Preventing SA 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 service agreement's balance is affected. For example:

• When a payment is frozen, the customer's balance is reduced.
• When an adjustment is frozen, the customer's balance is impacted.
• When a bill segment is frozen, the customer's balance is increased (typically).

For payments, there is no issue. However, for bill segments and certain types of adjustments, you may NOT want the customer's balance to be impacted until the next bill is completed. Consider the following scenarios:

• Late payment charges:
  • You can setup the system to create a late payment charge (i.e., an adjustment) say 5 days after an unpaid bill is due.
  • If the related adjustment is frozen, the customer's balance will be impacted. However, its impact will not affect aged debt until the next bill is completed. In other words, the amount of the frozen adjustment segment will appear as a "New Charge" until the bill is completed.
• Batch billing:
  • If a customer has multiple service agreements, it's possible for one of the service agreements to have a bill segment that's in error and the other service agreement's bill segment to be error-free.
  • If this happens and you have setup the bill cycle schedule to freeze bill segments if they're error-free, then you could have one bill segment frozen and another in error.
  • The frozen bill segment will impact the customer's balance. However, its impact will not affect aged debt until the bill is completed (and a bill cannot be completed until all of its bill segments are error-free). In other words, the amount of the frozen bill segment will appear as a "New Charge" until the bill is completed.

While aged-debt isn't impacted by frozen FT's, the general ledger is. 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 customer's balance). If this is unacceptable, you can setup the system to not allow certain types of FT's to be frozen until the next bill is completed. This means that neither the customer'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.
• Examine each of your adjustment types. Select Freeze At Bill Completion for those that should not impact the customer's balance or the general ledger until the next bill is completed. Select Freeze At Will for those that should impact the customer's balance and the GL when they are frozen. Typically, the only adjustment types for which you'd choose Freeze At Will option are those that cause a customer's balance to be reduced, those that are used to refund money to a customer, and those that are created at bill completion. Adjustment types for adjustments created during bill completion (e.g., by a bill completion algorithm) must have their adjustment freeze option set to Freeze At Will. Otherwise (i.e., if the option is Freeze At Bill Completion ) they will not be frozen until a subsequent bill is completed.

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. This means that the freeze button will be disabled on Bill - Main , Bill - Bill Segments and Bill Segment - Main.
  • The Billing background process will not freeze bill segments until all segments on a bill are error free (and permission has been granted on the bill cycle schedule to complete bills).
  • Bill segments will exist in the freezable state until the bill is completed.
• If you turn on Freeze At Bill Completion on Adjustment Type - Main:
  • Users will not be allowed to freeze adjustments of this type online. This means that the freeze button will be disabled on Adjustment - Main .
  • 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. This means that the freeze button will be enabled on Bill - Main , Bill - Bill Segments and Bill Segment - Main.
  • The Billing background process will freeze bill segments when the individual segment is error-free (and permission has been granted on the bill cycle schedule to freeze bill segments).
  • 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 be also be set to Freeze At Will (otherwise they wouldn't get frozen).
• If you turn on Freeze At Will on Adjustment Type - Main:
  • Users will be allowed to freeze adjustments of this type online. This means that the freeze button will be enabled on Adjustment - Main .
  • 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.