Managing Dunning Reminders

Dunning, in general, is the process of communicating with customers to claim outstanding receivables, for example (but not exclusively), overdue payment requests for invoices.

JustOn Billing & Invoice Management implements dunning process support based on configurable dunning statements.

Dunning in JustOn

To help tracking and claiming outstanding payments, JustOn supports dunning processes. With this respect, the following objects are important:

Statements

Represent the dunning statements that document outstanding payments, based on which you generate dunning reminders to be sent out to the corresponding accounts. The statement records are associated to the relevant accounts and hold the corresponding data as well as payment information.

Statement details

Represent the individual items to which the dunning refers – the actual invoices and, if set up accordingly, the dunning fees. Statement details are in a master-detail relationship to a statement.

A dunning run can include multiple invoices per account, producing an individual statement detail for each involved invoice. Consequently, an invoice that is subject to a dunning process relates to the produced statement detail, but not to the statement.

For invoices with installments, the dunning run takes the relevant amount due only. If, for example, at the time of a dunning run only the first and second installments of a payment plan are overdue, only this portion will be subject to the produced reminder.

Dunning reminder that involves two invoices

The statement records display their involved statement details in a related list. The PDF file printed from the statement includes the statement detail table, which, by default, shows the original invoice numbers.

Basically, the dunning process involves three main steps:

• Dunning run: You create draft dunnings for open invoices or account statements.
• Finalizing: You close the dunnings and generate the dunning reminder PDF documents.
• Distribution: You send out the dunning reminders via email, including the dunning reminder PDF and the involved invoices' PDF documents.

The dunning run refers to the operation that creates dunning notifications. The statements issued with the dunning run are referred to as dunnings. Depending on the progress of the dunning process, they can have different statuses.

• Draft: New dunnings have the status Draft. You can check draft dunnings for correctness and edit them as necessary.
• Closed: Finalizing dunnings sets them to Closed, generates the PDF dunning reminders to be sent out, and adds the defined dunning fees to the account balance and the open invoice amount. As a whole, this makes the dunning operation legally effective.

In order to use the dunning process feature, you must configure it accordingly using the custom setting Dunning Levels. This setting defines, among others,

• the condition to be matched for activating the process,
• dunning fees or late fees as required,
• the due period and a grace period,
• whether the related invoice PDF is attached to the dunning reminder email or not.

Using multiple dunning levels, you can build your individual dunning escalation scenario, which may progress from friendly reminders to firm warning letters:

Invoice payment due
↳ Failure to payment: First reminder
     ↳ Failure to first reminder: Second reminder
          ↳ Failure to second reminder: Final reminder

Once set up, you can then start a dunning run using the Statement Runs functionality.

Postponing the payment due date for an invoice suspends applicable dunning procedures for the specified time.

How to exclude accounts or invoices from the dunning run?

Certain circumstances may require to postpone the payment due date for invoices. This suspends applicable dunning procedures for the specified time.

As an alternative to the due date deferral, you may consider excluding specific accounts or specific invoices from being subject to the dunning process – using a so-called dunning block.

This involves the following steps:

(1) Create a custom checkbox, like, for example, PreventDunning, on the Account or Invoice object that defines whether to exclude (if true) a given record from the dunning run. Depending on your requirements, you can have this checkbox selected manually by a user, or automatically via a formula, for example, that can check a record for certain criteria and consequently select (or not select) this checkbox.

(2) In each dunning level configuration that you intend to apply, add a condition that evaluates this checkbox and consequently determines whether to exclude the current record:

PreventDunning__c = false

Following the example, JustOn excludes an invoice from the dunning run if the checkbox is selected (true) and the condition therefore yields false.

Info

For details about dunning reminder configuration options, see Setting Up Dunning Process Management.

Managing dunning reminders involves the following tasks:

• Defining a contact role for the dunning reminder distribution
• Creating dunning reminders for multiple accounts
• Issuing dunning reminder for a single invoice
• Editing draft dunning reminders
• Deleting draft dunning reminders
• Finalizing dunnings
• Recreating dunning reminder PDF
• Emailing dunning reminders
• Redistributing dunning reminders
• Downloading dunning reminders

Defining Contact Role for Dunning Distribution

You can use contact roles to pre-populate contact and address fields when executing a dunning run. JustOn supports contact roles as defined using the custom picklist field JustOn Contact Role on the Contact object or on the Account Contact Relationship object.

