Hi, I have not been able to figure out how to use the Schedule button to automatically populate installments for pledges. The only criteria it seems to be using are the start and end dates, as well as the number of installments and optionally "Billing Schedule," i.e. installment frequency. I've done a lot of trial-and-error, but no matter what dates I put in, the resulting schedule never comes out with a consistent monthly schedule. It appears that it can only intelligently space out installments by number of days, as opposed to scheduling them on the same day of every month.
The problem is mainly a workflow issue. Since I have to manually edit each installment date that the scheduler spits out, it makes the process pretty time-consuming when there's a high volume of gift entry. Any help/advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
Michael
Hi Michael,
You can use predefined billing schedules to create a schedule with a payment on the same day of every month.
For example, if you wanted 4 payments due on the 15th of each of the next 4 months with the first payment starting the month after the pledge was entered, in TR_BILLING_SCHEDULE you would create a schedule with FM1+15, FM2+15, FM3+15, FM4+15 in the Bill Dates field.
The FM token means the first day of the payment plan beginning month, so you will need to pay attention to the Beginning date when you are setting up your payment plan. It defaults to the current date, so the example above would always have the first payment scheduled for next month. If you changed the Beginning date, it would set the first payment to be the month after whichever month you changed the Begging date to.
You can find full instructions on how to set up billing schedules here.
Kevin Sheehan
Senior Documentation & Learning Resources Specialist
Tessitura Network
+1 888 643 5778 x 329
ksheehan@tessituranetwork.com
This is great info. Thanks for the prompt reply!
-Michael