Accounts Receivable allows you to generate charges and print a memo statement for an upcoming term, but the results will not affect the subsidiary accounts because the charges generated in preliminary billing are not actual. When preliminary billing is run, a group of transactions with a source code of @C is created. This code means the transactions are preliminary charges or practice charges and that the system will not allow them to be posted to actual accounts.
Since the charges are not actual, the preliminary billing process and the resulting memo statements can be used for the following:
· To test the setup of charges, refunds and discounts. If something is wrong, it can be fixed and run again without needing to correct any transactions on student accounts, which allows for experimentation or fine-tuning of the definition and detail table information.
· To give to the student at the time of pre-registration so they have an idea of what their bill will look like when finalized for that term.
· To be run early in a billing cycle to exclude transactions that may disappear later in the term because of drops or adds. Later when drops and adds have ended, you can run actual statements.
Transactions that appear on the preliminary statements include actual charges and credits in addition to unapplied financial aid (source code of @F) and the preliminary charges (@C). Once preliminary charges are generated, you must generate actual charges since there is no way to have the preliminary charges become actual charges that apply to the student accounts.