Unpaid charges are written-off (charged back to the department) when it is determined that a customer will not pay a charge. The UC Accounting manual (see related link) requires charges to be written off before the charge can be assigned to a collection agency.
- After 180 days for both students and non-student customers, the in-house collection effort reaches its end, and unpaid charges of $25 or more are referred to a commissioned collection agency for more stringent collection steps.
- Unpaid charges on accounts with a Returned Mail flag are included in the write-off process before they reach the 180-day threshold, so the agency can initiate skip tracing activities.
- When a charge is written off from the Billing and Accounts Receivable(BAR) system:
- Unpaid charges less than $25 are normally not assigned to our collection agency. These amounts are charged back to the departmental revenue/income account at 100%.
- If payment is recovered by our collection agency, the payment is credited to the BAR Bad Debt Reserve account for 80%, and the agency keeps the 20% as their fee for collecting the debt.
- The BAR receivable account is credited for 100% of the unpaid amount.
- The BAR Bad Debt Reserve account is debited for 20% of the unpaid amount.
- The departmental revenue/income account is debited for 80% of the unpaid amount.
- Reports -Administrative Information Systems (AIS) provides three post-write-off reports, which provide details of the charge back through RDS/View Direct (see related link). The RDS/View Direct BAR report request form (in user manual provided at the BAR system training class) can be used to obtain access to these reports.
- BR0BWM40 - Departmental Notice of Write-Offs: Listing of invoices with returned mail flags debited back to your FAU for 80% of the unpaid balance. These invoices will be assigned to our collection agency.
- BR0BWB40 - Departmental Notice of Write-Offs: Listing of invoices debited back to your FAU for 100% of the unpaid balance. These invoices will NOT be assigned to our agency.
- BR0BWO40 - Departmental Notice of Write-Offs: Listing of invoices debited back to your Financial Accounting Unit (FAU) for 80% of the unpaid balance. These invoices will be assigned to our collection agency.
