Customer Class - Main
To set up customer classes, navigate to and use the Main page to define your Customer Class.
Description of Page
Enter a unique Customer Class code and Description for every customer class.
Use Collection Class to define the collection class that defaults onto new accounts that belong to this customer class. An account's collection class may be subsequently modified if the account has special collection problems or needs.
For more information about the significance of collection class, refer to Designing Your Collection Classes .
Turn on Business Activity Required if service agreements linked to accounts with this customer class require a Business Activity description to be entered.
Turn on Open Item Accounting if accounts belonging to this customer class are subject to open-item account. Refer to Open Item Accounting for a complete explanation of the significance of this switch.
Turn on Non CIS Payment if accounts belonging to this customer class are used for payments made to reduce non-CIS debt. For example, assume your company accepts payments for a county assessor and you don't want to set up a separate account for each person who pays their assessment bill. You should set up the following information to accept such payments:
- Create a new customer class called "Non CIS Customer".
- Create a SA type for each type of non-CIS payment that customers can make. Make sure to enter a distribution code on each SA type that references the appropriate revenue (or payable) account. Don't forget to indicate that each SA type is not billed.
Payment Templates can be used for common types of non-CIS payment allocations. These templates are used to default the payment distribution and allow non-CIS payments to be directly allocated to specific distribution codes.
For more information about using Payment Templates to process non-CIS payments, refer to Non-CIS Payments.
- Create an account to which you'll book such payments. Have this account reference the new customer class. We recommend creating a separate account for each SA type that you created in the previous step.
- Create and activate a service agreement for the new account(s).
When someone pays for non-CIS debt, the operator will add a payment for the above account. On the payment, the operator should record reference information in order to know exactly why the payment was made. Refer to Payment Event - Main for more information.
You must define a variety of business rules for every division in which a customer class has customers. For example, if you operate in both California and Nevada AND you have CIS divisions for each state AND you have residential customers in each state, you must define Customer Class Controls for each CIS division. You do this on the Customer Class - Controls page. The grid that follows simply shows the CIS divisions for which business rules have been set up.