Refunding Deposits

To refund a deposit, you simply need to change the deposit SA's state to pending stop. The system does everything else (i.e., calculates interest and refunds the deposit to the customer).

There are three ways in which a deposit SA's state can become pending stop:

• The Deposit Refund background process (DEPRFND) make a deposit service agreement pending stop when it detects that the customer meets the automatic refund criteria. Refer to Defines The Conditions That Cause The System To Automatically Refund A Deposit for a description of how to define the conditions that control automatic refund.
• An operator, at their discretion, may refund a deposit by stopping the deposit SA using Start/Stop Service (the same page used to stop all other types of service agreements). This page simply changes the deposit SA's state to pending stop.
• The system changes the state of a deposit service agreement to pending stop when it recognizes that all other SAs of its deposit class have also been stopped. This may be necessary, for example, when a customer's utility service agreements have been severed for non-payment. Refer to Deposit Seizures When Other SAs Are Stopped for more information.

The system changes the state of a pending stop SA to stopped when the process responsible for Finalizing Pending Stops next runs.

When a deposit SA becomes stopped, the system calculates interest through the stop date. Refer to Controls Interest Calculation for a description of how interest is calculated.

When the stopped deposit SA is final billed, the system produces a final bill segment that shows the deposit amount being returned to the customer. When the bill segment's bill is completed, the deposit is refunded to the customer as per the deposit refund algorithm on the deposit's deposit class. Refer to Controls How Deposits Are Refunded To A Customer for a description of how a deposit is refunded.