Financial Services Manual (FIN)

Effective: 4/11/1985

Revised: 3/1/2006

FIN 306: Accounts Receivable Billings

Purpose

To generate Accounts Receivable billings

Source

University policy

Policy

University departments desiring to bill students, faculty, staff, and off-campus users of university goods and services may use the university accounts receivable system for these billings. This policy applies to all university agency/orgs other than sponsored agency/orgs (agency/orgs that contain an all-alpha area designation). All interdepartmental billings to university departments must be processed via Interdepartment Purchase Orders (POs). See FIN 407, “Internal Purchase Orders,” for interdepartment transactions policies and procedures.

In accordance with generally accepted accounting principles, the ASU agency/org is credited at the time of initial billing with a write-off (back charge) to the agency/org occurring if all collection efforts have been exhausted without collection success. If Financial Services’ initial collection efforts are unsuccessful, Financial Services may assign billing to an off-campus collection agency, with the collection agency fee being charged to the ASU agency/org receiving the collected funds. A collection agency fee is only paid if the collection agency is successful in collecting the funds.

Departments are billed a nominal per-transaction fee for the posting of charges and reversals to accounts receivable and the related billing/collection follow-up efforts. The fee is charged monthly to an Advantage System account the department identifies. The fee rate is determined by the annual number of transactions processed and the level of collection effort needed. The billing fee for a department requiring a moderate to high effort level is 40 cents per transaction fee and for a department needing only a standard effort level is 30 cents per transaction fee. Exempt from the transaction fee are departments whose fee assessment would be less than $2,000 annually. The total monthly fee is based upon the number of charges and reversals posted to accounts receivable by the department during the month. The total cost to the department is less expensive than if they were to set up their own billing and collection system and no administrative effort is required by the billing department in handling this assessment.

Procedure

University departments should complete an appropriate billing document to generate a billing. Some university departments such as Residential Life and Parking and Transit Services are able to use subsystems to automatically bill users of campus services; however, most departments must submit manually prepared billing documents.

Departments desiring to bill off-campus users are encouraged to submit completed Local Account Billing Authorization forms and typed customer invoices to Accounts Receivable. Billing Authorization forms are available from Accounts Receivable. Departments desiring to bill students, faculty, and staff are encouraged to submit completed Accounts Receivable (A/R) Charge forms to Accounts Receivable. Departments that submit large quantities of completed charge forms with repeating information such as description, agency/org, revenue/sub-revenue or object/sub-object code, and amount can request Accounts Receivable to crash print this information on the blank forms.

An A/R Charge form is completed by entering specified data in the appropriate blank areas on the form. Complete the following information on the form before submitting it to Accounts Receivable.

1. Date

   Required. Enter the date of form preparation in MMDDYY format.

2. ASU ID Number

   Required. Generally the individual’s ASU-assigned number (such as 993123456).

3. Name

   Required. Enter the name of the person or entity being billed.

4. Description

   Required. