The recommended practice is to make the child accounts’ billing dates the same as their parent accounts’ billing dates. Aria allows you to create child accounts whose billing dates are different from their parent account’s billing dates. If a child account’s billing date is different from the parent account’s billing date:
Parent-Child Account Best Practices
- Overview
- Prerequisites
- Important Notes
- Best Practices
- Parent and Child Billing Dates
- Statement Presentation
- Account Statuses
- Service Credits
- Cash Credits
- Refunds
- Parent and Child Account Currencies
- Creating an Order/Prorated Invoice
- Apply Open Cash Credits and Payments To Child Invoices
- Write-Off On Child Invoices With Parent Pay Responsibility
- Move Self/Parent Pay MPIs from Dunning when Paying Parent Account Charges
- Use Cases
Overview
You can create parent‐child account relationships to group accounts together based on your business needs.
Examples:
- You have customers who want to add child accounts for individuals who will use services billed to the parent account or to the child accounts.
- You are a reseller that wants to add your clients as child accounts that will use services billed to the parent account or to the child accounts.
- You are a company that wants to add your departments as child accounts that will use services billed to the parent account or to the child accounts.
There are three different responsibility levels associated with child accounts as described in the table below:
| Responsibility Level | Description | Usage Accrued by Child Account Recorded Under... | Services Billed According To Whose Plan... | Invoices Paid By... |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Level 1 | Standard self pay | Child account | Child account | Child account |
| Level 2 | Parent pay | Child account | Child account | Parent account |
| Level 3 | Parent usage & pay | Parent account | Parent account | Parent account |
You can assign payment responsibility to a master plan instance (MPI) from any account in a parent pay child account's ancestry:
- by using these APIs: assign_acct_plan_m, create_acct_complete_m, set_payment_responsibility_m, update_acct_complete_m, update_acct_plan_m, and update_acct_plan_multi_m. (Please see the documentation for the <resp_level_cd> input field in the respective APIs for more information.)
OR
- in the Aria application when you create an account, add a plan to an existing account, or create/update a parent-child account relationship.
Example: a parent pay child account can have a responsible MPI from a "grandparent" account.
Prerequisites
Based on your business needs, set your chosen client parameters that apply to parent‐child accounts as described in Provisioning Setting Parameters. You can find these parameters in the Aria application under Configuration > Notifications> Provisioning Settings.
Important Notes
- The responsible MPI from the parent account must be a self pay plan.
- For simplicity, the words "parent" and "child" are used generically throughout Aria's documentation to refer to customers in a hierarchy of accounts. Example: the "parent account" responsible for a "child account's" plan may actually be a "grandparent" account.
For any account in a hierarchy, you can identify the “chief” account, which is the ancestor at the highest level. This information is returned by the <chief_acct_info> output in these APIs: create_acct_complete_m, get_acct_details_all_m, get_acct_hierarchy_details_m, and update_acct_complete_m. Example: if you have a child account with a parent and "grandparent", you can identify the "grandparent" account as the “chief” account.
In the Aria application, you can see a diagram showing any parent, children or "grandchildren" for an account by viewing the account hierarchy.
- For more information please see the additional important notes about parent‐child accounts.
Best Practices
Parent and Child Billing Dates
- Aria will generate an invoice on the child account’s billing date.
- Aria will not collect a payment for the child account’s balance until the parent account’s billing date.
Statement Presentation
Determine the pieces of child account information that you want to include in the parents’ statements and contact Aria Systems Customer Support to specify your statement template requirements:
- All child invoice line items, or
- Only the balance transfer amounts.
Account Statuses
Decide what should happen to a child’s account status when the parent’s account status changes. When a parent’s account status is updated, the child’s account can be updated to the same status assigned to the parent. Please contact Aria Systems Customer Support to set up your parent-child account status options.
Service Credits
Be sure to apply service credits to the correct account:
- For credits that apply to a child account’s services, apply the service credit to the child account.
