Purpose

To set up conditions defining how an encumbrance is applied due to unpaid and overdue fees, and the date(s) on which encumbrances apply if a fee is unpaid.

SubSystem

Finance

This form is used to set up conditions defining how an encumbrance should be applied due to unpaid and overdue fees. Institutions can select a fee type for a calendar type and calendar instance, and define:

• The specific Encumbrance Types that will apply after a set number of dates or after a specific amount is overdue.
• If authorisation and comments are mandatory for an encumbrance.
• If an encumbrance is to be excluded from the automatic application and end-dating processes (i.e. FINJ6230 and FINJ6220).
• Correspondence encumbrance details.

For more information, see the Parameters section below.

An introduction to setting up and managing encumbrances and their effects is found in the section on Encumbrances in the Enrolments subsystem. The place of encumbrances in the general processing cycle is outlined in Understanding Student Finance. Schedules, of which the Fee Encumbrance form is one, are introduced in the Specialist Overview.

The following jobs can be used to maintain Administrative fee encumbrances: (Each job consults the Encumbrance Schedule to discover which encumbrance should apply.)

• The Process Overdue Payment Penalties job (FINJ6230) determines if a student has an unpaid debt for a fee after a Payment Due Date. It then:
  • Applies encumbrances and sets the System Status of the encumbrance record to APPLIED if all conditions are met, or
  • If the the Restrict Auto Processing checkbox is selected on this form (FINF2890) for the Encumbrance Type, then the FINJ6230 job sets the system status of the encumbrance record to PENDING or WAIT APRVL (i.e. not APPLIED). The encumbrance record can then be manually confirmed (set to APPLIED) if all conditions are met, or cancelled by a Fees Administrator in the ' Authorise Fee Encumbrances' (FINF6311) form.
• The Record Encumbrance Expiry Dates (FINJ6220) job determines whether a student has an Administrative encumbrance without an expiry date, and then checks the student’s Person Payment Schedule for any amounts that are unpaid and overdue with that Encumbrance Type. If there are no unpaid or overdue amounts and all conditions are met, then the encumbrance has an expiry date recorded as the encumbrance no longer applies. The job:
  • Automatically sets an Expiry Date for Administrative person encumbrances (in bulk) if conditions to lift the encumbrance are met. Or,
  • If the Restrict Auto Processing checkbox is selected (see the Parameters section, below) for the Encumbrance Type, then that encumberance is not processed by the job instead, at a later date, an Expiry Date can be set manually for the individual encumbrance by an administrator in ENRF6310).
    
  • Note: This job does not process Academic encumbrances. Expiry Dates are set for Academic encumbrances in PRGF6610 (accessed via the Progression Rules button in ENRF6310).

Schedule Entries

An Encumbrance Schedule consists of one or more records. Where there is more than one, the records can be set up to distinguish between:

• Different dates, after which the accumulated Encumbrance Effects up to that point will apply (effects of each succeeding entry will normally become more severe), and/or
• Different Encumbrances that can apply depending on the amount still to be paid at a single date.

Setting Up Entries

Entries can represent dates in one of three ways:

• With 'Fixed Dates' only. These are selected from instances of one or more Date Aliases which must already have been defined in the Calendar subsystem.
• As Offsets signifying a number of days after the Payment Due Date in a student's individual Payment Schedule (these can be seen in the Maintain Person Payment Schedules form, FINF3800).
• With Fixed Dates and Offsets used in combination in one entry. The recommendation in this case is that the Date Alias Instances follow those in the payment schedule for the corresponding Fee Liability, with an offset of one or more days.

The applicable Encumbrance is decided by comparing the entries in the schedule against the effective Run Date of the processing job, FINJ6230.

Levels and Overrides

Encumbrance Schedules can be specified at any of the three levels, with implications as discussed in the Levels section of Special Topics. But they can only be at two levels concurrently, as follows:

• At FTCI Level and FCCI Level concurrently, in which case the schedule at the FTCI Level overrides that at the FCCI Level for the corresponding fee only.
• At FCCI Level and FCFL Level concurrently, in which case the schedule at the FCFL Level overrides that at the FCCI Level for the corresponding fee only.

In both these cases, fees without schedules at either FTCI or FCFL Level will have Encumbrances applied according to the Category Schedule at FCCI Level, even if they are in a group with other fees where an Override applies. However, note the important exception described under WARNING for Student Contribution Amount and Institution Fees below.

Where a fee is not covered by a schedule at any level, Encumbrance effects do not apply.

Student Contribution Amount and Institution Fees

For fees with a System Fee Type of COMSUPPORT (HECS) or a System Fee Trigger Category of INSTITUTN, Encumbrance Schedules must be at FTCI Level.

WARNING. For these two cases, the Fee Assessment routine takes no account of schedules at any other level. Lack of a schedule at the FTCI Level is taken to mean that no schedule exists, and therefore that no Encumbrance applies. This is so even where a category which includes the corresponding fees as liabilities has a schedule attached.

