State Surcharge – ‘Billed’ Payment Type Caution!

It has recently come to our attention that some agencies are still using the ‘Billed’ exceptional payment method to pay permit fees in the Building Module.

Billed: The ‘Billed’ payment method was created to allow the agency to indicate that the customer will receive an invoice or bill and the permit will be allowed to advance through the workflow regardless of when actual funds are received.  This is the decision of the issuing agency and the responsibility to track of the issuing agency.
 
Please note, if you are one of these agencies:

1. The ‘Billed’ paid fees will not be included in State Surcharge reporting, which means no surcharge will be reported up and until you pay permit fees with an actual CASH (cash/check/credit card) payment method.
2. The prescribed process for using the ‘Billed’ exceptional payment method:

• Invoice the permits fees to be paid and generate the Invoice report (you will need this later on and then it will be available in Documents)
• Pay the invoiced permit fees with ‘Billed’
• Run the Revenue Exceptions report (Report 2 > Reconciliation reports > Revenue Exceptions) to track these ‘billed’ records and to send the Applicant/Owner a copy of the Invoice you generated at 30/60/90 days asking for CASH payment  
• When they come in to make a CASH payment – you will void the ‘Billed’ payment which will make the fees outstanding again (as per the invoice you sent), and then post their CASH payment.  Once this CASH payment is posted on the permit fees, these paid permit fees will then be included in the State Surcharge reporting as required.

It is important to be aware and follow the above process above all the way through to receipting a CASH payment.  If you don’t, you run the risk of issuing or even finaling a permit with no actual payment made (we see this happening sometimes in the database) – or of never paying the required State Surcharge on permit fees (we’ve also see this happen).