Credit control

Accounts are associated with credit control rules.

Rules are configured in Credit control under Accounts Receivable in the main section of the Configuration and Tools page.

Set an action under Expiry Action on the Payments tab. Set the Stationery to the stationery document created previously.

Tip: Only take action on accounts with an invoice in the last nn days is used to avoid asking account holders who no longer have active subscriptions to update their credit card details.

Figure: An example credit control Automatic Payment configuration tab

Screenshot showing a credit control Payments configuration tab.
Note: In the following example 20 days before expiry means 20 days before the end of the month. 20 is commonly used as the customer is most likely to have just received or is just about to receive their new card. If you set the period higher, the customer is more likely to forget to update their details. A lower number of days increases the risk of a payment failure before the customer responds to the warning.

You can add additional expiry warnings by clicking New expiry action. This gives you the ability to associate a subsequent action with a different email message. For example, WARNING - ... you may have missed our previous email regarding your credit card expiry ....

Figure: An example credit card expiry warning action configuration window

Screenshot showing a credit card expiry warning action configuration window.

Enabling Batch Dispatch will hold warnings in a queue so they can be reviewed before being manually released. This is useful when first implementing the warning process. This checkbox can be cleared once the process is established.

Calculating the expiry warning

The expiry warning mechanism triggers as cards meet the days before expiry criteria set in the expiry action.

For example, if the days before expiry is 20 and a card will expire in August, then the calculation is 31 days minus 20 days, producing a result of the August 11th. This task runs at night so, in this example, the calculation occurs on the night of the 11th and is ready for dispatch on the 12th.  Experience shows a result on the 13th, so there is a one day difference in what might be expected.