Definition: What is it?

A billing account is a way of allowing customers to consolidate several invoices into an account that is paid off at a later date.

Customers can be allocated a credit limit and orders can be taken up to the value of the credit limit without any payment being made. Statements to the customer can then be generated (eg monthly) and payment is made based on the outstanding amount.

NOTE: A billing account does not change the flow of the normal Invoice and Payment processes. It simply allows for a more structured organisation of Invoices and Payments.

What is it used for?

Uses include:

• Setting credit limits for customers
• Keeping track of credit available to customer for purchase on account
• Keeping track of payments made in advance (NOTE TO CHECK: Could also use Financial Account for advance payments but need to understand the differences in functionality and process) 
• Keeping track of a subset of payments and invoices for a specific client, i.e. allowing them to have multiple billing accounts (NOTE TO CHECK: This is from David - does this mean having multiple accounts for one customer or does it mean one billing account can track a hierarchy of invoices and payments.....)
• Allow multiple authorised parties to bill against the same account which one party is responsible for paying (e.g. different offices of the same organisation may have one single account with a supplier to make use of order volume discounts)
• Managing and generating customer statements ??
• Customer specific order tracking
• Accounts Receivable / Debt Management
• Analysis and monitoring customer spending (creditworthiness / discounts / product popularity ???)

TO DO: Check for more uses

NOTE: A payment that is applied (or matched) to a Billing Account it should still be applied to an invoice. In the case where the payment arrives before the invoice has been generated then once the invoice is generated it should be applied to the payment or payments.

The billing account 'Terms' menu include an option to setup limited terms (including payment terms) for a customer. Details of current options available to be defined are listed below:

• Late Fee
• Prompt Payment Discounts
• Payment due of specified date per month (eg 20th of the month following invoice date)
• Payment due in days (eg 30 days)
• Penalty for Collection agency (NOTE: Not sure what the difference is between this and Late Fee......?)
• Non returnable sales item
  
  

NOTE: If statement processing is included then need to look at processes around aging of debtors 

What's on the screen?

The default screen displays a list of all Billing Accounts with details of the billing account identifier, credit limit, description as well as the agreement start and end dates.

TO DO:Add in a screen shot?