Recurring Charge - Setup and settings

The standing instruction for something charged every period: a rent, a service charge, an electricity bill, a school fee, an office overhead. One row is one thing charged to one scope.

When to use it

Setting up a new tenancy: rent, common area charges, water, parking, electricity.
Adding a fee head for a class or a student.
Recording a company overhead that should be booked every month without anyone typing it.
Changing a price from a given date onwards.

Before you start

Have these ready:

the charge head (the fee or service item) and the income or expense account it should reach;
the party who pays, or the class, student or tenancy the charge is scoped to;
the fine or discount policy, and the increment policy, if the charge uses them.

Also know which billing calendar your company bills on. A month means a Nepali month or an English one depending on that setting, and it decides which charges a run picks up.

Where to find it

Setup > Recurring Charge.

The fields on this screen

Section	Field (on screen)	What to enter	Required
Tax	VAT applicable	Tick to mark the billed line taxable. The VAT that posts comes from the bill's tax terms, not from here.	No
Tax	VAT %	(not explained yet)	No
Tax	TDS applicable	Tick to withhold TDS on this charge. A tick with TDS % left at 0 withholds nothing and is flagged on the run.	No
Tax	TDS %	Percentage withheld from this charge. It applies to this charge's own amount, not to the whole bill.	No
Timing	Bill periods back	Which month this bills. 0 bills the month being run; 1 bills the month before, for arrears such as metered use.	No
Timing	Credit days	Days allowed from the due date before a late fine starts. It does not set the due date itself.	No
Policy	Fine / discount policy	(not explained yet)	No
Policy	Increment policy	(not explained yet)	No
System	Generated From	Records which assignment and rate period this charge came from, so a repeat run does not duplicate it.	No
Charge	Direction	Revenue = bill (Dr AR / Cr income); Expense = JV (Dr expense / Cr payable-bank)	No
Charge	Name	for example Grade 10 Tuition, Office Rent	No
Charge	Scope type	Who/what it applies to (class, student, org, ...)	No
Charge	Scope id	Id within scope type (class id / student id); blank for org/global	No
Charge	Context id	Secondary dimension (academic year / contract); optional	No
Charge	Charge head (product)	The fee/service product; carries the income ledger. Optional for pure expenses.	No
Charge	P&L ledger	Income (else via product) or expense ledger	No
Charge	Amount	The rate this charge bills at. Rate type decides whether it is per month, per square foot or per unit.	No
Charge	Rate type	How the rate is read: per month, per square foot of the area, or per metered unit.	No
Posting & Schedule	Periodicity	(not explained yet)	No
Posting & Schedule	Effective from	First day this charge bills from. A month it only partly covers bills only the days inside the window.	No
Posting & Schedule	Effective to	Blank = open-ended	No
Posting & Schedule	Posting mode	Decides what is posted - a bill to the customer, or an expense voucher against a payable or a bank account.	No
Posting & Schedule	Counter ledger (payable/bank)	Expense credit side; blank = derive	No
Posting & Schedule	Party (vendor/customer)	Expense vendor / revenue customer; blank = derive from scope	No
Posting & Schedule	Voucher type id	Document type the SPE creates; optional	No
Posting & Schedule	Priority	Billing / collection order	No
Posting & Schedule	Active	Only active charges are picked up by the billing run. Untick one to stop it billing without deleting it.	No

How it works

Saving a charge bills nobody. It only records what should be billed. The documents are raised later, when a billing run for a period is started from the Bill Generation screen. Until then nothing exists in the accounts.

When a run does happen:

Direction decides what is raised. Revenue raises a sales invoice to the paying party. Expense raises a journal voucher.
Revenue is grouped by the paying party, not by the charge. A customer holding three shutters gets one invoice with three lines, because the customer is the one who owes the money. A class-scoped fee fans out to every active student in the class.
Rate type decides how the Amount is read: per month, per square foot of the area, or per metered unit. Per-month and per-square-foot charges are reduced in proportion when the effective window covers only part of the month, so a tenancy that starts mid-month pays for the days it occupied. A metered charge is never reduced that way, because the reading already measured only what was used.
Bill periods back decides which month is billed. 0 bills the month being run. 1 bills the month before, which is what electricity needs, since a meter cannot be read before the month it measures. Charges on different settings land on separate invoices.
Effective from and Effective to mark when the charge starts and stops. A blank Effective to means it runs until you stop it.
Untick Active to stop a charge billing without losing it. A run only picks up active charges.

Money and tax:

VAT applicable marks the billed line taxable. The VAT that actually posts comes from the bill's tax terms, not from the percent typed here. So a charge marked taxable on a document with no tax term posts no VAT.
TDS applicable withholds from this charge's own amount, not from the whole bill. Ticking it with the percent left at zero withholds nothing, and the run flags it instead of guessing.

What changing a charge does, and does not do:

A change applies to future bills only. Invoices already raised are not re-priced, and nothing already posted moves. If a rate was wrong on a bill that has gone out, correct the bill.
If a charge that has already billed is later changed outside the normal screens, the charge generator reports it as an error instead of quietly rewriting it, because an issued invoice already points at the old figure.
Where a party holds several metered charges against one meter, exactly one of them claims the reading. The others are skipped, with a stated reason on the run. Under-billing is the safer direction, and it is what happens.

Tips and common mistakes

Scope id, Context id and Voucher type id are typed as plain numbers, so you need the record number of the class, student or customer in front of you. Getting one wrong points the charge at somebody else, with no warning.
Credit days is the grace period before a late fine starts. It does not set the due date on the invoice.
A charge with no matching meter reading is skipped, not billed at zero. "No reading" and "the reading was zero" look different on the run, and only the second is a real zero.
After adding charges for a new tenancy, check the run detail instead of assuming. A charge that was skipped says so there.

Bill Generation is where a period is actually billed. See also Billing Run History, Tenancy and Shutter, Discount / Fine Policy, Increment Policy, and the Product master (the charge head).