Re: Can't Invoice Next Term

Pat Augustine ( (no email) )
Tue, 17 Feb 1998 10:51:50 -0500

>No, the problem is definitely in the lack of this feature, REGARDLESS of
>whether you'll carry a customer 30 or 60 days. Scenario:
>
>Joe User has no credit card. He signs up with you, using Emerald 2.2, on
>2/18, and pre-pays that first month. You IMMMEDIATELY create and invoice
>for 2/18 to 3/18, and mark it paid. You run billing on Mondays, and for
>pre-payments, you go 30 days in advance. So on Monday, 2/24, you do a
>batch run that creates his NEXT invoice, for 3/18 to 4/18, which is DUE on
>3/18. This user habitually pays at the last minute, so you can EXPECT him
>to be knocking on your door the morning of March 17th with a check in
>hand.... and NOT A MOMENT BEFORE THAT. So on Monday, 3/17, you run a
>billing batch, and it doesn't create his invoice -- he hasn't paid the last
>one yet! He pays on Tuesday, and you mark it thusly. He paid ON TIME,
>and there should be no problem, right? WRONG! Next time you do a billing
>run, Monday, March 24th, it will STILL not generate an invoice for him!
>Yes, he paid his last one, but when you tell it on the 24th of March to
>generate invoices from that day through April 24th, it will SKIP HIM. Bad
>karma.

This is not the way Emerald works in my environment. In that scenario, on
the March 24th billing run he WOULD get generated (we do it all the time).
With incremental billing it does any active account up to the day you enter,
from the 1st of the month (ie, it doesn't generate for 3/24 - 4/24, but
instead 4/1 - 4/24). So you should always include the last day of the
current month in your billing cycle. On Monday, Mar 24, when you create
invoices, create for Mar 31, then without printing, create for Apr 24. Then
print and all your invoices will come out, including Joe User. It only takes
about 2 extra minutes.

Actually, to give a better idea of what we do, and this may not work for
you, here's our scenario. We take payments every day. I post the payments to
Emerald daily. Every morning I generate "Welcome Letters" for everyone who
signed up the day before. As part of that process I also generate invoices
for the last day of the month. Since we bill invoices a month in advance, as
you do, this only generates a handful of invoices (stragglers, people who
paid late and therefore got "missed" in the normal invoice run). Invariably
those stragglers had their payment posted the day before, and their new bill
goes out the following day, giving them as much lead time as possible to pay
again.

Pat Augustine
Interlink America