Auto Continuation

This article will explain the Auto Continuation process. Below is an explanation of continuation billing, how to run continuation, and additional things to note, like exceptions, special circumstances, and discounts.

Topics in this article include

• What is Auto Continuation?

• Types of Continuation Billing

• Templates

• Running Continuation Manually or Unattended

• Month-to-month Continuation Billing

• Exceptions and Special Circumstances

• Discounts

• Continuing Meter Items

• Basic Troubleshooting

What is Auto Continuation?

Auto Continuation billing is the process of extending rentals by closing monthly contracts and reopening a new one for billing purposes. It commonly runs off a 28-day cycle in the United States unless specified as Month to Month in the Pricing tab (Customer Record) or Rate Engine. In Australia, it will typically run from the 1st of the month to the 1st of the next month.

 
Types of Continuation Billing

There are multiple types of Continuation billing. If your customer has a credit limit, it will not affect your ability to auto-continue.

1. Manual Continuation Billing - This is done when manually closing a contract and selecting continuation billing from the closed contract menu.
   
   
2. Manual Auto Continuation - This is completed when you select a template and select Accept or Reject on each contract.
   
   
3. Auto Continuation - This is when you select a template and then select Proceed.
   
   
4. Unattended Continuation - This type of continuation will initiate without user input. It will run from the designated template after a schedule is created in the template and the schedule is Enabled (in Manage Schedule). Unattended Continuation is initiated by a Point of Rental task. The task is created once the schedule is enabled.

Templates

 
Template Menu

• To use an existing template, double-click or right-click the record.

• To create a new template, select ‘New’ in the top left corner.

• To edit an existing template, right-click on the record.​​

• To sort templates, right-click anywhere on the template and select Move. 

  • It's recommended that Specialty billing be first priority (Weekly/bi-weekly or anything less than a month) to avoid the contract being included in monthly billing cycles.
  • If your continuation is Unattended, the template sorted as number 1 will run before template number 2.​​​​​​

Template Layout

Each area of the template and its options are defined below. 

Top area

Name - Title for the schedule. This is what you will see in the template list.

Description - The schedule’s objective.

Continue Type

ℹ️Important! When running continuation billing, you should always run both types: Non-Continued and already Continued.

Bill Already Continuation Billed Contracts - This option is for contracts that have already been through continuation billing at least once. Set by the defined range of days. For example, if ‘7’ is entered here, when the schedule is run, it will look for all contracts that have already been continuation billed that are due within the next 7 days.

Bill Non-Continuation Billed Contracts - This option is for contracts that have never been continuation billed before. It pulls contracts that have been open for the number of days defined. For example, if ‘28’ is entered here, it will only pull contracts that have been out for at least 28 days and exclude those that have been open for less than 28 days.

Selection

Bill Through

Bill Contracts for X Days - This allows you to bill the open contract for a specific number of days.

Bill Contracts Through - This allows you to bill contracts through a specific date. This is generally used for companies that bill by month (1st to 1st). This feature allows the first invoice to end on the first day of the month regardless of the start date.

Allow Special Rate Increase and Decrease - This option is important to those of you who use the special rates feature heavily. There are three options here: Always, Never, and Ask. This can be useful for adjusting pricing items that have been rented for a long period of time, where you may want to increase the price. This feature gives you the ability to decide how the system should proceed when encountering a special rate. From the dropdown, you can select always, ask, or never. Always and Never will not prompt you to make a selection. ​​​​​Important! If you are set up Unattended Continuation, do not select the option "Ask."

Update meter reading - Checking this box will force the system to prompt you for a current meter reading when you are not using AEMP or GPS Unit. If meters have been updated throughout the month, either manually in the item record, this prompt will populate with the last reading; this reading can be manually overridden if necessary. If you are using a GPS Unit or AEMP Integration, it will update the meter reading regardless if this option has been checked or not.

Pay Credit Cards - Checking this box will charge contracts for cash customers. When Continuation is performed manually, you can interact with the payment screen. However, if you have Unattended continuation billing, the system must have a saved credit card token for payments to be taken successfully. Please note, when manually running auto-continuation and there are multiple credit cards stored in the customer record, the contract will open to the payment screen and will allow you to make an account payment and choose a credit card to use.

Print Options

The Print Options for Auto Continuation will only work if you have the Invoice Sent By option set to 'Print' in the customer file. Please verify these settings from within your Customer File - Account Tab.

Contract Information

 Update Contract information for all contracts - Checking this box will update all contracts with messages entered in the open space below. If used, it will overwrite any text currently in that field. It is not typical to use this feature.  

 

Schedule

•  Allows the operator to schedule the template to run unattended.
  
  
• Enable or disable the schedule accordingly.
  
  
• Run by day of the week or by the day of the month.
  
  
• If "Day of the Month" is selected, there is an option to choose the "Last Day of the Month." This will look at the actual last calendar day of the month, not the day that's marked as the "End of Month" in Calendar Maintenance.

Running Continuation Manually or Unattended

Here's how to get there

Expert: Program Menu > Counter System > Auto Continuation
Elite: Left Menu > Transactions > Auto Continuation

Unattended Continuation

Important!

• If you are set up for Unattended Continuation, do not select "Ask" for the dropdown option for the template settings for Allow Special Rate Increase/Decrease.
• Deposits will always move forward to the next contract. 
• When running continuation billing, you should always run both types (Non-Continued and already Continued).

