note regarding tax setup. 
• Cancel Active Subscription via Imports - clarified column requirements to process cancellation. 
• Intacct Integration Setup Guide - clarified the two different setup options. 
• NetSuite Authentication Configuration Steps - various updates from the Finance team. 
• Schedule Payment Run - clarified that Payment Run goes off the Invoice Due Date. 
• Manage Invoices - added a section on exporting invoices.