Account Payments

Account Payments—Section Overview

Purpose

This Knowledge Central section groups the articles covering how payments are attached to, collected for, and applied against a customer account in Aria Billing Cloud. Use it as the entry point for any task involving payment methods, payment collection, payment application, deferred/unapplied funds, payment terms, installment plans, or tokenized card handling at the account level.

Child Sections

Add a Payment Method to an Account—Covers attaching a payment method (credit card, bank account, etc.) to an account so it can be charged. Route here for tasks about registering, updating, or associating a payment instrument with a customer account.

Add a Payment Term—Covers configuring non-electronic "Payment Terms" (e.g., Net-30), restricted to Finance-role users. Includes due-date logic, account group scope, early-payment discounts, bill lag days, surcharges, and automated payment-reminder notifications. Route here for invoicing/terms configuration rather than card or bank charges.

Defer or Unapply a Payment—Covers creating, applying, and unapplying deferred or unapplied payments — i.e., funds received but not yet allocated to a specific invoice or balance. Route here when a payment needs to be held, reassigned, or reversed from its current application.

Electronic Payment Collection—Describes how Aria automatically collects electronic payments: during nightly batch runs, at account creation, and around specific triggers like plan changes or one-time orders. Route here for questions about automated/system-initiated collection behavior rather than manual charges.

Make a Payment—Covers manually processing a payment (electronic or non-electronic) against an account. Route here for on-demand, agent- or user-initiated payment actions.

Payment Plans—Covers breaking an account's outstanding balance into scheduled installments to ease repayment and reduce churn. Contains three sub-articles: creating a new plan using the balance of a cancelled plan, example fee calculations for a plan, and scenarios describing how payments are applied against an active plan. Route here for installment/repayment-schedule logic rather than single lump-sum payments.

Tokenized Credit Cards—Explains card tokenization, where raw cardholder data is replaced with a randomly generated token for secure storage and transaction processing. Route here for questions about secure card storage, PCI-relevant handling, or token-based charge processing rather than payment-method setup in general.

Agent Routing Notes

• Single, one-time charge → Make a Payment
• Recurring/automatic charge behavior → Electronic Payment Collection
• Storing or updating a card/bank account → Add a Payment Method (or Tokenized Credit Cards if the question is specifically about token security)
• Setting up invoice due-date/discount rules → Add a Payment Term
• Installment scheduling → Payment Plans
• Reassigning or reversing an already-received payment → Defer or Unapply a Payment