Your First Month
The aim of this guide is to get you up and running in your first month on Current.
This guide covers the tasks you'll do most in your first month on Current. Each section is short, with a video and a link for more detail, so jump to what you need.
Start here
- Understanding the System
- Recording Payments
- Making Adjustments and Undoing Errors
- Late Fees
- Move Out
- Billing
- Reporting
- Checklist
Understanding the System
Current may store information and handle tasks in different places than the software you're used to. This short overview gives you a foundation for everything else.
Recording Payments/ Taking Payments
There are two ways to record a payment:
- Receive Payment on the account page, for in-person or phone payments.
- Payment Batches on the Payments page, for checks you group by bank deposit.
More detail: Payment Batches Overview
Making Adjustments and Undoing Errors
Mistakes happen. This video shows how to correct a transaction on an account so the balance and history stay accurate.
Late Fees
Late fees can be added in several different ways. Here are a few that can be done ad hoc:
- One account: Navigate to the account and use Add Charge/Credit under More Options. This is the most direct option, but can be cumbersome for large numbers of accounts.
- Many accounts from the Delinquency page: Select accounts and click Fee on a stage’s tab to add that stage’s fee. You can also use Add fee on the All tab to add one fee to accounts in different stages at once. See Adding Bulk Late Fees to Delinquent Accounts.
- During a billing cycle: Under the Review Bills stage, select accounts and use Add Transaction to add charges in bulk. This can only be done during the billing cycle. See Add Transactions In Bulk.
Fees aren’t added automatically. Accounts moving into a delinquency stage aren’t charged on their own. Someone needs to add the fee using one of the options above.
The Delinquency feature is purpose-built to manage all stages of an account delinquency. Policies allow you to set stages where you can send notices, add fees, or create service orders to do things such as hang door tags or shut off service.
Move Out
When someone new takes responsibility for a location, use Move Out. It closes the old account with a final bill and starts a new account for the location.
You can do the steps in any order. For example, start the new account before the closing bill posts.
You can leave the service transfer open if you don't have the new account's details yet. Once the closing bill posts, the old account stops billing and is unlinked from the location
- More detail: Move Out
Billing
We'll schedule sometime to go over the first billing with you.
In the meantime, please find an overview of the billing workflow here: Billing Workflow
Reporting
To find reports, click Reports in the left-hand menu, then use the Select Dashboards drop-down in the upper-right corner. Choose Accounting Reports for your usual reports, or pick another dashboard like Operations, Billing Detail, or Payments Explorer.
Need something that isn't built in? Choose Create Custom Reports from the same drop-down to build your own, or ask the Data Agent to build one for you.
Some screens also have their own breakdowns. For example, a billing cycle shows a summary for that cycle, and an account shows the customer's usage.
Reporting
More detail:
Checklist
- Understand how Current organizes information compared to your old software.
- Record a payment with Receive Payment and with a Payment Batch.
- Correct a transaction on an account.
- Add a late fee to one account, and to several from the Delinquency page.
- Complete a Move Out, including starting the new account.
- Review the Billing Workflow before your first billing cycle.
- Open a dashboard from Select Dashboards in Reports.
- Build a report with Create Custom Reports.
Looking for more? See More Common Tasks for adding service locations, changing rate codes, and managing deposits.