Advantage Financial allows you to define many aspects of billing through configuring tables associated with the billing process. Software coding changes are not needed.
The Billing Profile (BPRO) table defines the basic characteristics of a customer bill. A single Billing Profile, or bill definition, can be assigned to one or many customers. A Billing Profile combined with a customer code constitutes a customer account.
Important billing characteristics that the Billing Profile table allows you to specify include:
Bill Type - Determines whether a customer receives an invoice, a statement, both an invoice and a statement, or no billing at all. Customers for whom the setting of both statement and invoice has been selected are billed using invoices, but will also receive a periodic statement detailing activity against their account. Statement customers are billed through statements only and do not receive invoices.
”Remit to” information - Specifies the name and address that will be printed on the bill identifying where and to whom payments should be made.
Central Remit - On the Billing Profile table, the Central Remit flag determines whether the central remittance address should be used on the accounts receivable documents assigned to this billing profile. This flag also determines whether the respective customer notice generation programs need to generate a Coupon ID and write a record to the Coupon Return (CRT) table for Invoices, Statements and Payment Plan related notifications. In addition, selection of this flag also causes the Auto Apply flag on the Coupon Return table to be set to True when the table is updated.
Refer to the Billing Setup Tables section for more information on the Coupon Return table. Refer to the Generating Cash Receipts for Centralized Billing section for information on how the CRT table is used to create zero dollar Cash Receipt documents.
Output Distribution - Selection of this field specifies where each form will be routed after it has been printed.
Organization/Contact Information - Contains name, address, and other related information to inform customers whom they should phone or email if they have questions about their bill.
Minimum Billing Amount - Lets you override the system-wide minimum billing amount level set on the System Options table on a case-by-case basis. Minimum Billing Amount applies only to those customers who receive statements.
Use Default Intercept Remittance - Selection of this flag indicates that the Default Billing Profile specified on the Intercept Options table (plus the AR Department and Unit from the referenced Receivable) should be used to infer the remittance contact information when an internal debt record is saved to the Intercept Request table.
For statement customers, the Billing Profile lets you define:
Statement Frequency - Determines when statements are sent; for example, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly.
Statement Day - Determines which day statements will be generated for a particular frequency
Weekend/Holiday Exceptions - Specifies the day on which statements will be generated for a particular frequency when the billing day falls on a holiday, a weekend, or when the regular defined statement day is not part of the month.
Special instructions - Identifies the special text to be included on the statement.
Expanded statement - determines whether detailed transaction activity should be printed on the statement.
For invoice customers, the Billing Profile table lets you define:
Special instructions - Identifies the special text to be included in the invoice.