Level access

The form is accessed:

• At FTCI Level through (FINF2100), via the Fee Type Calendars button (bottom right) and then the Fee Encumbrance button (top button, bottom right).
• At FCCI Level through (FINF2800), via the Fee Encumbrances button (bottom button, 2nd from right).
• At FCFL Level through (FINF2800), via the Fee Liabilities button (bottom right) and then the Fee Encumbrances button (or FTCI Fee Encumbrance button) (bottom button, 2nd row from right).

The FTCI Fee Encumbrance button is displayed when a schedule exists at FTCI Level. The form can still be accessed from FCFL Level, but only to display the existing FTCI schedule.

Scenario

A payment of $300 is due on the 11/6/2005 and has an unpaid amount of $175.
Effective Run Date of the Process Overdue Payment Penalties job, FINJ6230 is 22/6/2005.

The debt is 11 days overdue at the Effective Run Date, so the routine enters the schedule at the second entry. For both the first and second entry, the conditions apply (1^st entry, the debt is over $100; 2^nd entry, the debt is over 50%), so both FEE-ENC1 and FEE-ENC2 are created as pending Fee Encumbrances. In this situation the more severe of the two pending Fee Encumbrances would normally be authorised in FINF6311, and the other one cancelled.

If the debt had been assessed at $100 and the unpaid amount had been $55, only FEE-ENC2 would apply, since the outstanding amount would not meet the condition set in the first entry.

If the effective run date had been 14/6/2005, no encumbrances would apply since this is less than 5 days after the Due Date, and so no entries would take effect.

The Fee Calendar Instance block contains:

• Calendar Type
• Start Date
• End Date
• Fee Type
• Fee Category
• Currency

The Fee Encumbrance block contains:

• Date Alias
• Date Value
• Offset Days
• Minimum Overdue %
• Minimum Overdue Amount
• Encumbrance Type

• Discontinue Enrolment - check box
• Write Off Bad Debt - check box
• Restrict Auto Processing - check box
• Authorisation Required - Application - check box
• Authorisation Required - End Date - check box
• Correspondence Required - check box
• Comments Required - Application - check box
• Comments Required - End Date - check box

  Buttons

• Correspondence
• Back (FINF2800 or FIN2100)

The Correspondence block contains

• Date Alias
• Date Value
• Offset Days
• Minimum Overdue %
• Minimum Overdue Amount
• Encumbrance Type

Pending Correspondence

• Communication Type
• Date Alias
• Date Set to APPLIED
• Days Until APPLIED

Applied Correspondence

• Communication Type

End-Date Correspondence

• Communication Type

Rules/Notes:

The Fee Calendar Instances block:

The Fee Calendar Instances block identifies the Fee Period and level for which the schedule is relevant. For a schedule at FTCI Level, the Fee Category is blank. At FCCI Level, the Fee Type is blank. At FCFL Level, there are entries in both Fee Type and Fee Category fields.

The Currency is displayed if available to the calling form.

Schedules for fees with a System Fee Type of 'COMSUPPORT' (HECS) or a System Fee Trigger Category of 'INSTITUTN' must be specified at FTCI Level.

A Date Alias Instance can be used more than once, as long as different Overdue Percentages or Amounts are given. This allows Encumbrances of different severity to be indicated for the same date, depending on the sum overdue.

'Date Alias' definition: - The institution-defined name of an event (not an actual date value). Each Date Alias is assigned a Date Alias Category and may be assigned a Calendar Category. Date Alias examples are CENSUS (DIISRTE Census Date) and END-LECT (last day of lectures in Teaching Period).

'Offset Days' definition: - Instead of supplying an actual date for an event, it is possible to define it as being a certain time before or after another event. This is known as its 'offset'. For example, the number of days after the fee payment date before which the encumbrance comes into affect.

Warning 'lamps' advising that exceptions exist at another level are shown at FCCI Level if, for any fee in the category:

• A schedule exists at any other level, overriding the FCCI schedule for that fee.
• A Student Contribution Amount or Institution Fee is included in the category (see Student Contribution Amount and Institution Fees above).

The Fee Encumbrance block:

Use the Fee Encumbrance block to record one or more entries representing dates after which the corresponding pending Encumbrance applies.

Records can be entered as:

• All based on Date Aliases, with or without Offsets, or
• All based on Offset days from a date shown in the Person Payment Schedule (FINF3800), with no Date Aliases.

For each entry, an amount below which an encumbrance will not apply for an overdue payment, can be specified as either:

• A proportion of the amount overdue using the Minimum Overdue Percentage, or
• A fixed amount, using the Minimum Overdue Amount field.

Alternatively, the amount fields can be left blank. An encumbrance will then apply to any amount overdue.

