The Lifecycle Of A Service Agreement

The following diagram shows the possible lifecycle of a service agreement.

Pending Start When you initiate a request to start service, the system initiates a service agreement in the state of Pending Start. A pending start service agreement remains in this state until everything necessary to start service is defined in the system.

Active The system automatically changes the state of Pending Start service agreements to Active when everything necessary to start service exists in the system. Refer to Activating Pending Starts for more information. While in this state, the system bills the service agreement's account for the service.

Pending Stop When you initiate a request to stop service, the system progresses the service agreement to the Pending Stop state. A pending stop service agreement remains in this state until everything necessary to stop service is defined in the system.

Stopped The system automatically changes the state of Pending Stop service agreements to Stopped when everything necessary to stop service exists in the system. Refer to Finalizing Pending Stops for more information. The service agreement remains in this state until it is paid in full.

A service agreement can be automatically stopped depending on the SA Type configuration of the Stop Option Flag. Service agreements configured to automatically stop will be stopped when all SP related SAs of the account are stopped. For example, if an account has a cable service and a charitable contribution service agreement then the charitable contribution service agreement can be configured to automatically stop when the cable service agreement is stopped. The stop date of the charitable contribution will be set equal to the stop date of the electric SA.

Closed The system moves a service agreement to the Closed state when it no longer has a financial balance.

Reactivated The system moves a service agreement to the Reactivated state if a financial transaction is created after a service agreement is Closed (e.g., when a payment is canceled after the service agreement is closed). Please be aware that Reactivated service agreements are processed by the Write Off Monitor.

When the service agreement once again has a zero balance (e.g., because the customer pays or the debt is written off), the service agreement returns to the Closed state.

Cancelled You may Cancel a service agreement if it shouldn't exist (because the customer doesn't want service). While cancellation doesn't physically remove a service agreement from the database, most queries and trees suppress information about canceled service agreements. This means cancellation is a nice way to logically delete undesired service agreements.

You'll notice in the above diagram that you can cancel an Active, Pending Stop or Stopped service agreement. You may only do this if the service agreement's financial transactions and non-billed billable charges are all cancelled.

You should rarely have to change a service agreement's status. Why? Because the system changes the status behind-the-scenes when various events take place. For example,

• When you request a service start using the Start/Stop page, the system creates a service agreement in the pending start state.
• If you cancel a pending start before service is activated, the system automatically changes the state of the service agreement to cancelled.
• When everything necessary to start service exists, the system automatically changes the state of the service agreement to active.
• When you request a service stop using the Start/Stop page, the system changes the state of the stopped service agreement to pending stop state.
• When everything necessary to stop service exists, the system automatically changes the state of the service agreement to stopped.
• When a final payment is received and the stopped service agreement's balance becomes zero, the system automatically changes the state of the service agreement to closed. The system can also close a service agreement as part of the write-off processing.
• If the payment bounces, the system automatically changes the state of the service agreement to reactivated. And the system will change it back to closed when the account's balance returns to zero.
• If a billable charge is interfaced into the system, the system automatically changes the state of the service agreement to reactivated.

You may need to manually change a service agreement's state for the following reasons:

• If a service agreement was activated inadvertently, you may cancel it (and therefore logically remove it from the system) after canceling all of its financial transactions. You do this by clicking the cancel button on the service agreement page. You may also cancel an incorrect service agreement if the status transitions to pending stop or stopped before you have a chance to correct the mistake.
• If you don't want to wait for the system to automatically activate a pending start service agreement, you may push the activate button on the service agreement page. You might do this in order to create a bill for an impatient customer.
• If you don't want to wait for the system to automatically finalize a pending stop service agreement, you may push the stop button on the service agreement page. You might do this in order to create a real time final bill for a customer.
• If you don't want to wait for the system to automatically close a stopped service agreement, you may push the close button on the service agreement page.
• Sometimes a service agreement is closed or stopped by mistake. You can activate a stopped, closed, or reactivated service agreement using the Reinstate SA button on the service agreement page. Using the Reinstate SA button retains the current service's billing history.