Customer Menu Option "7"
Any rental account can be set up to be billed. When loading the contract select yes under billing, (See New Rentals and Leases).
The contracts that are due to be billed will be when you run the Billing (Customer Menu option 7). In Store Setup under the "Other" tab you can also setup billing so it is ran automatically when you run the On Screen Account Manager. How often the billing will be run depends on what you put in the Run Billing For __ Days box, However if you load a new contract that needs to be billed right away the next time you run On Screen Account Manager it will be billed even if billing is not due to be run.
The sample invoice is designed with the customer address positioned so it can be put in a window envelope for mailing. The contract information, amount due, next due date etc. will be printed automatically on the invoice. You can customize the invoice in Printer Setup. The invoices will be printed to the printer you have selected in Printer Setup.
Below are descriptions of the fields / buttons on the Billing screen:
Run Billing For ___ Days: This is for how often you run billing, if you print invoices every week set it to 7. If you set it to 7 every 7 days you will be asked if you want to print invoices when you run the On Screen Account Manager (If that option is set in Store Setup). This number is also added to the next number below to get the total days out to bill customers.
Bill Customers ___ Days Before Due: This is for how many days before a customer is due you wish to bill them. Typically this is set to 14. This number is also added to the Run Billing For number to get the total days before due to bill customers. For instance if these 2 numbers are set to 7 and 14 every 7 days you will be prompted to print invoices and invoices would be printed for anybody due in the next 21 days. These 2 numbers together should never add up to more than 30. If you run billing only 1 time per month the numbers should be set to 30 and 0.
When a contract is billed it is flagged with the date last billed, if they do not pay and you have rebilling enabled they would not be billed again until at least 25 days later.
By default once a customer is billed if they do not pay they would not be billed again until they do pay, you can change this option in Store Setup under the "Other" tab.
"Only Report what would be billed. Do not print invoices" checkbox: Check this box if you only want to see a report of who is due to be billed with the current settings instead of printing the invoices.
"Cancel Last Billing Run" button: This button will undo the last billing ran so you can re-run the same billing again if you need to.
Use Alternate Billing Logic checkbox: Check this box if you want to use the alternate way of determining who gets billed. The way it determines who gets billed is described below.
Example of how the alternate billing method works with the following sample #'s in the fields.
Run Billing For 7 Days
Bill Customers 14 Days Before Due
Bill anybody due on any month within the dates: 1-15
If the contracts due date is beyond todays date + 21 days the contract WILL NOT BE BILLED.
If the contract was billed in the past 15 days it WILL NOT BE BILLED. (the 15 days is an internal # that cannot be changed)
If either of the 2 calculations above determine the contract should not be billed then it will not be billed no matter if it meets the requirement below or not.
If the day of month due falls from 1 to 15 it WILL BE BILLED, no matter what month they are due.
The alternate billing method works best for stores that only print invoices 1 or 2 times a month. If you print invoices weekly the normal method works best.