For the dunning reminder distribution, JustOn supports the following use cases:

• Dunning Contact
• Dunning Mailing Contact
• Dunning Email Contact
• Dunning Email CC Contact
• Dunning Email BCC Contact

Defining contact roles requires the field JustOn Contact Role to be available on the page layout of the Contact or Account Contact Relationship object. For details, see Enabling Contact Roles for Dunning Distribution.

To define a contact role for a contact or account-contact relationship:

1. Open the relevant contact or account-contact relationship.

   On the contact record, change to the Details tab.

   To edit an account-contact relationship:

   • From the Related Contacts related list on an account record, click next to the relevant contact, then select Edit Relationship.
   • From the Related Accounts related list on a contact record, click next to the relevant account, then select Edit Relationship.

   For details, see Create and Edit Relationships Between Contacts and Accounts in the Salesforce Help.

2. Click next to the JustOn Contact Role field.

3. Select the intended use case from the JustOn Contact Role picklist.

4. Click Save.

   Make sure to not assign two or more contacts with the same role to an account. If this is the case, JustOn randomly picks one of them, which may produce unwanted results.

JustOn Contact Role priority

• If both JustOn Contact Role on the account–contact relationship and JustOn Contact Role on the contact are set, the role defined on the account–contact relationship (irrespective of whether it is a primary or secondary relation) has priority over the role defined on the contact.
• If JustOn Contact Role is set both on a direct and an indirect account–contact relationship, the role defined on the direct account–contact relationship (primary relation) has priority over the role defined on the indirect account–contact relationship.

• JustOn Billing & Invoice Management considers JustOn contact roles defined on primary contacts (related via a direct account–contact relationship) only.

  If you need a JustOn contact role on a secondary contact (related via an indirect account–contact relationship), you must define it on the corresponding ACR record.

• Salesforce allows time limitations and an explicit Active status for account–contact relationships. These settings, however, do not have influence on the priority of the assigned JustOn contact roles. If an account–contact relationship is valid on a given date, JustOn Billing & Invoice Management will consider the assigned contact role.

  You must make sure to not assign two or more contacts with the same role to an account. If this is the case, the system randomly picks one of them, which may produce unwanted results.

• Contact role settings on the account–contact relationship (ACR) and on the contact can complement each other, as long as they are not in conflict.

• For compatibility reasons, JustOn Billing & Invoice Management still supports existing Salesforce Classic Account Contact Roles. If available, they take general precedence over the values set in the JustOn Contact Role fields on the contact or the account–contact relationship.

To keep control simple, use JustOn contact roles either on contacts or on account-contact relationships only. If you decide to use account-contact relationships, JustOn recommends to use JustOn contact roles on account-contact relationships for more flexibility.

The examples in JustOn Contact Role Priority illustrate the behavior.

Creating Dunning Reminders for Multiple Accounts

Using the Statement Runs functionality, you can create dunning reminders for multiple open invoices.

1. Open the Statement Runs tab.
2. Click New.

3. Open the Dunning Run sub-tab.

   
   Invoking a dunning run

4. Select the dunning levels as required and, optionally, a dunning date.

   If you do not set a specific dunning date, JustOn uses the current date.

5. Click Start.

   This creates dunning reminders for all open invoices that match the conditions defined in the selected dunning levels.

   Note that JustOn generates one dunning reminder per dunning level for each account.

Info

JustOn pre-populates the address fields of the resulting dunning reminders as follows:

• If you have set contact roles for the relevant account contacts for the use cases Dunning Contact or Invoice Contact, JustOn takes the address data defined with the corresponding contacts.
• If there are no contact roles set, JustOn takes the address data found in the account.

Creating Dunning Reminder for Single Invoice

You can individually generate a dunning reminder for a single open invoice.

1. Navigate to the invoice for which you want to create a dunning reminder.
2. Click New Dunning.
3. Select the dunning level as required.

4. Click Continue.

   This creates a single dunning reminder of the selected level for the current open invoice.

Info

JustOn pre-populates the address fields of the resulting dunning reminders as follows:

• If you have set contact roles for the relevant account contacts for the use cases Dunning Contact or Invoice Contact, JustOn takes the address data defined with the corresponding contacts.
• If there are no contact roles set, JustOn takes the address data found in the account.

Editing Draft Dunning Reminder

Info

In draft dunning reminders, the text fields are empty. The values are retrieved from the corresponding template detail.

Only texts that you explicitly specify in a dunning reminder text field overwrite the template text. Upon finalizing the dunning, JustOn pulls all values that are not overwritten from the template detail to complete the PDF.

