Collection cases
Under Finance → Collections, named cases gather the overdue invoices, the letters sent, the payments, the events recorded by hand and the costs of the case; a debtor can have several. A case is opened by hand, and one button hands it to the lawyer with a ZIP package.
Opening a case: on an invoice's Emails tab, with Open collection case. A customer can have several cases (one per contract, say): when opening, give the new case a name, or add the invoice to one of the customer's active cases. The name can be changed later on the case page. When opening, you are asked whether the money is still expected – if not, the invoice's settlement becomes "Uncollectible": it leaves the cash-flow curve and stays marked in the breakdown. This affects only the forecast and can be changed per invoice on the case page later. Further overdue invoices of the same debtor can be added on the case page.
The case page shows:
- the claim – what the chased invoices still owe, per currency, with the payments;
- late-payment interest – by default the statutory rate: the central bank base rate in force on the first day of the calendar half-year + 8 percentage points, for the whole half-year (between businesses). The team's country picks the bank: the MNB base rate for a Hungarian team, the BNR reference rate (the monetary policy rate) for a Romanian one. For a consumer debtor the points can be changed per case (0 in Hungary, 4 in Romania), and two more modes can be chosen: a fixed annual rate, or "base rate + points, at every rate change" – the statutory rate for a consumer debtor in Romania, where it is not the rate on the first day of the half-year that counts but a new period starts at every central bank decision. Simple interest, actual days / 365, from the day after the due date; each invoice opens a breakdown by period and payment with the principal, the rate and the interest. Demona downloads the base rate from the MNB and the BNR daily. The team default is set on the Collections list page and can be overridden per case. It is an indicative figure: the exact claim is for the lawyer to compute;
- the history – the emails sent, the payments and the events recorded by hand (note, phone call, payment promise, postal letter, return receipt received, letter returned, payment plan), with their files. A postal letter, a return receipt and a returned letter are also filed in the Mail register, with a registry number;
- the costs of the case – incoming invoices the chase ran up (lawyer, postage and so on), picked from existing incoming invoices by a search, and items with no invoice (a court fee, the fee of a payment order) with a description, amount, currency, date and a proof file. This is for the record only: it is not part of the claim or the interest, it stays out of the planned cash flow, and it does not keep the case open. It can be added to a closed case too;
- the contracts – picked by hand from the customer's contracts, the ones the claim rests on (drafts cannot be picked). Picking also needs access to the CRM module.
A person responsible can be assigned to the case, and it has its own chat.
Statuses: Open, Paused, With lawyer, Closed – paid, Closed – written off. When every chased invoice is settled, the case closes itself as paid. A closed case cannot be reopened. No automatic payment reminders go out for the invoices of a case that is paused or with the lawyer.
Handing over to the lawyer: after you enter the name of the law firm, Hand over to lawyer and download package sets the case to With lawyer (the case sheet names the firm) and downloads a ZIP: a case sheet with the claim and the interest broken down by interest period, the PDFs of the invoices and of the cost invoices, the proofs of the other costs, the attached contracts with their files, the letters sent, the mail register items and the case files. The attachments are one flat, numbered list (01_invoice_…pdf, 02_email_…pdf); the attachment table at the end of the case sheet cites them by the same numbers, and the history gives each entry the number of its attachment.
On the customer's page, the Collections tab lists the customer's cases and the Activity tab shows their events too.
Viewing cases requires access to the Billing module; opening, changing them and downloading the package require its manage right.