Managing Balances

Transferring Balance Amounts

Transfers are made to correct payments that were allocated incorrectly, to allocate a debit adjustment for any account, and to allocate an account adjustment for an account that pays by credit card. In Customer Center and Billing Care, a CSR can transfer amounts between bill items. Transfers can also be made from payment items and account adjustment items to bill items.

A CSR can also make a credit or debit transfer of a currency balance.

Moving a Balance Group from One Bill Unit to Another

To move a balance group from one bill unit to another in the same account, use Billing Care or Customer Center.

Moving a balance group to a different bill unit means that any new charges for the services in the balance group are applied to the new bill unit.

For example, an account has two bill units. One bill unit tracks charges for services that are invoiced. The other tracks charges for services paid by credit card. The customer decides to pay for all services by credit card. The balance group for invoiced services is moved to the bill unit with the credit card payment method. Any new charges for these services are applied to the new bill unit and are charged to the credit card. Existing charges for these services that occurred before the balance group was moved are associated with the old bill unit and are invoiced.

You cannot move a balance group to another bill unit if the balance group's bill unit has unallocated payments or adjustments, open refunds, or unresolved disputes. All disputes must be settled, refunds paid, and payments and adjustments allocated before the balance group can be moved.

A bill unit must have at least one balance group. When a bill unit has only one balance group and that balance group is moved to another bill unit, BRM automatically creates a new balance group not associated with any service for the bill unit from which the balance group was moved.

Important:

You cannot move account default balance groups to a different bill unit.
You should never move a balance group to a bill unit in a different account. To have a different account be responsible for the charges in a balance group, you must create a bill unit hierarchy that includes the appropriate bill units from both accounts.

Note:

To move a balance group from one bill unit to another in the same account, create a custom application that calls PCM_OP_CUST_MODIFY_CUSTOMER.

Backdating A/R Actions

You can backdate A/R actions so that, for accounting purposes, the action is considered to have occurred at an earlier point in time and the revenue for that time is reported accurately. The A/R actions you can backdate include adjustments, disputes, settlements, externally initiated payments, payment reversals, and write-offs.

Note:

BRM does not support future dating of A/R actions.

To backdate an A/R action, the CSR sets the transaction date (the date that the action is to take effect) to a date before the current date. When backdating, the CSR must select a date after the following:

The last posted G/L transaction report.
The account creation date

Whether backdated A/R actions appear on the current bill depends on the accounting method you use:

If you use balance forward accounting, the total of A/R actions for all prior open bills appears on the current bill or invoice as part of the previous balance.
If you use open item accounting, A/R actions do not appear on the current bill or invoice.

If customers request an invoice that includes information on specific A/R actions in a prior billing period, you can create the invoice by running PCM_OP_INV_MAKE_INVOICE.

Synchronizing BRM and ECE Balance Group Transfer Data

You must configure BRM to synchronize the following database updates with the ECE cache:

Service transfers to a different balance group
Balance group transfers to a different bill unit

To configure BRM to send updated balance group transfer information to ECE, use the account synchronization feature to publish the ServiceBalanceGroupTransfer business event to the Oracle DM database queue. For installation and configuration instructions, see "Installing and Configuring Account Synchronization" in BRM Installation Guide.

When configuring the Oracle DM for account synchronization:

Make sure the ServiceBalanceGroupTransfer business event is listed in your payload configuration file under the <PublisherDefs> section. This business event appears in the default Oracle DM payload configuration file (BRM_home/sys/eai_js/payloadconfig_ifw_sync.xml).
Make sure the event notification list maps the /event/notification/service_balgrp_transfer/data notification event to opcode number 3626. This mapping appears in the default account synchronization event notification file (BRM_home/sys/data/config/pin_notify_ifw_sync).
Add the ServiceBalanceGroupTransfer business event to your BRM_home/sys/dm_oracle/ifw_sync_queuenames file if the file maps specific business events to queues.