Account - Budget
The Budget page contains information about all service agreements linked to an account that are eligible to participate in a budget billing plan. Refer to Budget Billing for more information about how this information affects the account's bills.
You are actually changing service agreements. When you change a service agreement's budget amount on this page, you are actually changing the service agreement's recurring charge amount. Refer to Service Agreement - Recurring Charge for more information.
Eligible service agreements. It's important to be aware that some service agreements linked to an account may not be eligible for budget plans. For example, assume you have a customer with a deposit service agreement and one or more utility service agreements. This customer will be billed for their deposit regardless of the utility service agreements' budget amounts. You define whether a service agreement may participate in a budget plan on the service agreement's SA type.
Open and navigate to the Budget page to view this information.
Description of Page
The appearance and dialogue of this page differs slightly for an account with a small number of service agreements (100 or less) versus a large number of service agreements (more than 100).
- For an account with a small number of service agreements, the user may click the Recommend Budget button to generate a New Budget for each service agreement. At that point the service agreement's budget amount has not been updated. The user may review the calculated amounts; make desired changes and then click Save to update the budget amount for the service agreements.
You must save the page in order for the budget changes to take effect.
- For an account with a large number of service agreements, the user may click the Calculate and Apply New Budget button. At that point the system will calculate the recommended budget and update the Budget Amount on all the eligible service agreements. To change the budget amount for one or more of the service agreements, the user navigates to the service agreement page using the drill down button adjacent to the service agreement in question.
Click Cancel Budget to have the system set the New Budget amount to zero for all the account's service agreements on budget.
Budget Recommendation. Though this page lists all SAs eligible for a budget, the budget recommendation only calculates a budget amount for SAs whose start and end date (if any) includes the budget date.
Budget Plan controls how the account's debt is managed for budget-related purposes. Specifically, it controls how the recommended budget amount is calculated and how / when the customer's budget is periodically changed.
Default note. Budget plan defaults based on the account's customer class / division combination.
The list of budget plans is restricted to those without a CIS Division and those with a CIS Division that matches the account’s CIS Division. When the account does not have a CIS Division, the list is not restricted
Use New Budget Date to define the effective date of any changes to the customer's budget amount (this date is the effective date on the respective service agreements' recurring charge history).
The system displays the sum of the service agreements' current budget amounts in Current Account Budget.
For accounts with a small number of service agreements, the system displays the sum of the service agreements' new budget amounts in Recommended Account Budget.
The grid that follows contains a row for each service agreement linked to the account that is eligible to participate in a budget billing plan:
SA Information This is a concatenation of basic information about the service agreement.
Last Changed Date This is the date when the service agreement's budget amount (i.e., recurring charge amount) was last changed.
Current Budget This is the existing budget amount (i.e., recurring charge amount) for the service agreement.
Recommended Budget For accounts with a small number of service agreements, the service agreement's budget amount (i.e., recurring charge amount) will be changed to reflect this value when the page is changed. The effective date of the change is defined in New Budget Date.
Retroactive Budget Enrollment Process
Retroactive budget enrollment allows customers to sign up for budget billing inclusive of the current bill. It is a multi-step process that involves putting the customer's SAs linked to the current bill on budget effective as of their prior bill date, re-billing the bill segments, and deciding how to present the new information to the customer. This process is available if the following conditions are met:
- Account is not an open-item account.
- Account is not currently on budget.
- Current bill is not due.
- At least one service agreement linked to the current bill is eligible for budget.
When retroactively enrolling on budget, the system creates a budget enrollment process flow and assigns it a customer service request type. The process flow type (enroll customer on budget process) and customer service request type (enroll customer on budget request type or request type) are determined from the action method with Action Method Role of Enroll Customer on Budget. See Setting Up Retroactive Budget Enrollment Request Types for more information about setting up the request type and action method. The request type control some options provided in the process. For example, the recommended budget amount can be edited if the Allow Budget Amount Edit control is set. The process flow is designed to streamline the steps necessary to retroactively enroll the customer on budget billing and contains three steps or panels:
Budget Enrollment Details. This panel is used to set the budget amount of the service agreements linked to the current bill that are eligible for budget billing. The list of available budget plans as well as the default budget plan are the same as in the Account - Budget page. If a budget plan is already configured for the account, it will be used as the default in this panel. The budget amount must be defined for all service agreements to continue with the process.
Bill Comparison. This panel shows the current bill and a simulation of what the bill would have looked like had the account's eligible SAs been on budget.
Bill Presentment. This panel is used to determine how the changes to the current bill, resulting from enrollment in budget billing, will be presented to the customer. The changes can either be included in the current bill (Reopen Last Bill) or included in the next bill (Show On Next Bill). A new bill date must be specified when the Reopen Last Bill bill presentment option is selected.
The system will prevent the process from continuing if Reopen Last Bill is selected as the bill presentment option and the current bill cannot be reopened.
The following are performed when the process is finished:
- Account's SAs that are eligible for budget linked to the current bill are enrolled on
budget effective as of their prior bill date.Note:
If any of the bill segments' period ended before the bill date, the earliest end date among those segments is used as the budget effective date.
- Bill segments for the SAs linked to the current bill are rebilled.
- If the selected bill presentment is Reopen Last Bill, the current bill is re-opened and completed to include the rebill details.
- The Summary panel is shown containing the simulated bill and the current bill.