Customer Payment Plans

Use the payment plan routines as an easy way to track customers who have agreed to repay an outstanding dollar amount.  When a customer accepts a payment plan, the customer agrees to pay a specified dollar amount according to a predetermined schedule to pay off their outstanding amount.  Using the Payment Plan Wizard you can set up customer payment plans and specify the plan details.  After the payment plans are set, you can track customers who have a plan, who has missed a payment and who has made their payments.  Customers with payment plans can be excluded from the Past Due process and Shut Off process, if desired.  

Note:  Do not confuse customer payment plans with customer budgets.  They are separate routines and have separate functions.

Steps for Processing Customer Payment Plans:

1.  Create a customer payment plan using the Customer Create Payment Plan Wizard.  Maintain the following fields:

• Plan Start Date

• Overpayment Type

• Frequency

• Term

• Plan Payment $

• Note:  Term and Plan Payment Amount work together to determine how the system will handle the payments.

• If Term 0 / Plan Payment $ 0 - Then enter payments manually.

• If Term 5 / Plan Payment $ 25.00 - The system will apply the number of payments that was entered as the term, for the amount that was entered as the plan, for example 5 payments of 25.00 each.

• If Term 0 / Plan Payment $ 25.00 - The system will calculate the number of payments needed to pay the amount in Total Plan Payment which defaults to the balance owed.

• If Term 0 / Plan $ 25.00 / Total Plan Payment more than balance owed - The system will calculate the total number of payments to pay the amount in the total plan payment.

• Total Plan Payment

2.  View a customer's existing payment plan details, during the Payments View of the Enhanced Inquiry or during the Payment Plan Panel of the Customer Inquiry.  
In addition, customers who have a payment plan set up are identified with a P on the Balances View.

3.  List customer payment plans and the associated details, using the Payment Plan Report.
Tip:  You can use this report to see the customers who are due to make a scheduled payment for their payment plan.

4.  Apply a payment to a customer's payment plan, during Cash Receipts Entry.

5.  Payment plans integrate with the past due and shut off routines, making it easy to stop sending notices to customers who are paying according to an agreed upon payment plan.  Or, you can choose to continue to include these customers in your past due or shut off process.  When you create the workfile, you can choose whether to include or exclude customers with payment plans.

6.  When a customer has finished making all the agreed upon payments for the plan, the system automatically recognizes that the payment plan is finished.  The Payment Plan information becomes history and can be viewed in the Enhanced Inquiry, if the Only Show Active Payment Plans checkbox is left unchecked.

Note:  To Remove a customer's payment plan, use the Customer Remove Payment Plan Wizard.  This will remove the payment plan information from the account regardless of whether the customer has finished the plan.