Promise Contact Actions

Promise Contact Actions are contact plans used to automatically manage promise contacts. The actions cover all possible scenarios. A promise payment may be a full payment, underpayment, overpayment, returned NSF payment or broken promise. When a payment is received for an account that has an active Promise, the amount and date of the payment are evaluated to determine which action to perform on the account.

Promise Contact Actions are set in the Payment Posting Options form and are enabled when you switch ON 'Automatically manage promises' in the same form.

Promise Contact Actions set in Payment Posting Options

The contact plans used for promises must be set up beforehand or must exist already in your system. They are shipped with Collect! and may be copied from the Demonstration database.

Contact Plan list with Promise Contact Plans

Collect! ships with plans and settings in place to manage promises automatically. We will explain how each plan performs.

We will cover:

• Automatically Manage Promises
• Promise Full Payment
• Promise Underpayment
• Promise Overpayment
• Promise NSF Payment
• Promise Broken Payment

Automatically Manage Promises

This switch in the Payment Posting Options MUST be enabled with a check mark to manage your promises, whether or not you choose to use Promise Contact Actions. By itself, when switched ON, the switch will handle promises on accounts, as outlined below.

• Collect! will advance the promise Due Date on a repeating promise when a full payment is posted to the account. When the account is paid in full, the Promise Contact will be marked Completed.
  
  
• Collect! will not advance the promise Due Date when an underpayment is posted to the account, but will keep track of how much more is needed to satisfy the Promise.
  
  
• Collect! will advance the promise Due Date on a repeating promise when an overpayment is posted to the account.
  
  
• Collect! will roll back the Due Date and reactivate the Promise, when an NSF check is posted to the account.
  
  

If there are contact plan codes in the Promise Contact Actions section, then additional steps will be taken whenever an account has an active Promise. Each of these steps is described below.

Promise Full Payment

The Promise Full Payment (PRF) plan will run when a payment is posted that matches the Amount set in the Promise contact for the account.

Promise Full Payment Actions

This plan writes a line to the debtor's Notes and queues a letter confirming receipt of payment.

Even without a plan in this section, Collect! will advance a repeating promise Due Date when a full payment is posted to the account.

Promise Underpayment

The Promise Underpayment (PRU) plan will run when a payment is posted that is LESS than the Amount set in the Promise contact for the account.

Promise Underpayment Actions

This plan writes a line to the debtor's Notes and queues a letter informing the debtor that the amount received did not satisfy the Promise.

Even without a plan in this section, Collect! will not advance the promise Due Date when an underpayment is posted to the account, but will keep track of how much more is needed to satisfy the Promise.

Promise Overpayment

The Promise Overpayment (PRO) plan will run when a payment is posted that is MORE than the Amount set in the Promise contact for the account.

Promise Overpayment Actions

This plan writes a line to the debtor's Notes and queues a letter confirming receipt of payment and informing the debtor that the amount received more than satisfies the Promise.

Even without a plan in this section, Collect! will advance a repeating promise Due Date when an overpayment is posted to the account. You can set the 'Advance overpayments' switch in the Promise contact if you wish to consider overpayments as fulfilling future promises. By default, the Promise Due Date always rolls forward only one Repeat interval, regardless of the amount overpaid.

Promise NSF Payment

The Promise NSF Payment (PRN) plan will run when you post a returned NSF payment on an account that has a Promise.

Promise NSF Payment

This plan writes a line to the debtor's Notes, queues a letter informing the debtor that the promise payment has gone NSF, schedules a Review of the account and changes the account's Status to NSF.

The Promise NSF Payment action also deletes pending contacts on the account. This deletes the Promise contact, effectively ending the Promise agreement. You are prompted before the plan deletes the contacts, so you may cancel that action.

If you do not want Collect! to delete the Promise contact, you can switch ON "Do not autodelete" when you first set up the Promise contact. The PRA - Promise Active plan has this switch set to prevent autodeleting promises.

Even without a plan in this section, Collect! will roll back the Due Date and reactivate the Promise, when an NSF check is posted to the account.

Promise Broken

The Promise Broken (PRB) plan will run when you process your broken promises using Batch Processing.

Promise Broken

This plan writes a line to the debtor's Notes, queues a letter informing the debtor that they missed their promised payment, schedules a Review of the account with a Delay of 14 days and changes the account's Status to PRB.

To use this Promise Contact Action to manage your broken promises, you must use Batch Processing. Unlike the other plans, It does not run automatically.

To Run Promise Broken

1. Select Tools and then select Batch Processing from the drop-down choices.

2. Ensure that ' Process automatic contacts previously scheduled' is enabled with a dot in the radio button. Select NEXT.

3. Enable 'Selected contacts only' and switch ON 'Broken promises' with a check mark. Select NEXT. Then select START when you are ready to proceed.

4. Collect! will process your broken promises and display results.


Results of Processing Broken Promises

5. If you go to an account with a broken promise, you will see the changes that the plan made to the account. The Status is changed and a line is written to Notes.


Debtor with Broken Promise

Viewing the Contact list for the account, we can see that a letter and a review have also been scheduled. The review is delayed 14 days to give the debtor time to respond to the letter.


Contacts Scheduled for Broken Promise

You may want to handle broken promises differently. This is easily managed by modifying the actions in the Promise Broken plan to suit your needs.

Summary

Promise Contact Actions are contact plans that enable you to perform custom actions as Collect! automatically manages promises on your accounts. You can schedule whatever events you need for full payment, underpayment, overpayment, NSF payment and broken promises. Any payment posted to an account with a Promise will trigger one of the promise contact plans. Broken promises are managed through Batch Processing.

Remember that whenever you use contact plans, you have to be careful that you know every step the plans will take on your accounts.

Other promise contact plans shipped with the Demonstration database are Promise Activate (PRA) to start a Promise on an account and Promise Review (PRR) to review an account that has a Promise set up.

To print a coupon book when you start a Promise, you may add a letter event to the PRA plan.

See Also

- Promise Contact Topics