Pay Plans

You create a pay plan when a customer agrees to make one or more scheduled payments to satisfy past (or future) debt. These payments cannot be matched to open items because it is unlikely that debit FT's exist that equal the amount of each scheduled payment. However, you must specify a match type on all payments made by open-item customers. Therefore, a conundrum exists - the system requires a match type on payments made by open item accounts, but payments made for pay plans cannot be matched to existing FT's. This conundrum is solved by the fact that match types do not have to specify an override payment distribution algorithm. The customer class's standard distribution algorithm is used for payments that reference such a match type.

You may wonder how these payments will eventually get matched to open items? If ALL payments associated with a pay plan occur before the next bill is paid (or if the pay plan exists to satisfy future debt), these payments will be swept onto the match event that is created when the customer pays their next bill. However, if the pay plan exists to payoff historical debt and this debt has not been entirely paid by the time of the next bill, an unmatched event will exist when the customer pays their subsequent bills (if the payment amount doesn't match the amount of new charges on the bill). Why? Because, the customer is not paying the entire amount of the bill and therefore the system will not be able to match the payment to open items. If this occurs, we recommend canceling the match events that are created when the customer pays their subsequent bills. When the customer finally pays off all outstanding debt, the system will create a single match event that will contain all payments and bill segments.