Enhancements to Charity Functionality Including a New Round-Up Option

Customer charity donations are ultimately passed on to the charity, so you’ll have to point to the appropriate G/L accounts to isolate this money and to keep track of how much you’ve collected versus how much you’ve turned over.

The G/L accounts are built off the charge category. The relationship between the charge category and the general ledger is defined in G/L Distribution Profiles (Maintenance > Utility Management > G/L Distribution Profiles). There you must locate and click on the dedicated charge category to display the G/L Accounts page, where you can then identify the appropriate G/L accounts.

Charity donations are applied to customer bills as separate billing items, so you must create a billing item specific to the charity. This section describes how to do that. Once a charity billing item is created, you can enroll customers in the program.

If you have multiple charity programs, you will need to create a billing item for each of the different programs.

To create a charity billing item, do the following: 

1. Open the Billing Item List page: Maintenance > Utility Management > Rates > Billing Item.

2. Click the New button at the bottom of the page to open the Billing Item page.

   

3. In the Billing Item field, enter a name for the billing item.

   Ideally, the billing item should be named in such a way as to make it easily identifiable within the software as a charity of whatever type it is. For example, if the charity is called “Opt in for Kids,” you might call it “Opt in Kids - FF,” with the “FF” identifying it as a Flat Fee charity, or “Opt in Kids - RU” with the “RU” identifying it as a Round-Up charity. Keep in mind that this required field will only accommodate up to 16 characters.

4. In the Description field, enter a description for the billing item.

   Again, the description should help make the billing item easily identifiable within the software as a Flat Fee or Bill Round-Up type of charity. For example, if the charity is called “Opt in for Kids,” you might make the description “Opt in for Kids - Charity FF” or “Opt in for Kids - Charity RU,” with the “FF” indicating Flat Fee and the “RU” indicating Round Up. This field can accommodate up to 32 characters.

5. Fill in the Active, Effective Date, and Start Date as appropriate.

6. Select the Charge Category that was created for the charity in question. This tells the system where to place the charity billing line item on the customer’s bill. For information about creating a charge category, see Set Up a Dedicated Charge Category above.

7. Select the Charitable Donation check box. This identifies the billing item as a charitable donation and supports the idea that the billing item will appear on the customer’s bill indefinitely (see the No. of Times to Apply field below). It will also enable the Calculation Type field, which is required for charitable donation billing items.

   Important: If you are already using charity donations but have not completed this step for your charity billing item(s), you should do so. It will make processing the charity donation much easier. For example, if a customer who is enrolled should move out of their current location, the customer will only be charged for the last month’s charity donation amount, not what remains of the 9,999 “Times to Apply.” This only applies, however, if the billing item is flagged as a Charitable Donation.

8. Use the Calculation Type field to indicate whether you are creating a flat fee or round-up type charity billing item.  

   If you are creating a flat fee charity item, do the following: 

   1. Select Quantity x Rate from the Calculation Type drop-down control. This tells the system that, when the donation is calculated, the customer will be charged a flat fee based on the default quantity and default rate defined in the next few steps.
   2. In the Default Quantity field, indicate the quantity that will be applied to this billing item. This number is multiplied by the rate to determine the charge. The default value is zero. Valid values are 0 through 999. The value may be overwritten when the billing item is applied to an account.
   3. Enter the Default Rate that should be charged when this billing item is assessed. The default value is $0.00; valid values are $0.00 through $999.99. The value may be overwritten when the billing item is applied to an account.

   If you are creating a round-up charity item, do the following: 

   1. Select Bill Round-Up from the Calculation Type drop-down list. This tells the system that, when the donation is calculated, the customer will be charged however many pennies it takes to get the bill to the next dollar amount.

   Also, notice that the Default Quantity and Default Rate fields disappear when you selected Bill Round Up. These fields are not used with round-up charity donations.

   

9. In the No. of Times to Apply field, enter the default number of times (i.e., the number of consecutive utility billings) the billing item will appear on the customer’s bill.

   When a customer is enrolled in a charity, it is assumed that participation will be an on-going, month to month donation of indefinite duration. This is represented by entering 9,999 in the No. of Times to Apply field. This simply enables the system to apply the charity donation indefinitely, to every future bill, until the program is manually ended (see Discontinuing a Charitable Donation below).

   Note: Again, as long as the Charitable Donation check box (described above) is selected for the charity billing item, if the customer should move out of their current location, the customer will only be charged for the last month’s donation amount, not what remains of the 9,999 “Times to Apply.”

