Managing Billing Accounts

This chapter describes how to manage billing accounts. It includes the following topics:

About Billing Accounts

To handle the payment of policy premiums, insurance companies use something called a billing account. A billing account is a construct that is used to handle the billing and payment activities associated with one or many insurance policies. The policy premiums are billed and collected through the billing account. This allows insurance companies to give users the flexibility to pay their premiums through a single bill, even though they might have several policies.

Siebel Insurance provides flexibility for companies to handle billing-oriented transactions in various ways. Although billing accounts are a popular method within the industry, many companies handle billing on a single policy basis and many use a blend of billing account and single policy billing.

Using the procedures given in this chapter, end users will be able to use the Billing Accounts screen to add a billing account, associate a billing account with a policy, contact, or company, and add a service request to a billing account.

Scenario for Billing Accounts

This scenario features sample tasks performed by an insurance agent. Your company might follow a different workflow according to its business requirements.

An insurance agent creates a new billing account to manage the various policies held by one of her customers. First, she associates the policies and certain contacts with the billing account. In this context, a contact can be someone who is responsible for paying the bills associated with an account or someone associated with the billing account, such as the secondary insured on a policy.

Later, the insurance agent receives a call from one of her contacts. The contact has a problem with his latest bill. The insurance agent logs a service request against the customer’s billing account.

Process of Managing Billing Accounts

This section details sample tasks often performed by end-users when managing billing accounts. Your company might follow a different process according to its business requirements.

End-User Procedures

The following list shows tasks end users typically perform when managing billing accounts:

Creating Billing Account Records

End users can add a new billing account record from any Billing Accounts view, including the Contacts screen, the Companies screen, the Service Requests screen, or the Billing Accounts screen.

To add a billing account

Navigate to the Billing Accounts screen.

Add a new record and complete the necessary fields.

Some fields are described in the following table.

Field	Comments
Account #	Automatically generated by the application. You can configure Siebel Insurance to assign a billing account number based on your company’s standards and conventions.
Effective Date	Set to the current date.
Status	Set to New.
Type	The type of billing account. Select: Single Policy if you will associate only one policy with the billing account. Multiple Policy if you will associate more than one policy with the billing account.

Associating Billing Accounts with Other Records

Billing accounts can be associated with policies, contacts, companies, service requests, and households. End users can make the associations directly from the Billing Accounts screen, the Contacts Billing Accounts view, or the Companies Billing Accounts views.

Billing accounts can only be associated with households through an implicit relationship with a contact. That is, a billing account must be associated with a contact who is a member of a household in order for the billing account to be associated with the household. This relationship is then visible in the Households Billing Accounts view.

To associate a billing account with a policy

Navigate to the Billing Accounts screen.
In the Billing Account list, drill down on the billing account for which to associate a policy.
Click the Policies view tab.
In the Policies list, add a record.
The Add Policy dialog box appears.
Do one of the following:
- If the policy already exists, select the policy in the Add Policy dialog box.
- If the policy does not yet exist, click New to create a new policy.
The Add Policy dialog box closes and a record is added to the Policies list.
Complete the necessary fields.
The policy is now associated with the billing account.

Note: The billing account type determines how many policies must be associated. If the type is Single Policy, then only one policy must be associated.

Associating a Billing Account with a Contract or a Company

Use the following procedure to associate a billing account with a contract or a company.

To associate a billing account with a contact or a company

Navigate to the Billing Accounts screen.
In the Billing Account list, drill down on the billing account with which to associate a contact or a company.
Click the Contacts view tab.
Do one of the following:
- In the Contacts list, click New and either select or add a contact in the Add Contact dialog box.
- In the Organizations list, click New and either select or add a company in the Add Companies dialog box.

The selected contact or company is now associated with the billing account.

Adding a Service Request to a Billing Account

Use the following procedure to add a service request to a billing account.

To add a service request to a billing account

Navigate to the Billing Accounts screen.
In the Billing Account list, drill down on the billing account to associate with a service request.
Click the Service Requests view tab.
In the Service Requests list, add a record and complete the necessary fields.