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BillMax Billing Solutions 877.245.5629 sales@billmax.com |
| Billing Functions | ||
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Chapter 3. Administering Accounts | 
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The following describes the different billing functions that a Customer Service Representative may perform. Which functions are allowed depend on the Permissions of the Authorized BillMax User that the Customer Service Representative is logged in as to BillMax.
Under normal circumstances, BillMax will generate and send Statements. However there are times when a Customer Service Representative needs to generate and send a Statement. In addition, there may be a need to send a statement covering more time than a normal Statement or to send historical Statements. BillMax allows the Customer Service Representative to:
Choose from which statement in the past to start listing transactions.
The transactions from a number of consecutive statements to include on the newly generated Statement.
| (1) | Specify the initial Statement from which transactions will be included on the newly generated Statement. |
| (2) | Specify the number of Statement from which transactions will be included on the newly generated Statement. |
| (3) |
Clicking on |
Figure 3.7. Example Statement
| (1) |
Click |
| (2) |
Click |
| (3) |
These buttons perform the same functions as those listed on the |
| (1) | Place a customized message on the Statement using this input field. |
New Sales listed on a Statement do not have a due date set until a Summary is entered for the Account. Normally this is done automatically by BillMax. This may done manually by hitting the "CLOSE STATEMENT" button.
There are several different summary lines that may show up on a Statement. The following contrived Statement shows the different summary lines:
Figure 3.8. Contrived Example Statement Balances
| (1) | The total amount that is past due. This may be made up of amounts that have different due dates in the past. |
| (2) | The total amount that has appeared on previous Statements, but none of which is past due. |
| (3) | Credits (either a Store Credits or a Payments) that have not been used completely to pay off a Sale, a Refund or a Deposit Charge. |
| (4) | Refunds that do not sufficient amounts of Payment Allocated to them. This may occur when a Refund is made against a Payment and then the Payments is subsequently Voided (perhaps due to Non Sufficient Funds). |
| (5) | New charges along with the due date. |
Entering a Payment for an Account is accomplished by clicking the PAYMENT button. The following is displayed:
Figure 3.9. The Payment Screen
| (1) | The amount of the Payment. |
| (2) | The Payment method. |
| (3) | A number for the payment (check number, credit card transaction number ...). |
| (4) | If giving the customer a receipt from a receipt booklet, the receipt number. |
| (5) |
Whether to let BillMax automatically Allocate the Payment to Sale, Deposit Charges or Refunds. If no Allocations are specified below, and this is set to |
| (6) |
Clicking |
| (7) | Indicates an Allocation to be stored in the database. |
| (8) | The total amount of the original transaction. |
| (9) | The amount of the original transaction that has already been paid, presumably by a different Payment or a Store Credit. |
| (10) | The amount of the Payment being entered that will be Allocated to this transaction. |
| (11) | Indicates whether or not the transaction may have automatic Allocations made to it. Will be skipped by the BillMax automated Allocation process. |
Store Credits may not be used to give the Account a Refund or be used to pay off a Deposit Charge. Giving Store Credit to an Account is accomplished by clicking the CREDIT MEMO button. Note that Store Credits may not be used to give the Account a Refund or be used to pay off a Deposit Charge. The following is displayed:
Figure 3.10. The Credit Memo Screen
| (1) | The unit amount of the Store Credit. This amount is multiplied by the quantity to determine the total amount of the Store Credit. |
| (2) | The quantity. |
| (3) |
Set to |
| (4) | Specifies whether or not sales tax should be assessed on the Store Credit. |
| (5) |
Either a Service must be specified for a Store Credit or the |
| (6) | Optionally specify a start date for which the Store Credit is given. |
| (7) | Optionally specify an end date for which the Store Credit is given. |
| (8) | The type of Store Credit. A valid value from the chargetypes list. |
| (9) | A description for the Store Credit. |
Ringing up a Sale for an Account is accomplished by clicking the CHARGE button. The following is displayed:
Figure 3.11. The Enter Charge Screen
| (1) | The unit amount of the Sale. This amount is multiplied by the quantity to determine the total amount of the Sale. |
| (2) | The quantity. |
| (3) | Specifies whether or not sales tax should be assessed on the Sale. |
| (4) |
Set to |
| (5) | Enter, if applicable, a purchase order number. |
| (6) | The first date an attempt will be made to collect funds via Electronic Funds Processing for a Sale or a Deposit Charge. . |
| (7) | Specify whether or not the onetime sale is for usage or not (i.e. online time, MegaBytes transferred, etc.). |
| (8) |
Either a Service must be specified for a Sale or the |
| (9) | Optionally specify a start date for the Service. |
| (10) | Optionally specify an end date for the Service. |
| (11) | The type of Sale. A valid value from the chargetypes list. |
| (12) | A description for the Sale. |
This is how to record a refund that has been given to the customer through another system such as writing a check or using a credit card terminal. To record a Refund, click the REFUND button. The following is displayed:
If there is no un-Allocated cash, then a Refund can not be recorded.