   Note: Regardless of the number you enter here, it can be overridden when the billing item is applied to a customer’s account.

10. Click Save to save your work.
11. To create additional charity billing items, repeat the above steps as needed.

Now that your charity billing item is created, you can enroll customers in the charity program by adding the billing item to the customer’s bill. ^See Enrolling a Customer in a Round-Up Charity.

Customers who want to participate in a charity must be enrolled in that charity. This is done by adding a charity billing item to the customer’s account. To do this, do the following:

1. Open Customer Service: Utility Management > Customer Service.
2. Use the inquiry pane in the upper-left corner to search for and open the customer you would like to enroll in a charity.

3. In the results pane, click the folder icon associated with the customer and then click Billing Items.

4. The Billing Items attribute will open (click for details). Click the New button.

   Tip: In the strictest sense, a billing item is a one-time, non-recurring fee, an add-on, extra kind of charge. It represents something that is not part of the standard rate structure, such as a meter inspection fee, line fee, etc., for which the customer will be charged only once or a limited number of times. The Billing Items attribute displays the billing items that have been applied to an account; it allows you to add new billing items and discontinue or delete items that no longer apply.

   

5. The Billing Item pop-up window will open.  

   

   Do the following: 

   1. Click the Billing Item field to display the drop-down list and then select the charity billing item for which you would like to enroll the customer.

      Notice that when a billing item with a Bill Round Up calculation type is selected, the Quantity and Amount fields disappear from the pop-up window; that is because they are not used with the Bill Round Up calculation type.
      For instructions on creating a round-up charity billing item, see Create a Charity Billing Item.
   2. Enter a Description for the billing item.
   3. In the Times to Apply field, enter the number of times the customer will be billed for the charity. When a customer is enrolled for a charity, it is assumed that it will be an on-going, month to month donation of indefinite duration. This is represented by entering 9,999 in the Times to Apply field.
   4. Click OK.

6. The Billings Item page will refresh and the new billing item will appear in the Billing Items grid. The customer is now on the charity program.

   Going forward, if the customer was enrolled in a round-up charity, their utility bill will be rounded up to the nearest dollar and the amount of the rounding up will appear on the customer’s utility bill as a separate billing item. If the customer was enrolled in a flat fee charity, their utility bill will include the appropriate flat fee charity donation amount.

   

In earlier releases, there is no good way to view at-a-glance whether or not a customer participates in a charity program. (Click here for details.)

In the Customer Service results pane, a customer’s Billing Items attribute might signify (via a number in parentheses) one or more existing billing items, and one of those billing items could be a charity; but not necessarily, because they could be other types of billing items. To confirm that a customer participates in a charity, the user would have to drill into either the Billing Items attribute or Billing Item respectively.

Enhancements have been made in the current release to allow users to set up account messages for customers who participate in charity programs. Account messages are tied to charity billing items. When this feature is set up, an icon will appear on the Account Information page of all customers enrolled in the charity. Hovering over the icon displays a tooltip that describes the charity.

Account Message Setup

1. Open the Account Message List page: Maintenance > Utility Management > Misc. Definitions > Account Message. This page lists all of the account messages that have been created for use within Utility Management. It also allows you to add new and maintain existing account messages.
2. Click New.

3. The Account Message page will open in Add mode. Click the Message Type field and select Billing Items from the drop-down list.

4. Completing the previous step will display and enable the Billing Item field. The message has to be pointed to the charity billing item for which you want the message to display. Click the Billing Item drop-down control and select the charity for which you are creating the charity account message.

   Note: If you have more than one charity billing item, you must complete these steps for each one of them.

5. Use the Message Code and Message fields to create the message you want conveyed to users when they hover over and/or click on the message icon on customer Account Information pages. To make it clear for users, the message should include the name of the charity and the words “flat fee” or “round-up.”

   For more information about setting up Account Messages, see Help Central by navigating to the Account Message page and selecting the Help button from the nine box menu at the top of the page.

   

Utility Management > Customer Service > Customer > Billing Items

Discontinuing a customer from a round-up charity is done in Customer Service by selecting the customer to disenroll, opening the Billing Items attribute, clicking the round-up charity billing item in the Billing Items grid (shown below), and then clicking the Delete button at the bottom of the page.

After clicking Delete, one of two things will occur: 

• If the billing item was never actually used, it will be deleted and removed from the Billing Items list.
• If the billing item was previously used, it will remain in the Billing Items list, but set the Times to Apply will equal the times already applied, so it will never charge out again.