[puravida]

Hello all,

We have launched "Recurring Payments".

Currently, the recurring payments have the following features:

1. Create an automatically generated (and committed upstream) file for Loan Payments, Bill Collections, Fixed/Pre-funded Payroll, and G/L general ledger entries.

2. Have the system automatically calculate the next effective date, taking in to consideration holidays and weekends.

3. View a report showing the next generation date, amounts of current file, and more, after each automatic generation completes.

4. Support 2-day (typical for balanced files) and 1-day transactions (for special use with G/L and/or prefunded payrolls)



OVERCOMING PITFALLS OF AUTOMATED / RECURRING PAYMENTS

The idea of "recurring payments", "recurring billing", "automated billing" or "automated payroll" is not new. However, SBT upper management decided against implementing it for many years due to liability issues. Now, however, SBT has successfully run similar automated tasks for years in testing and has decided to push forward this initiative because of the growing demand and the careful design to limit our liability and yours. Eventually, this piece of the system will become something that you and your customers will rely upon but you should always at least review what is generated for accuracy and correctness.

[puravida]

As a result of positive customer feedback and requests, the following changes have been implemented:

• The next generation date calculates forward instead of backward*
  
• A new option (admins only) is available to SKIP a payment for a customer**
  
• A new option (admins only) is available to update the remaining number of payments**

*This is more customer-friendly, in that a bill collection should never bill BEFORE the collection date (to avoid debiting an account before a user expects it). So all dates are calculated forward, taking into consideration holidays and weekends.

**These two new options allow for the ability to skip a payment for a user and 1. extend the loan payment to the end (i.e. no change to # of payments remaining) or 2. handle the payment outside of the system (i.e. manually reduce the number of remaining payments by one and collect a one-off credit card charge, etc)