Account Registration - Installment Terms

Installment Terms Features and Concepts

The following features are available through Installment Terms (functionality accessible via APIs unless otherwise noted):

• Credit Memos Application: Apply credit memos to correct installment charges or to close remaining installment balances.
• Write-off for Uncollectible Balances: Write off any remaining uncollectible installment balances.
• Mid-period Cancellations: This allows for immediate or future cancellations of installment schedules. Upon cancellation, the invoice line will share the same due date as the invoice, triggering immediate collection attempts. If collection fails, the master plan instance that the item is mapped to will enter dunning.
• New Customer Purchases: Allows your new customers to purchase new NSOs with an installment term.
• Dunning for Electronic Payments: Dunning for electronic payments are available with this release.
• New Statement Status:
  'Installment Due Paid': This indicates all due charges (both installment and non-installment) on the statement are paid. This status is accessible via the Aria UI (CCP and Aria Billing Cloud, under Accounts > [search for account] > Account Overview > Statements & Invoices > Statements [Status column]) and via Aria APIs.

  Note: When an account statement includes an installment, Aria uses the installment due date to determine if the statement is late or if the statement status needs to be updated. If payment is collected on time, the statement status will be updated to ‘Installment Due Paid’. If the installment due is not paid, the statement is marked as ‘Late’ or ‘Late ok’.

• New Installment Schedule Statuses:
  • Active: The installment schedule will be initiated starting upon invoice creation.
  • Completed: The installment has been paid in full (through payoff or write-off).
  • Cancelled: The Installment has been canceled mid-period and is due immediately.
• Other Payment Options:
  • Tracking a payment applied to an installment for each statement cycle, which helps determine the correct installment amount due for future statements.
  • Allowing clients to define a “lump sum days until due” in the installment catalog definition for an aligned installment type so the due date on a lump sum payment can be any day other than the future installment due date.
  • Using the installment due date to determine if an installment is past due regardless of the payment application method system wide in Aria (FDFO for First Due First, Out; FIFO for First In, First Out for oldest invoices; etc.).
    • The new Statement FIFO payment collection method has been added for installments. This method prioritizes payments by applying them first to non-installment charges, then to installment charges due on that specific statement. To access this parameter, navigate to Configuration > Payments > Payment Settings (Default Payment Collection Method).
  • Calculating estimate dates for aligned installments by gathering the billing interval and rate schedule for all plan instances under the aligned MPI and generating all invoicing dates and taking the upcoming ones for however many installments are left.

• View/select installment terms from the new Installment column at the Accounts > Statements & Invoices > Orders screen (here).

Installment Terms includes support for dunning late fees; a past due installment will be considered as part of dunning fee calculation.

• For electronic dunning, Aria now excludes the future installment balance from the master plan instance (MPI) balance used to calculate the dunning fee via Fee Type: Percentage Fee, which is determined when you create a dunning process. This implementation is only for self-pay MPIs.

• For Net Terms dunning, Aria enables dunning for installments as part of master plan instances (MPIs) associated with the Net Terms pay method. Now, when an MPI is in dunning because the installment amount due is not paid, once the installment amount is paid and the batch runs on the next degrade date, the MPI will come out of dunning. This eliminates the need to validate future installment amounts for dunning or out-of-dunning movements.
  
  Aria now also excludes the future installment balance from the MPI balance to calculate the dunning fee via Fee Type: Percentage Fee, which is determined when you create a dunning process. This implementation is only for self-pay MPIs.

• The Days Until Due field value on a Payment Term configuration (Finance > Payment Terms > [New Payment Term]) and a Payment Method configuration (Configuration > Payments > Payment Method > [Add a Payment Method]} is now used to calculate the invoicing due date for independent installments. These enhancements were made in the Aria UI as well as the relevant APIs.

• Use a new event for installment assignment and trigger the event with the appropriate payload (XML, Name-Value Pair, and Email)—Account Installment Assigned under Accounts and Master Plan Instances.
  • When the installment is successfully assigned, event 760 (shown below) will be triggered (against the destination account) and the payload will be generated.
    
    

• An existing installment with lump sum now will display lump sum details by persisting the data on the checkbox. In previous releases, it didn’t persist, and created confusion with users if those lump sum details stored or not.
• Mandatory fields are now shown in red.
• Previously, the installment due displayed incorrectly when aligned_lump_sum = 0 (lump sum is communicated when invoice is created). This has been resolved.

• Account comments are now automatically added when installments are created or their schedule status is updated. The comments format is as follows:
  • Installment Created: “<installment_type>installment<Installment_no>created for<service_name> - <service_no>on invoice<invoice_no>"
  • Installment Schedule Status Updated: “<installment_type>installment<installment_no>status for<service_name> -
    <service_no>on invoice<invoice_no>was updated to:<schedule_status>"

• Exclude future installments due from collection when setting the existing Auto Collect on Order Invoicing parameter to True.

• More information can be accessed from here.

Aria has also introduced additional loops and strings in support of lump sum payments; please contact your Aria representative for more information. Also, if there is a lump sum with a given installment schedule, the lump sum payment will appear first on that schedule. Otherwise, the oldest installment appears first.