Preventing Obligation Balances And The GL From Being Impacted Until Bill Completion

It's important to understand that when any type of financial transaction is frozen, the related obligation's balance is affected. For example:

• When a payment is frozen, the taxpayer's balance is reduced.

• When an adjustment is frozen, the taxpayer's balance is impacted.

• When a bill segment is frozen, the taxpayer's balance is increased (typically).

For payments, there is no issue. However, for bill based tax types, you may not want the taxpayer's balance to be impacted until the bill is completed. Consider the following:

• If a taxpayer has multiple obligations that should be presented on the same bill, it's possible for one of the obligations to have a bill segment that's in error and the other obligation's bill segment to be frozen.

• The frozen bill segment will impact the taxpayer's balance and the general ledger. This is because a financial transaction is marked for interface to the general ledger when it is frozen. This can be problematic if you have a long period between FT freeze and bill completion (you could impact the general ledger but not impact the taxpayer's balance).

If this is unacceptable, you can setup the system to not allow certain types of FT's to be frozen until the bill is completed. This means that neither the taxpayer's balance nor the general ledger will be impacted until bill completion time. To do this:

• Choose the Freeze At Bill Completion option on Installation Options - Billing.

• Determine if any of your adjustment types are ones that would be included on a bill-based tax bill. Select Freeze At Bill Completion for those that should not impact the taxpayer's balance or the general ledger until the next bill is completed. Select Freeze At Will for those that should impact the taxpayer's balance and the GL when they are frozen.

Please be aware of the following in respect of the Freeze At Bill Completion options:

• If you turn on Freeze At Bill Completion on Installation Options - Billing:

• Users will not be allowed to freeze bill segments online.

• Any background process created for batch billing should not freeze bill segments until all segments on a bill are error free.

• Bill segments will exist in the freezable state until the bill is completed.

• If you turn on Freeze At Bill Completion for an adjustment type:

• Users will not be allowed to freeze adjustments of this type online.

• Background processes that create adjustments will not freeze this type of adjustment. Rather, the adjustments will be frozen when the next bill is completed.

• Adjustments of this type will therefore exist in the freezable state until the next bill is completed.

Please be aware of the following in respect of the Freeze At Will options:

• If you turn on Freeze At Will on Installation Options - Billing:

• Users will be allowed to freeze bill segments online.

• Any background process created for batch billing should freeze bill segments when the individual segment is error-free.

• Bill segments will exist in the frozen state regardless of whether the bill is completed.

• The frozen bill segment's FT will be interfaced to the GL when the interface next runs.

• All adjustment types must also be set to Freeze At Will (otherwise they wouldn't get frozen).

• If you turn on Freeze At Will for an adjustment type:

• Users will be allowed to freeze adjustments of this type online.

• Background processes that create adjustments will freeze this type of adjustment.

• Adjustments of this type will exist in the frozen state prior to bill completion.

• The frozen adjustment's FT will be interfaced to the GL when the interface next runs.