Monitoring Overdue Bills

The Overdue Monitor checks if your accounts have bills that violate your overdue rules

The Overdue Monitor is a background process that periodically reviews your account's financial obligations.

Note well: every account belongs to a collection class. There are two types of collection classes: those whose accounts are monitored by the Account Debt Monitor, and those that are monitored by the Overdue Monitor. This chapter describes the Overdue Monitor.

Overdue rules define when and how unpaid bills are collected

An account's collection class overdue rules have algorithms that monitor an account's financial obligations. These algorithms are invoked by the Overdue Monitor when it's time to review an account's obligations.

These algorithms can contain any type of criteria. However, most are defined using a combination of a threshold age and monetary amount. For example, a classic algorithm would check if a bill has unpaid financial transactions more than 20 days old that exceed $50.

In the case of bill-oriented collection, the monitoring algorithms look at each of the account's bills to determine if they are paid. Note, a bill is considered paid if its financial transactions (FTs) are linked to a balanced match event. If a monitoring algorithm finds an unpaid bill, it can check if it old enough (and large enough) to be considered a violation.

When you set up a monitoring algorithm, you define the type of overdue process that should be created when an overdue bill is detected. You do this by defining the appropriate "overdue process template".

An overdue process template defines how to handle an overdue bill

An overdue process template contains one or more overdue event types. These define the number and type of events that are created to prod the customer to pay. For example, you might set up an overdue process template with event types to send a series of letters followed up by a call.

The overdue process template has contains the rules defining when events are activated.

The specific action that's performed by an overdue event is controlled by the Activation algorithm defined on its event type. Refer to Overdue Event Type - Main for a list of the various Activation algorithms delivered with the base package.

Multiple objects can be associated with a single process

The above diagram shows a single bill linked to an overdue process. It should be noted that an overdue process is capable of referencing multiple bills (or other objects).

Note well: while a single overdue process can reference many overdue objects, all such objects must be of the same type. For example, you cannot commingle bills and service agreements under a single overdue process. The type of object managed by an overdue process is defined on its overdue process template.

If a customer pays the bill, the overdue process is cancelled

If an overdue bill is paid, the overdue process is canceled real-time. You control if and how an overdue process is cancelled by setting up the appropriate rules on the overdue process template.

The Overdue / Cut Event Manager activates and triggers overdue events

The Overdue / Cut Event Manager is a background process that activates overdue events on the appropriate date. On this date, the event's Activation algorithm(s) are called.

This Overdue / Cut Event Manager also has the responsibility of recursively activating later events that are dependent on the completion of earlier events.

Events can be activated real-time

Overdue Process - Main has a button that allows users to activate (and recursively trigger) overdue events online / real-time. This means you don't have to wait for a batch job to activate events.

Overdue events can wait for related activities to complete

As described above, an overdue event's Activation algorithm can create virtually any object. What wasn't explained is that the event can be set up to wait for the ancillary object to finish before it completes. For example, an event can create a To Do entry and wait for it to complete before the next event is triggered. You can introduce plug-ins to create and wait on virtually any object.

While an overdue event is in the Wait state, the Overdue / Cut Event Manager monitors the state of the related object(s). When the related object completes, the event is transitioned to the Complete sate (thus triggering dependent overdue events). Please see Some Events Wait For Something Before Completing for more information.