Located in the Energy module under the Utilities menu, this utility calculates and updates new budget monthly payments for budget billing customers and creates unpaid Bookings for the total gallons expected to be used by each customer.
Setup
Contract Information
- Select Customers – Choose Select to specify customers or Cust Class to select all customers by Customer Classification.
- Minimum Gallons – The lowest number gallons that may be used when the Booking is created.
- Gallon Price – The price to be entered on the Booking.
- # of Billing Periods – The number of monthly payments in the budget season.
- Min. Budget Pymt Amount – The lowest monthly payment allowed on budget billing.
- Round Budget Amount to – Set to round monthly payment amounts to the nearest 5 or 10 dollars.
- Rounding Gallons – When calculating the total gallons, select to round this amount to the nearest 50 or 100 gallons.
- Equal Billing Cycle – Specify the billing cycle for the utility. This utility may be run multiple times accommodating different cycles.
- Include current budget balance in new budget payment calculation – When calculating the new budget payment amount, this option uses the total dollars of the new budget season contract then adds or subtracts the customer’s current budget balance.
- Accumulate budget amount by customer/tank cycle – For customers with multiple tanks on budget payments, this option adds the total dollars needed for each tank and then calculates one monthly payment. The payment amount will be associated with one tank while the others will have a 0.00 budget payment.
Five date ranges can be entered and three of those can be used to calculate the quantity and Heating Degree Days for the capture grid. Enter the Start Date and End Date and choose Include if applicable.
Booking Information
- Default Product – Select a product to be used if there is no default product on the Tank.
- Date – Select the Booking Date.
- Start Date – Select the Booking Start Date.
- End Date – Select the Booking End Date.
- Location – The selected location is used for each Booking created.
- Printouts – Optionally select to print the Booking or Booking Contract (same as from Booking window). Select the printer where the documents are to be printed.
- Booking Comments – An additional comment may be entered to print on the Bookings created.
Select Save to save the changes on the Setup tab.
Calculations
- Agvance totals the gallons delivered per budget season, and then compares the highest gallon total to the Minimum Gallons – whichever is highest is used for the quantity on the Booking.
- Highest Gallons * Gallon Price = Budget Billing Dollars
- Budget Billing Dollars / # of Billing Periods = Monthly Payment Amount
Create
Based on the information on the Setup tab and the calculations, this tab summarizes the information for the unpaid Bookings and the new monthly budget payment. Select Preview to populate information based on criteria on the Setup tab.
- Post – Manually select the boxes in grid for the tanks to be posted, or the Tag All button may be used to select all lines.
- Tag All – Selects the Post box on all lines.
- Untag All – Clears checkmarks from the Post column on all lines.
- Contract Signed – Select this option to indicate the customer has signed the contract. A notification is sent to SKY. Additionally, if the Disallow edit of a signed booking preference is selected in Accounting on the A/R tab at Setup / Preferences, checking this option will prevent any edits to the Booking after saving.
- Assign Seller Signature – Check this option to capture the Seller Signature. A window will display to select the appropriate seller. If the Seller Signature Only From Logged In User option is selected in Accounting at Setup / Preferences on the A/R tab, the signature of the user logged in will be added to the contract without the option to select another signature from the list. For more on setting up signatures, see here.
Select Post to update the monthly payments on the selected tanks plus creates unpaid Bookings in the location(s) specified.
Upon posting, a confirmation displays to show the Bookings created.
These Bookings can be seen at Accounting / A/R / Product Bookings.
If Bookings are not needed, this grid may be used to manually update the tank monthly payments.
