>Emerald look for all accounts that expire in the month of the date
>that you enter in the date field under the batch tab.
Only if you do NOT have Incremental Batch turned on. If you turn ON
"Incremental Batch", it will ONLY go through the exact date you enter, and
ONLY in the given month. (This confused the hell out of me until someone
explained it properly).
To PROPERLY bill, turn ON INCREMENTAL BATCH, and at least ONCE PER WEEK:
Bill all CC's about 7 days in advance. If 7 days from now WRAPS AROUND A
MONTH, you MUST do it TWICE.... once for the last day of the month, and
once for a few days into NEXT month. E.G. on April 28th, you wish to bill
all credit cards through May 6th. Do TWO credit card batches, one with a
date of 04/30/98 and the other with a date of 05/06/98.... These two steps
combined will generate bills for ALL credit card customers who expire on or
before May 6th *and* have no outstanding past-due invoices.
Bill all TERM (renewal or invoice customers) at least 30 days in advance.
For BEST results, insist paper billing customers pay quarterly to prevent
them from being SKIPPED if they have an outstanding invoice (in essense, to
ensure a bill has time to reach them, and payment has time to get back, 30
day cycles aren't enough, since many PAY the last day possible). Same
applies here. TODAY, for example, I ran a pair of Renewal Batches, one
dated 04/30/98 and the other dated 05/08/98, the latter being to catch
those in the first 8 days of May, and the former being to catch those in
the rest of April who may have not yet been billed, or who have recently
paid, said outstanding payment having caused them to be skipped last week.
You're right, though -- if Incremental Batch is OFF, you get the whole
month, like it or not.
>#1 People having expiration dates on the extremes (end of the month
>or beginning of the month) get invoices or charges at odd times.
Using incremental batch prevents this, but means you have to be sharp, and
do TWO billing runs each time, since Emerald won't jump over a month-end
border in a single run.... (i.e. if you enter 05/06/98 on April 15th, it
will bill ONLY those who expire May 1st to May 6th -- you have to do one
with a date in April to catch those in April, etc....