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Accounts: Billing - Overall

This is used to control the main billing settings for the deal.

General
The Suspend Billing field is used to temporarily stop billing for active deals. It has no effect on terminated leases. If you suspend billing and a number of months have passed, unsuspending billing will cause the unbilled months to be all billed at once for the next billing run. If this is not desired and you only want one month billed, then you should consider changing the next payment due date on the Amortization screen.

The Print statement when billing is run field is used to control whether or not you want a statement to print for this deal when the lease billing or loan statement procedures are run. For weekly due dates, it is recommended to set this to "Never." The "Only if amt owed > 0" option means that a statement will never be generated unless there is any amount owed. This option works great in the event where payments are posted before the billing procedure is run, and you only wish to see statements where a customer has not yet paid in full through the upcoming due date.

Taxes and Add-Ons
These are add-ons to the base payment of the deal. This is usually only used for leases. An add-on, or "AMPTax" (Additional Monthly Payment and Tax) is usually a tax, but may be any amount that adds or subtracts from the base payment.

You may have up to eight add-ons for each deal. Before adding anything to a deal, an AMPTax master code must first be defined. See AMPTax Maintenance for how to do this. Use the Add Code to Deal button to select an AMPTax code to this deal.

The "Accum.?" column is for taxes and is used to indicated whether or not tax rates are to be treated separately or accumulatively. For example, a total tax rate of 7% in Minnesota is broken down to 6.5% state tax and 0.5% city tax. With the accumulative flags on, the tax is calculated at 7%, and then broken down to the 6.5% and 0.5%. By default, U.S. taxes are accumulative.

Canadian taxes are NOT accumulative. GST and PST are to be calculated separately.

If you need to calculate a tax off of a reduced base payment (because it contains non-taxable amounts), then you may override the percentage by checking the Override Perc box, and then entering a percentage into the Override % field. This percentage would be the percentage of how much of the base payment is taxable. For example:

Base Payment = $395.47
Tax Rate = 5.5%
Taxable Portion of Base Payment = $110.73, or 28% (110.73 / 395.47 = .279995954)

In this example you would go to the tax rates that have been marked for usage, mark the Override Perc box, and then enter 28 into the Override % field. (You can also be more precise and enter 27.99960 if you want.) As a result, the tax will calculate as $6.09. (395.47 * .055 * .28 = 6.090238)

When any changes are made to this screen, ALWAYS click the Recalculate button. This will calculate an update Total Payment Amount. When you save your changes, the deal's amortization schedule will be updated for all remaining, unbilled lines. (Lines which have been billed will not be affected.)

Use the button to remove the corresponding code from this deal. Again, hit Recalculate.

Late Fee
Grade Period represents the number of days that can pass after the payment due day before a deal will be assessed a late fee. Be careful when setting this field, as it strongly controls the late fee assessment. For example, if you have deals that are paid weekly, setting the grace period to 7 or more days would result in the customer to never be assessed a late fee or statement. Here are the recommended delinquent day settings:
  • Weekly. Zero days. Your customers are keenly aware that they signed a contract for weekly payments. If they cannot make these payments on time, then "sock it to them" with late fees or repossess the collateral.
  • Bi-weekly or semi-monthly. 0-2 days. Like weekly deals, your customers should know that they are on the hook for at least 2 payments per month. 2 days are recommended to allow for weekends.
  • Monthly. 0-10 days. 5 days is recommended.

    Grace period end day of month is used as an override to the Grade Period. This may be between 1 and 31 and represents a fixed day of the month on which the grace period will end. USE THIS FOR MONTHLY DEALS ONLY!!! (Set this to zero to NOT override the Days before delinquent.) Setting this to 31 will cause ALMSys to always use the last day of the month. You would typically use this override when you have the same day of month due for all of your deals and you want your grace period to end on the same day for everyone, regardless of how many days are in the month.

    Late fee based on percentage of .... is used to set the method of calculating the fee. There are five methods:

    1. Base Payment Principal + Interest: If any amount is owed after the grace period has expired, this method will simply calculate the late fee amount as the percentage (explained next) times the base amount (principal plus interest) of the payment.

    2. Amount Owed, Excluding Fees: If any amount is owed (excluding fees) after the grace period has expired, this method will calculate the late fee as the percentage times the amount owed.

    3. Minimum, or percent of P & I, to Maximum: If any amount is owed (excluding fees) after the grace period has expired, this method will calculate the late fee as the percentage times the base amount (principal plus interest) of the payment.

    4. Amount Owed, Excluding Delinquent Fees Only: This is similar to type 2, but only excludes those late fees that are considered delinquent.

    5. Total Outstanding Amount Owed. This will calculate the late fee as a percentage of the current total outstanding amount owed. Caution: This may charge late fees on top of late fees. Some states and provinces prohibit this practice.

    Percentage to calculate is the percentage to use to calculate the late fee. Fifteen percent would be entered as 15, five and a quarter percent would be entered as 5.25.

    Minimum late fee dollar amount is the minimum dollar amount that each late fee calculation is to be. This is applied to all calculation types.

    Maximum late fee dollar amount is the dollar amount that each late fee calculation is not to exceed. This is applied to all calculation types.

    Percentage of outstanding amount owed due to avoid a late charge is how much the customer may pay of the current amount owed to avoid a late fee. For example, if this percentage were set to 95, then that would indicate that the customer would only need to pay 95% of the total amount owed to avoid the late fee. In other words, if John Doe is billed $300.00 and only paid $285.00, then a late fee would not be assessed. If you wish to always charge a late fee when any amount is delinquent, set this to 100. If you wish to never charge a late fee (no matter what), set this to 0.

    If the calculated late charge is less than... will completely suppress a late fee if it is calculated less than this number.

    Generate Late Letter is used in conjunction with the Delinquency Report, which will only generate data for a late letter if this field is marked as "Yes." The date of the last late letter is provided on this screen.

    Coupons
    If you want to create payment coupons for your customer, then you have two choices on this screen.

    The Coupons Printed Here box will allow you create and print coupons using your printer. Most likely, this will be on special paper with perforations. (Contact Support to discuss special coupon forms.) You have the choice for the sort order of the coupons. The "Tear Friendly" choice will arrange the coupons so that they are in order after separating all of the pages' top coupons first.

    The Request External Coupons box will create a request for an external company to create the coupon book. Once you make the request, you will need to go to the Coupons Export screen to create the batch for the external processor.