Rental accruals

Rental accrual processing allows rental charges to be accrued in one period and invoiced in the next period if the billing date is within a certain number of days of the period end (based on rules 49 and 50 on the rental agreement). The charges accrued are generally for a number of days. The subsequent billing will add those accrued charges to the new charges for the next period. When the charges are determined for the subsequent billing, the billing starts after the accrual date. This can result in the customer being over charged if the best rate from the rental charge from date to the subsequent billing date is the equivalent of one week. For example, if two days accrued and the rental was then terminated after another 4 days, the rental would be charged as six days (2 accrued + 4) at the daily rate when the best rate may be one week at the weekly rate.

Now, the system will reverse the accrual in the subsequent billing and recalculate the charges from the rental agreement’s charge from date to the current billing date. The accrual records will no longer be shown on the contract invoice.

This pertains to bill in arrears rentals only because bill in advance rental accruals will never result in the incorrect number of days being billed.

Fixed and Time Charges

The following applies for fixed and time charges:

• If the rental is bill in arrears, when finding the last billed date, the system will ignore accrual billing records and use the next previous billed date or, if no previous billed date exists, it will use the rental Charge From Date as the start date for the billing.

Variable Charges

The following applies for variable charges:

• If the rental is bill in arrears, when finding the last billed date, the system will ignore accrual billing records and use the next previous billed date or, if no previous billed date exists, it will use the rental Charge From Date as the start date for the billing.
• If there is a previous billing and it was accrued, when looking for readings to include in the billing, the system will find any with a reading date greater than or equal to the above start date and less than or equal to the current billing date, regardless of whether the reading has been billed.

Miscellaneous Charges

The following applies for miscellaneous charges:

• If the rental is bill in arrears and the miscellaneous charge has a status of Billed:
• • The system will check the billing file to determine if the miscellaneous charge was accrued on the previous billing.
  • It will check the new Contract Bill Accruals file to determine if the miscellaneous charge accrual has been reversed.
  • If accrued and reversed, the system will ignore the miscellaneous charge for this billing.
  • If accrued and not reversed:
  • • The system will check the Contract Miscellaneous Charge-Discount/Surcharge Cross-reference file to determine if the miscellaneous charge is from a contract discount/surcharge.
    • If it is from a contract discount/surcharge, if the discount/surcharge is a percentage, the system will calculate the miscellaneous charge using the fixed charges and add it to the contract miscellaneous charge file with the new billing date.
    • If it isn’t from a contract discount/surcharge OR if it is a flat charge discount/ surcharge, the system will bill the miscellaneous charge again with the new billing date.
• If this is the first billing and charges are to accrue, they will accrue as they always have.

Contract Billing Cancellation Process

The following applies:

• In the functions that cancel billing runs, when deleting the miscellaneous charges created from the discount/surcharges, the system will delete the corresponding record(s) in the Contract Miscellaneous Charge-Discount/Surcharge Cross-reference and Contract Billing-Discount/Surcharge Cross-reference files.

Contract Billing Post Process

The following applies:

• In the function that processes accrual records created in the previous billing, if the rental is bill in arrears:
• The system will create a GL transaction reversing the accrual instead of an AR transaction.
• It will update the accrual record in the Contract Bill Accruals file with the GL transaction for the accrual reversal.
• It will change the status of the accrual records to Billed.
• It will not add an invoice number to the accrual records. This will cause the accruals to be excluded on the printed invoice.
• In the function that processes accrual records created in this billing, if the rental is bill in arrears:
• The system will create the GL transaction as usual for the accrual records.
• It will add a record to the Contract Bill Accruals file with the GL transaction for the accrual.

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