You can, however, use the Copy Text button to copy the text field contents of the template to the draft statement, and then modify the texts as required.

After creating draft dunning reminders, you check them for correctness. If necessary, you must edit the draft dunning reminders, modifying details like basic data, addresses, distribution instructions, texts, etc.

1. Open the dunning reminders list.

   To access the dunning reminders list, click the statement run name in the Statement Runs tab, or open the Statements tab.

2. Click Edit in the row of the dunning reminder you want to modify.

   Alternatively, you can click the dunning reminder name to open the dunning reminder and then click Edit in the detail view.

3. Modify the data as required.

4. Click Save.

Deleting Draft Dunning Reminders

As long as dunning reminders are in the status Draft, you can delete

• a single dunning reminder individually from its detail view,
• selected dunning reminders from the dunning reminders list (on the Statements tab or the statement run detail view), or
• without prior selection, all draft dunning reminders from the dunning reminders list at once.

Individually Deleting a Dunning Reminder

To delete a single draft dunning reminder individually from its detail view:

1. Open the dunning reminders list.

   To access the dunning reminders list, click the statement run name in the Statement Runs tab, or open the Statements tab.

2. Click the dunning reminder name to open the detail view.

3. Click Delete, then again Delete to confirm and complete the operation.

   This deletes the current draft dunning reminder.

Deleting Selected Dunning Reminders

To delete selected draft dunning reminders from the dunning reminders list:

1. Open the dunning reminders list.

   To access the dunning reminders list, click the statement run name in the Statement Runs tab, or open the Statements tab.

2. Select the checkboxes next to the dunning reminders you want to delete.

   Selecting the checkbox in the table header selects all dunning reminders listed on the current list view page.

3. Click Delete Drafts, then click Continue to confirm and complete the operation.

   This deletes the selected draft dunning reminders.

Deleting All Draft Dunning Reminders

To delete all listed draft dunning reminders at once:

1. Open the dunning reminders list.

   To access the dunning reminders list, click the statement run name in the Statement Runs tab, or open the Statements tab.

2. Click Delete Drafts without prior selection, then click Continue to confirm and complete the operation.

   This deletes all draft dunning reminders listed in the current statement run detail view or in the Statements tab.

Info

Once a statement run detail view is empty, that is, once you have deleted all draft dunning reminders produced in this dunning run, you can delete the statement run detail.

Finalizing Dunnings

Finalizing dunnings sets them to Closed, generates the PDF dunning reminders to be sent out, and adds the defined dunning fees to the account balance and the open invoice amount. As a whole, this makes the dunning operation legally effective.

Note

Once a dunning is set Closed, you can no longer change or delete it.

You can finalize

• a single dunning individually from its detail view, or
• multiple dunnings from the Statements list on the statement run detail view.

Find the produced files on Salesforce's Files tab in the group Owned by me, if not configured otherwise (see File Distribution).

Info

Salesforce Files is the default location for storing produced files. For accessing and using file-related JustOn features, make sure that the Salesforce features Content Deliveries and Salesforce CRM Content are enabled.

Individually Finalizing a Dunning

To finalize a single statement individually from its detail view:

1. Navigate to the Statements list in the statement run view or open the Statements tab.
2. Click the statement name to open the statement's detail view.

3. Click Finalize.

   This launches a screen flow for the finalization.

4. Click Finalize to confirm and start the operation.

   This executes the finalization process, setting the current statement to the status Closed and generating the corresponding PDF document. Find the produced file on Salesforce's Files tab in the group Owned by me, if not configured otherwise (see File Distribution).

   The screen flow shows the operation progress. After completion, clicking Close & Refresh returns you to the updated detail view of the current statement.

Finalizing Multiple Dunnings

To finalize multiple statements from the Statements list:

1. Open the Statement Runs tab.
2. Click the name of the statement run that has produced the statements you want to finalize.

3. Select the checkboxes next to the statements you want to finalize.

   Proceeding without selection includes all statements.

4. Click Finalize.

   This sets all selected statements to the status Closed and generates the corresponding PDF documents. Find the produced files on Salesforce's Files tab in the group Owned by me, if not configured otherwise (see File Distribution).

Recreating Dunning Reminder PDF

In certain business use cases, you may need to recreate the PDF file for an already finalized dunning reminder (status Closed). Doing so does not modify any dunning reminder data.

Make sure that the option for recreating PDF files is enabled for your org.

