Recently, we have been discussing Late Charges; how to set them up and how to calculate them. As we discovered, they are very flexible but they are not mandatory for all your services. Did you know that you can specify whether or not each of your services is subject to Late Charges? This is just one of several service characteristics that you can control within UtilAbility.
Let’s explore how you setup and maintain your Service Types. Your Service Types are defined and maintained through the Service Type Maintenance form which you can access under the Maintenance menu item from the Main form. You can add new service types and modify them, changing various characteristics about them any time you wish.
When setting up a new service:
- First, enter a Service Code. UtilAbility will use the Service Code to identify each service.
- Next, select the Calculation Type. Calculation Types are fixed within UtilAbility and they define the formula that will be used when calculating bills for the service.
- NOTE: Additional entries may appear when selecting certain calculation types. These additional fields are used when calculating a service based on the selected Calculation Type. Other fields and information from other locations may also be used for certain Calculation Types. Please see the UtilAbility Help Documentation for a complete list of Calculation Types and their associated formulas.
- The Service Name is for your reference and will appear in various locations within UtilAbility. You can use any Service Name you wish.
- You can control the order in which the services are printed on the invoices and the order in which they are paid by default when posting payments to your accounts.
- As we mentioned above, you can indicate whether or not each service is subject to Late Charges. You can even specify which Late Charge Group the service belongs to, so you can separate Late Charges for each service or groups of services.
- You can specify whether or not the service is considered when determining which accounts are subject to shut off.
- Finally, you can specify whether or not they will allow you to prorate their calculated bills.
As you can see, there are several service characteristics that you can customize to satisfy your service billing policies. You can modify any of these characteristics any time you wish as your policies change. If you have any questions, please see the UtilAbility Help Documentation or you can contact our support staff for more information.