How Do Collection Agency Referrals Work?

The following points describe how collection agency referrals work.

• A write-off process has one or more events. One type of event causes overdue debt to be referred to a collection agency.
• When a referral write-off event is activated, the system marks the event for processing by the event's Collection Agency Referral Algorithm (refer to Setting Up Write Off Event Types for more information).
• The next time the Collection Agency Referral process executes (the frequency is dependent on your background process schedule), it will refer the process' debt to a collection agency. The specific agency to which the debt is referred is controlled by the event type's Collection Agency Referral Algorithm. The sample algorithm supplied with the system simply refers debt to the collection agency with the least amount of referred debt. If you prefer different logic, you must write your own algorithm.
• Regardless of the manner in which a collection agency is selected for an account's debt, the referral involves the creation of a collection agency referral history record. Refer to Collection Referral for more information.
• A collection agency referral history record is linked to an account. It contains the amount of debt referred to the collection agency. It is the creation of this record that, in turn, triggers the interface of information to the collection agency. The method used to interface the information to the agency is defined on the collection agency's record. Refer to Setting Up Collection Agencies for more information.
• If the collection agency is successful in obtaining the funds, simply add a payment. If the payment causes the SA's balance to become zero, the system will automatically close the service agreement. When the system closes a service agreement, it is "removed" from the write-off process. When a write-off process no longer contains active service agreements, the system cancels the write-off process. When a write off process is cancelled, all collection agency referrals are automatically cancelled.
• Collection agency referrals get cancelled by the creation of a new collection agency referral history record (with a type of cancel ). This record will be interfaced to the agency in the same manner used to interface a new referral (see above).
• If the collection agency is not successful in obtaining your funds after a given amount of time, you probably want to cancel the referral and write-off the debt. The cancellation of the referral will happen automatically if you design your write-off process to generate a collection agency cancellation X days after the referral. Refer to Setting Up Write Off Process Templates for how to do this. You can cancel a referral manually by simply creating a new collection agency referral history record (with a type of cancel ).