How To Nominate A Single Service To Sever (Rather Than Sever Everything That's In Arrears)

Some organizations that offer multiple services do not sever all services when the customer falls into arrears. Rather, they nominate a single service agreement to sever in the hopes that the lack of service will cause the customer to remit payment. The following diagram illustrates the control tables values required to implement this type of requirement.

Some utilities that offer multiple services do not sever all services when the customer falls into arrears and instead nominate a single service agreement to sever.

The following important concepts are illustrated above:

  • The collection process's last event does NOT sever all services. Rather, it calls an algorithm that selects a single service to sever. A base package algorithm allows you to define the primary service to sever and a secondary service to sever (if the customer does not have the primary service). If you sold electricity and gas, you would probably define the primary service as electricity and the secondary as gas (because electricity is easier to cutoff than gas).
  • The severance process that is started for the primary service cuts service. If the customer doesn't remit what is owed, the second severance event calls an algorithm that severs all other service agreements in the debt class.
  • Because you are nominating a single service to sever, you must set up a special value in collection class control to force the ADM to ignore all service agreements in a debt class when one of the SAs in the debt class is being severed. Notice that the age / amount in the criteria is so large that it could never be violated.
  • In addition, because the entire debt class must no longer be in arrears to stop the collection and severance processes, you must plug-in the appropriate collection process and severance process cancellation criteria on the debt class. Refer to How Are Collection Processes Cancelled and How Are Severance Processes Cancelled for more information about how these algorithms are used. Also note, you do not need service agreement cancellation criteria defined on your collection process templates and severance process templates (because cancellation is controlled at the debt class level).