Account versus Contract

Customers who pay on a budget plan tend to believe that there is one budget amount applied to their account's bill each month. This is not true. Rather, each contract has an individual budget amount (stored in the recurring charge array). The sum of an account's contracts' budget amount is the account's budget amount.

Why does each contract have a unique budget amount? Because all financial accounting in the system is performed at the contract level, not for an entire account.

While a unique budget amount is defined for each contract, a user can use a simple page to view and change the budget amount for all eligible contracts linked to an account.

It's important to be aware that some contracts linked to an account may not be eligible for budget plans. For example, assume you have a customer with a deposit contract and one or more financial services contracts. This customer will be billed for their deposit regardless of the financial service contracts' budget amounts. You define whether a contract may participate in a budget plan on the contract's contract type.