1. Create a template and configure the schedule. Be sure to check the "Enabled" box.
   

2. Go back to the template list. At the top of the window press "Manage Schedule."
   

3. Specify a time for the template to run and check the "Enabled" check box.  Auto Continuation will run on the days specified in the template schedule at the time specified here in this window. You can come back anytime to update this if needed.
   

• When deciding a time, consider when your company runs the End of the Day and when you would like billing to occur. If continuation billing is initiated and completed after the End of Day procedure, contracts will close and post on the next business day. 

4. The date, time, and result of that unattended continuation will be recorded on the template list itself. If any contracts had to be skipped, the box for Skipped would be checked. The template will need to be manually run in order to address those skipped contracts.
   

Manual Continuation

Continuation can be run manually through a template or directly from Auto Continuation. It is recommended that you use Templates for efficiency and to avoid human error.

1.  From the template table, double-click on the template you want to run, or right-click on the template and choose Select. If you're not using templates, select Default (NOT recommended).
   

2. Once the template appears, click Select, located on the bottom right. Important! You can select the "Preview" button in the Continue Type area to view an interactive report displaying contracts that will be continued.
   

3. A list of contracts will appear that are available to be continued according to the options selected within the template. If you click on the customer’s name, it will open the customer dashboard where you can view the customer's detailed information. You can also click on the contract number to open up the contract.
   

4. You can double-click on any contract listed to exclude them from Auto Continuation. Contracts without a contract price will appear here, but they will not be continuation billed until they reach their due date. When contracts are excluded their transaction operation will update to "Do not Continue." Note! You can also press the Select column header to select or deselect contracts in mass to be continued. If you exclude contracts, you will receive the following message asking if you want to exclude those contracts from future Auto Continuation. 
   
   
   
   
5. From the list of contracts, click the "Continue" button.

6. A contract will appear, where you can confirm the contract meets the criteria for the billing. You'll also see a small window appear with four options: Select, Reject, Proceed, or Abort. Press S for Select. Press R for reject. Press P for Proceed. Press A for Abort.
   
   
   
   • Select - By pressing Select, you confirm the contract that's displayed. This option will allow you to manually go through each contract. 
     
     
   • Reject -This option will not continue the displayed contract but will move on to the next one. 
     
     
   • Proceed - This option will go through and continue all the subsequent contracts. 
     
     
   • Abort - Use this option to stop the continuation billing process. Once pressed, it will immediately stop the process and bring you back to the template.

Month-to-month continuation billing

By default, Point of Rental's billing is set to 28 days. On rare occasions, you might need to do it every 30 days. You can change this by selecting the Month to Month checkbox in either the rate engine or customer file.

1. Configure your rate engines.
   Expert: Go to Program Menu > Configuration > System Configuration > Rate Engine.
   Elite: Go to ⚙️> App Configuration > System Configuration > Rate Engine
   

2. Configure your customer file.
   Expert: Go to Program Menu > File Maintenance > Customer File > Pricing
   Elite: Go to ⚙️> File Maintenance > Customer File > Pricing
   

Exceptions and Special Circumstances

• If you have inventory items with headers on the contracts and try to continue, you will receive a warning message to serialize the unit and try again.
  
  
• Tax Jurisdiction Change: Auto Continued contracts will be updated to the replacement tax jurisdiction when the old tax jurisdiction has expired.
  
  
• If a contract has a coupon on it, it will always skip in unattended continuation.
  
  
• If a contract is originally put out for a longer period of time (for example, 40 days) and it is continuation billed for 28 days, the ‘A’ contract will be put out for the remaining period of time (in this case, 12 days). If it is to stay out longer, the ‘A’ contract can be modified.
  
  
• If the unattended continuation is being run and pay cc is checked, the cc will only get paid if there is a token and the system is integrated. If the system is un-integrated, the contracts will need to be marked as paid by cc when that actually occurs. 

Additional Notes

• The transaction edit for all contracts in a continuation cycle has a checkbox labeled ‘Show All Continued Contracts.' When this is checked, transaction edits for all contracts in the cycle will be displayed.
• Continued contracts with an hour duration of 672 or greater will be assigned a status of 'Cycle Billed' on the closed contract.  Anything less than that will be 'Returned'.

Discounts

If you have line items on a contract with a discount, you will need to manually continue these contracts. They will not be carried over if doing auto continuation.
 

Continuing Meter Items

Continuation billing will always bill for meter overtime in addition to the 28-day rate. Having an AEMP connection is important because you do not have to worry about going out to the field to check the meter. It will also help you avoid a surprise bill.

Basic Troubleshooting

Someone should always be following up and checking the template status. You can do this from the Auto Continuation Template Screen.

• Check template. Make sure 0 days is not entered in bill non-continued contracts. 
  
  
• Always troubleshoot in the training database. 
  • Partial run?
    • If the contract was continued early, the transaction edit on the contract will show the operator's name. If the contract is auto-continued, the operator will show it as "system."
    • View Skipped contracts, press select, and see the list of contracts. Then go through each contract skipped! 
      
      
  • Did nothing run?
    • Double-check the task itself to make sure it tried to run
      • It's running through the Point of Rental task runner (you can see the task and the history)
        • NEVER EDIT THE TASK!!!!!
          • The Auto Continuation Application creates the 'Autocontinuation' TaskRunner task. Any edits will need to be made there.
            
            
            
• Is there a prompt that's not allowing the contract to be continued?
  
  
• Check the contract transaction operation. When contracts are excluded, their transaction operation will update to "Do not Continue." If contracts are excluded, they will always move forward as excluded.
  
  
• The Monthly date rate is specified in the item record. All Items Have To Reach The Date before reaching the monthly rate.