Some Encumbrance effects require that a student's enrolment is discontinued - these can be seen in the list of all Encumbrance Effects. For the appropriate Encumbrances, set the Discontinue Enrolment check box here, in order to alert staff authorising Encumbrances in FINF6311 that this is so.

The Write Off Bad Debt check box is provided in preparation for future functionality.

The Restrict Auto Processing checkbox is used to prevent:

• the FINJ6230 job from automatically applying an encumbrance (i.e. setting the encumbrance System Status to APPLIED), and
• the FINJ6220 job from automatically applying an Expiry Date to the Administrative encumbrance.

A user would select the Restrict Auto Processing checkbox if they prefer to manually apply (via FINF6311) an encumbrance or expiry-date an encumbrance (via ENRF6310).

When an Encumbrance Type is restricted or excluded from bulk processing (FINJ6230 or FINJ6220) by selecting the Restrict Auto Processing checkbox in this form, the conditions for when it should be set to APPLIED can still be defined in this form (FINF2890).

The Authorisation Required check boxes are selected by default. If you do not want these mandatory requirements set up for the encumbrance, then deselect the appropriate check box.

By using the Authorisation Required check boxes, institutions are able to indicate whether or not authorisation is a mandatory requirement to set an encumbrance to APPLIED, or in order to set an expiry date for an encumbrance.
Note: If authorisation is required, the Person ID of the authoriser and the date of authorisation are mandatory in FINJ6230 and FINJ6220.
The authorisation date defaults to today's date.

The Comments Required check boxes in the Fee Encumbrance block are used to make the addition of a comment mandatory for the encumbrance (for example, when setting parameters to run FINJ6230 and FINJ6220).

(Note: Comments can be recorded for an Encumbrance Type in ENRF6310.)

The Correspondence button is only available if the Correspondence Required check box is selected.

The Correspondence block:

This block (accessed via the Correspondence button) is used to record information about the type of correspondence that is required when the system status of an Administrative fee encumbrance is set to PENDING or APPLIED when running the FINJ6230 job, or an Expiry Date is set for an encumbrance via FINJ6220.

Institutions can define whether or not correspondence will be sent to a student when encumbrance conditions are met. They can also record a unique identifier for a Correspondence item (i.e. a specific piece of correspondence such as a letter, email, or SMS that will be sent).
The Encumbrance Type, encumbrance System Status, and Correspondence item is then used to create correspondence.
(For example, if a Pending Correspondence Communication Type is added for the Encumbrance Type on this form with a 'Days Until APPLIED' or 'Date Set to APPLIED' value specified, then when the System Status for the encumbrance is set to PENDING by the FINJ6230 job a Pending Correspondence item will be sent, and the encumbrance cannot be set to APPLIED until the number of 'Days Until APPLIED' has passed or the 'Date Set to Applied' is reached.)

Using the Correspondence Date Set to APPLIED and Days Until APPLIED fields, institutions can also define the number of days or the date after which correspondence has been sent, before an encumbrance can be set to APPLIED (if all conditions for the encumbrance have not been met).

If both the 'Date Set to APPLIED' and the 'Days Until APPLIED' fields are defined, then the Date Set to APPLIED will take precedence over the Days Until APPLIED. If neither are specified, then the system status of the encumbrance is not updated to APPLIED (via FINJ6230) but remains as PENDING.

Pending Correspondence sub block:

This block applies to correspondence generated for the encumbrance when its System Status is set to PENDING. Using the Communication Type field, institutions can specify the type of Correspondence item to be sent when the encumbrance is set to PENDING (via the FINJ6230 job).

Date Set to APPLIED:
Institutions can use this field to specify a date after correspondence was sent on which a PENDING encumbrance can be set to APPLIED, if conditions have not been met.

Days Until APPLIED:
Institutions can use this field to specify the number of days after correspondence was sent, after which the encumbrance can be set to APPLIED, if conditions have not been met.

If both the Date Set to APPLIED and Days Until APPLIED are defined then the Date Set to APPLIED takes precedence over the Days Until APPLIED.

If neither field is specified then the encumbrance status remains as PENDING but can be applied at any time.

Applied Correspondence sub block:

This block applies to correspondence generated for the encumbrance when its System Status is updated to APPLIED. Using the Communication Type field, institutions can specify what type of Correspondence item will be sent when the encumbrance is set to APPLIED (via the FINJ6230 job).

End-Date Correspondence sub block:

This block applies to correpsondence generated for the encumbrance when an Expiry Date is added. Using the Communication Type field, institutions can specify what type of correspondence will be sent when an Expiry Date is recorded for the encumbrance (via ENRF6310 or FINJ6220, and when it will be sent.

Validations:

• The Date Value for the encumbrance type must be less than the date in the Correspondence block Date Value field, when setting the encumbrance to APPLIED.
• If no Correspondence Type is specified, then no correspondence will be sent.

Added new fields, buttons and blocks and related information. Changed name of Restrict Auto Approval checkbox to Restrict Auto Processing.