Automated Contract Billing

Automated Contract Billing copies recurring weekly or monthly fees from each child’s Billing Box to the Ledger Card. Once Contract Billing is complete each family (or agency) will have a balance due on their account.

Getting There

At the main screen of Family Data & Accounting go to Functions > Family Accounting > Automated Billing Procedures > Contract Billing.

Hint: Do you have Drop Ins? Learn about the Drop In Contract Billing feature.

Process Contract Billing

1. Mark the Contract Cycle(s) you wish to process at this time, like “Weekly” or “Monthly”.

2. Select a Date for “All Children Enrolled As Of”. This will include only children who are actively enrolled.

Note 1: Their Enrollment Status as of that date must be “Enrolled”.
Note 2: If you have different billing rates (in the child Billing Box) for each schedule, the rate used will the one assigned to the schedule as of this date.

3. Choose a Post Date. This is the date the transaction will be recorded on the Account Ledger Card. If you are billing for next week you’d pick a date like next Monday to indicate the week for which you are charging.
   Note: The “Enrolled As Of” date and the Post Date should usually be the same.

4. Enter a Comment if needed. In most cases you’ll leave it as [Comment], which will use the individual comment from each child’s Billing Box. Check the box “Include Child’s Name in Comment” if you want the name of each child to be added to the comment.

Hint: You may choose a preset comment, like [Multi] days @ $[Amount], which would display the multiplier with the amount from the Billing Box, for example “5 Days @ $20.00”. You may also customize the comment (for example, to include the dates of service) and include a variable, like Week of June 11-15: [Comment], which would end up showing “Week of June 11-15: Full Time: Elizabeth”, if “Full Time” was the comment in the Billing Box of a child and “Include Child’s Name in Comment” is checked. Note: If the entire comment ends up being too long (more than 50 characters), it will be truncated.

5. The Default Multiplier is usually 1.00. This is the number of cycles (weeks, months, days) for which you are billing.

Example: If you were billing for 2 weeks at once, changing the multiplier to 2.00 would double the amount for everyone, although you may manually adjust the multiplier for individual line items on the next screen.

6. Click Next.

7. Select the accounts you wish to process and make any necessary changes to the Amount or Multiply columns. A gray light bulb indicates a “Hidden” account. See: How to Un-Hide an Account

Hint: Place a check in the column header to select all accounts or click just to the right of the check box to sort according to which families are selected and which are not.

8. Click Post > Exit.

View or Void a Previous Contract Billing

1. At the Automated Contract Billing screen, a list of recent billing batches will be displayed under the heading Automated Contract Billing History. Dbl-click the line you wish to view or void.

2. At the Batch Detail screen you’ll see all items that were part of that batch. You may print a Report showing what items were part of the batch or, If needed, void the entire batch at once – just click Void Batch. A void will appear on each Ledger Card that was included in the batch.

3. Click Exit to return to the main Contract Billing screen, then Exit again.