Introduction

In SmartFusion, service types are user defined parameters that typically relate to utility billing services such as water, electric, or garbage. A user may find that they want to penalize delinquent customers differently depending on the type of transaction code they were billed against. A user could relate a group of related transactions to a single service type.

Service types also provide the user the ability to define and penalize using an initial penalty and if the customer does not pay in time and if they don't pay the initial penalty on time, an additional penalty can be billed on top of that.

Explanation

Service Type Setup

To penalize using service types, the user must choose that system setting in delinquent settings to use service type delinquency configuration as opposed to the default delinquency settings in system settings. If this is not switched on, charge type options in delinquency processing menus will NOT allow the user to calculate penalty charges based on initial or additional penalty. Service type users should also fill out the system setting default penalty settings and transaction code. This is a safeguard in case a transaction code without a service type is billed and penalized during the billing.

A user should set up ALL their transactions that are subject to penalty with a defined service type. That is the standard use case for service type setup. Transaction codes that are subject to penalty that do NOT have a defined service type set will default to the delinquency processing system setting penalty options.

Service types affects three parts of the bill run; billing journal, when printing bills, and delinquent processing. Initial penalty will ALWAYS be the calculation service types uses for bill journal and when printing bills.

When assessing penalties, the user will have to choose whether this is assessing initial or additional penalty in the bill run selected. A user must determine which penalty they are assessing each time. For customers that do NOT have an additional penalty, the user should always just use the initial penalty. If a bill run has transactions subject to penalty without service types set up, the system setting delinquent settings will be used.

Initial Penalty

When using service types, the user must choose to penalize by initial or additional when on the delinquent processing screen during a bill run. Penalizing by initial will penalize all accounts set up with service types based on their service type and initial penalty settings.

Additional Penalty

When using service types, the user must choose to penalize by initial or additional when on the delinquent processing screen during a bill run. Penalizing by additional will penalize all accounts set up with service types based on their service type and additional penalty settings. Typically, a user would do an additional penalty during a bill run for customers that have NOT paid their initial penalty amount. Usage of additional penalty may vary from user to user. It is NOT mandatory to use BOTH initial and additional penalty.

Users using additional penalty would also turn on the system setting for delinquency processing to allow delinquent process to be run multiple times in bill wizard. This allows a user to run and update late charges multiple times during a bill run. After posting late charges, the screen shows how many times penalties have been ran and a button to see the process history.

Reference

Delinquent Processing
Delinquent Report/Late Charges
Bill Run Wizard: Delinquent Report/Late Charges
Service Types
Service Assistance