- For credits that apply to a parent account’s services, apply the service credit to the parent account.
Cash Credits
- For responsibility level 1 (self pay), cash credits should always be applied to the child account.
- For responsibility levels 2 and 3 (parent pay), cash credits should always be applied to the parent account.
Refunds
If you need to refund a payment for a child invoice that was paid by a parent account holder, you can issue the refund to the parent account and you can choose to also reverse one or more of the child invoice line items to which the refund applies.
Example: If a child account was charged in error you can issue a refund to the parent account holder, then reverse one or more child invoice line items.
Parent and Child Account Currencies
If you create a child account with parent pay responsibility, the parent and child accounts must be assigned the same currency. This may reduce potential errors resulting from different currency balances being rolled up together at the parent level.
For additional best practices and preconditions related to account registration in general, please see Account Registration Best Practices.
Creating an Order/Prorated Invoice
When creating an order/prorated invoice for a child account with parent pay, Aria now auto-collects the remaining transfer charge (if any) after consuming the open payment on the parent account if Auto Collect From Parent for immediate invoice of child is set to True (from Configuration > Billing > Invoice Settings).
Apply Open Cash Credits and Payments To Child Invoices
To automatically apply open cash credits and payments to child invoices, specifically parent-pay invoices, the Apply Child Open Payments parameter should be set to True. This is a client parameter; please consult your Aria representative for more information.
Write-Off On Child Invoices With Parent Pay Responsibility
After a write-off takes place on a child invoice, its balance transfer on the parent account shows up as fully paid. The write-off transaction is recorded on the child account. The child invoice stays fully paid after the write-off is applied to it.
Move Self/Parent Pay MPIs from Dunning when Paying Parent Account Charges
The dunning functionality related to parent-pay master plan instances (MPIs) was changed in Release 41. It is now required that dunning groups are associated with MPIs. So, even if a dunning group is not provided by the client upon MPI assignment, an empty dunning group (one containing no attributes) will be created and assigned to the MPI automatically.
Other Dunning Considerations
- The parent-pay MPI also now enters dunning when a collection fails on the immediate order invoice.
- The dunning process number is removed from plan assignment when the dunning group is disabled. The following error message has been introduced when trying to update details for a dunning group that is disabled: “Dunning group cannot be modified since it is already disabled.”
- The total balance of the MPI/Billing Group is now collected in the dunning manager batch job when the client parameter Auto-Collect Balance Scope is configured as Full Balance (from Configuration > Billing > Invoice Settings).
- The dunning fee calculator has been enhanced to calculate the dunning fee based on the dunning process from the dunning group mapped to the parent-pay MPI.
- Validation has also been introduced to not allow a responsibility change when the parent-pay MPI is in a dunning state. If this is attempted, the following error message appears: “The Responsible Master Plan Instance cannot be changed for this Parent-pay Master Plan Instance since it is in dunning or has completed dunning without exiting successfully as a result of an unpaid balance transfer.”
- Account comment functionality has also been enhanced to include more details related to dunning activity for self-pay and parent-pay accounts (Accounts > (search for an account) > Account Overview > Recent Comments > Comment Text).
- Dunning steps for parent-pay MPIs can be changed from the following location: Accounts > (search for an account) > Account Overview > Plans > Plan Instance ID > Dunning State > Move to Dunning Step.
- A master plan instance (MPI) using the payment terms payment type will come out of dunning (parent-pay MPIs and any child MPIs if applicable) if the statement balance is below the dunning threshold (please note that the dunning threshold does not apply to MPIs with electronic payment methods; the collection threshold applies for MPIs using electronic payment methods). This works with the client setting Dun Plan For Non-Electronic Payment Terms Using Cumulative Past Due Balance when it is set to True (Configuration -> Payments -> Payment Settings).
Use Cases
Click on any of the links below to see instructions for implementing a few basic parent-child account uses cases with APIs:
For additional rules that apply to parent-child use cases, please see the important notes about parent‐child accounts.