Voids are used for transactions that may not be deleted but are mistakes. They may also be used to void Payments that have been entered but have later turned out to be invalid. Examples are:
Checks that have been return NSF.
Credit card payments that have been subjected to a chargeback.
Voids are also used to reversed Sales that have been paid in order to de-Allocate Payments freeing up the Payments to be used for a Refund.
To void a transaction, click the "VOID" button. The following list is displayed:
Click on a link to void a transaction. The following (as an example) will be displayed:
Figure 3.14. Voiding a Transaction
| (1) | The type of transaction being voided. |
| (2) | The transaction number. |
| (3) | The date the transaction was created. |
| (4) | The amount of the transaction. |
| (5) | A description for the Void. Data must be entered in this field. |
| (6) |
Clicking on |
| (7) |
Clicking on |
| (8) |
Clicking on |
Click on "DEPOSITS" to manage Deposit Charges and Deposit Refunds. The following is displayed:
Figure 3.15. The Manage Deposits Screen
| (1) |
In order to assess a Deposit Charge, select a Service to which the Deposit Charge will be displayed and click the |
| (2) |
Set to |
| (3) |
Click |
| (4) | The total amount of Deposit Charges currently assessed to the Account. |
| (5) | The total amount of paid Deposit Charges currently assessed to the Account. |
| (6) |
The list of paid Deposit Charges currently assessed to the Account. Select one of more of these and click the |
Click on "CHARGE CREDIT CARD" to do a onetime credit card charge. The "Process Credit Card" page is displayed. The page is composed of the following sections:
| (1) | Click on this check box to permanently store the following credit card information in the Account record. If not checked, the credit card information entered below (if different than that which is stored in the Account record) will be used for the current credit card charge only. |
| (2) | The credit card information to be used for the current transaction. |
The following are the Sales and Deposit Charges that are to be paid by the current credit card transaction.
Click on "REFUND CREDIT CARD" to do a onetime credit card refund. The "Refund Via Credit Card" page is displayed. The page is composed of the following section:
| (1) | Specifies the amount to refund. This value can not exceed the sum of all the eligible unallocated payments. |
| (2) | Specifies payments to refund. |
![[Note]](images/note.png) |
Note |
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Refunds to credit cards are possible only if the payments were made via a credit card. In addition, most processors impose a date restriction whereby payments older than a certain time are no longer eligible to be refunded. Lastly, not all processing systems supported by BillMax support real time refunds. |
Transactions that have not been not been "summarized", i.e. had a subsequent Summary record created, may be edited or deleted. If a transaction has been voided, deleting the transaction will delete the Void. To edit or delete a transaction, click on the "EDIT/DELETE" button. A list of un-summarized transaction is displayed:
Click on the transaction to edit or delete. The display of the resulting screen depends on the type of transaction selected. The following is an example of clicking on a Sale link.
To view the Account's transaction history, click the "HISTORY" button. The following screen is displayed:
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Note |
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The monetary amounts are displayed in whole numbers with the appropriate decimal assumed. |
The colors of the various rows may be turned off by clicking the "No Color" link. The colors may be modified by editing the values in the histcolors list.
The data may be downloaded as a CSV file to a spreadsheet application using the "Download to spreadsheet" link.
![[Tip]](images/tip.png) |
Tip |
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The Summary lines (Ty column is 5) is the sum of all previous lines. If a Store Credit has been issued and is used, the sum of the taxable, ntaxable and tax columns may not equal zero even though the Account does not owe any money. This is normal behavior. |
Please see payhist table for a description of the fields listed.
Existing Allocations may be modified or new Allocations be created at any time. Care should be done when doing this, as it will change historical reports that are cash based. Examples of reports that will be modified when changing the Allocations are the Sales Tax report, the cash based Sales Report and the Accounts Receivable report.
To work with Allocations, click one of the following buttons:
"PAYMENT/CREDIT LIST"Brings up the list of Payments and Store Credits for an Account.
"INVOICE/DEPOSIT CHARGE"Brings up the list of Sales and Deposit Charges for an Account.
"REFUND LIST"Brings up the list of Sales and Deposit Charges for an Account.
Only working with Payments and Store Creditswill be described in detail. Clicking on the "PAYMENT/CREDIT LIST" displays the following screen:
| (1) | Click on a link to bring up a Payment or Store Credit for which the Allocations will be created or modified. |
| (2) |
A |
| (3) |
A |
After clicking on a link, the following screen is displayed:
If "Auto Allocate" is set to "NO" and the record saved, all Allocation records associated with this Payment will be deleted from the database. This technique may be used to re-arrange Allocation records.
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