Deposit Seizures When Other Contracts Are Stopped
Consider a situation when a service provided to a customer is stopped due to non-payment. At some point, if the customer doesn't pay, you'll want to seize the deposit and apply it to the overdue debt. To implement this, the system simply stops the deposit contract when it stops the last contract in its deposit class (refer to Finalizing Pending Stops for more information about stopping contracts). Then, when the account is next billed, the standard deposit refund process will offset outstanding debt before it is refunded to a customer.
Refer to Refunding Deposits for a complete description of how the system refunds a stopped deposit contract's balance to other contracts in its deposit class.
Note:
Deposit class refund method is the key. It's important
to stress that the only way the system will use a deposit to offset
overdue debt is if the deposit's deposit class has a refund method
that does this. If you've set up a deposit class' refund method to
cut a check for the entire deposit amount, the system will not offset
outstanding debt. Refer to Deposit
Class - Refund Method for more information.