Creating a budget billing plan

  1. Select Billing > Setup > Billing > Budget Billing Plan.
  2. In the Budget Billing Plans tree, right-click the root node and select Create Plan Setup.
  3. Specify an identification code for the plan in the Plan Code field.
  4. Under Enrollment Requirements, enter the requirements accounts must meet to qualify for budget billing under this plan.

    You can select any options that are applicable to the plan.

    • Select Not Currently in Delinquency to indicate that accounts in delinquency are not eligible for this plan.
    • Select Past Due less than to set a maximum past due balance. Accounts with past due balances of this amount or higher are not eligible for this budget billing plan.
    • Select Credit Rating less than to set a credit rating limit. If the customer responsible for the budget billing payments has a credit rating of this value or higher, the account is not eligible for this budget billing plan.
    • Select Bill History to set a minimum number of billing cycles for budget billing eligibility. When you attempt to enroll an account in this plan for a particular bill type, the account's bill history is checked. Accounts must have at least this many cycle bills of the selected type to qualify for this plan.
    • Select Enrollment Eligibility Formula to specify a formula that will determine if an account is eligible for this plan.
    • Select Allow Override of Enrollment Requirements to allow users with appropriate access to enroll accounts in this plan even if they do not meet all the requirements.
  5. Under Plan Start, specify the date or date range each year when accounts on budget billing begin their plan year.
    Note: Accounts can enroll in budget billing at any time, but the plan does not take effect until the plan year begins. This prevents accounts from starting budget billing during the summer months, when bills are higher than average and accounts will build up a debit variance. Agencies commonly begin budget billing in the fall or winter months so that  customers can build up a credit variance before reaching the summer.
  6. Under Calculate Budgeted Amount, specify the rules this plan will use to calculate the amount customers will be charged on each bill.

    The budgeted amount can be calculated by taking the average of past bills. You also have the option of using a formula. Because the budgeted amount is only an estimate, it will also must be recalculated periodically to keep the variance between the billed amount and the actual amount of the charges to a minimum.

    To calculate the budgeted amount as a monthly average, enter the number of previous bills you want to add up in the Sum of last __ cycle bills field. Specify the number by which you want to divide this sum in the Divided by field. (These two numbers will usually be the same, but there may be cases where you use different values. For example, you might add up the previous 12 cycle bills and divide the result by 11 to give the customer a one-month buffer in case there is a large variance to settle at the end of the plan year. Thus the customer would pay the budgeted amount for 11 months, and have only the settlement amount to pay in the 12th month.) In the Increase by field, you can also enter a percentage by which the calculated amount is increased to account for future rate increases.

    If you want to use your own formula to calculate the budgeted amount, specify the formula in the Budgeted Amount Formula field.

    Finally, under Recalculate Budgeted Amount, specify the intervals at which the budgeted amount that an account is charged under this plan will be recalculated. If you check Annually, the budgeted amount at the start of each plan year is recalculated. If you check Every __ months, you can set an interval at which the budgeted amount will be recalculated. Note that you can select either or both of these check boxes.

  7. Under Settlement, indicate how to settle customers' variances at the end of the plan year.

    Settlement is the process of billing an account on budget billing for its cumulative variance. Because the variance is the cumulative difference between the billed amount and the actual amount of the charges, the amount to be settled can be either a debit or a credit. To settle this amount, one or more settlement line items is created, according to the option you select. (Specifically, a settlement line item is a one-off line item of type "Settlement.") You can select either of these options:

    • If you select Settle Variance on last bill of plan period, a settlement line item for the entire variance on the last bill of the plan period is created.
    • If you select Distribute Variance over next __ cycle bills, the variance is divided by the number you enter, and then settlement line items are added to that number of cycle bills. For example, if you enter 4, an account with a variance of $75 will be charged $18.75 on each of the next four cycle bills.
    Note: The method you select here is only used to settle the variance at the end of the plan year. An account’s variance can also be settled manually during the plan year. For example, if an account’s variance is becoming unusually large, you may want to settle it halfway through the year. In that case, select the settlement method from a prompt.
  8. Under Plan Review, indicate how to compare an account’s actual charges in Review Budget Billing.

    In Review Budget Billing, a plan’s total actual charges to date for the current year can be compared to the total actual charges as of the same date last year. In addition to monitoring the variance, this can help you determine whether an account on budget billing is being charged the correct amount. If the total actual charges for the current year are about the same as for last year, the budgeted amount is probably correct.

    The comparison is expressed as a percentage, which is calculated as the ratio of the actual charges for the current year to the actual charges for the previous year. For example, if the total actual charges for the current year are $450, and the charges as of the same date last year were $300, the ratio is 150%. Anything over 100% represents an increase in the actual charges, and anything under 100% represents a decrease. A ratio of 100% indicates that there has been no change.

    You can use color coding to call attention to accounts with unusually large changes in the actual charges so that appropriate actions can be taken. You can set a minimum percentage, and text and background colors, for each of six levels: Highest, Higher, High, Low, Lower, and Lowest. Infor Public Sector shows default values of 200%, 150%, 125%, 50%, 25%, and 10%.

  9. Under Removal, specify the correspondence process setups you want to use for removal notices and removal warning notices for accounts on this plan.
  10. Click Save.