To recreate the PDF file of a finished dunning reminder from its detail view:

1. Open the finished dunning reminder for which you want to regenerate the PDF file.

2. Click Recreate PDF, then click Continue to confirm and complete the operation.

   This clears the PDF field and deletes the attached PDF of the current dunning reminder, then regenerates the dunning reminder PDF and links it to the dunning reminder record accordingly.

Emailing Dunning Reminders

JustOn Billing & Invoice Management supports the distribution of the generated dunning reminder PDF documents (including the involved invoices' PDF documents) via email. There are various options for emailing the PDF documents:

• Sending all or selected dunning reminders from the dunning reminders list, or
• Sending a dunning reminder individually from its detail view.

Info

Be aware that the emails are not sent immediately. Instead, JustOn Billing & Invoice Management queues the emails and sends them at 03:00 every day by default.

Sending Multiple Dunning Reminder Documents

1. Open the dunning reminders list.

   To access the dunning reminders list, click the statement run name in the Statement Runs tab, or open the Statements tab.

2. Select the checkboxes next to the dunning reminders you want to send, or leave all checkboxes unmarked to include all listed dunning reminders in the distribution.

3. Click Email.
4. Optionally, select the option to send a BCC to you, or the option to send the emails immediately.

5. Click Continue to confirm and complete the operation.

   This queues the email distribution of the selected, or all, respectively, dunning reminders (including the dunning reminder PDF documents and the involved invoices' PDF documents) to the corresponding accounts.

Sending Individual Dunning Reminder

1. Open the dunning reminders list.

   To access the dunning reminders list, click the statement run name in the Statement Runs tab, or open the Statements tab.

2. Click the dunning reminder name to open the detail view.

3. Click Send Dunning.

4. Optionally, deselect the checkbox Set the dunning to status Closed.

   Use this option to email a draft dunning reminder, which allows you to still edit it after it has been sent.

5. Click Continue to confirm the operation.

6. Optionally, adjust the email recipients or the email text as required.
7. Optionally, select or deselect the checkboxes for the invoice PDF attachments as required.

8. Click Send.

   This sends the current dunning reminder PDF (including the involved invoices' PDF documents) to the defined email recipient immediately.

Redistributing Dunning Reminders

Certain business use cases may require (re-)distributing existing PDF documents to a file distribution target, for example, in case the automatic distribution has failed or there is a new file distribution target to be populated. To this end, JustOn Billing & Invoice Management provides the custom button Distribute PDF. You can select records from list views and then use this button to distribute the corresponding PDF files to a (configurable) file distribution target.

Note

Use the redistribution function with caution. JustOn Billing & Invoice Management does not check the selected file distribution target for existing files, so distributing the same files to the same targets produces duplicates, which may consequently have unwanted effects.

To (re-)distribute dunning reminder PDF documents:

Make sure that the PDF redistribution is enabled. For details, see Enabling PDF Redistribution.

1. Open the dunning reminders list.

   To access the dunning reminders list, click the statement run name in the Statement Runs tab, or open the Statements tab.

2. Select the checkboxes next to the dunning reminders you want to redistribute to a file distribution target, or leave all checkboxes unmarked to include all listed dunning reminders.

3. Click to open the action menu, then select Distribute PDF.
4. Select the file distribution target.
5. Optionally, select the option to consider draft folders and draft documents only.

6. Click Continue.

   This starts a job that regenerates the corresponding PDF files and stores them in the selected location.

Downloading Dunning Reminders

Certain business use cases may require you to download dunning reminders. To this end, JustOn provides a custom button that allows you to select records from list views and download the corresponding PDF files to a ZIP file.

1. Open the dunning reminders list.

   To access the dunning reminders list, click the statement run name in the Statement Runs tab, or open the Statements tab.

2. Select the checkboxes next to the dunning reminders you want to download, or leave all checkboxes unmarked to include all listed dunning reminders.

3. Click to open the action menu, then select Download ZIP.

4. Optionally, select a specific file name pattern.

   The corresponding picklist shows the item Automatic Filename as well as the file name patterns as defined in PDF Name settings.

5. Click Start.

   This starts a job that collects and, if necessary, regenerates the corresponding PDF files and writes them to a ZIP file.

   Depending on the number of involved records, the job may freeze without indicating an error. In this case, cancel the current execution and repeat the operation with a smaller number of records to process.

6. When the process has completed, click Download ZIP.

   This opens the dialog for saving the ZIP file to your computer.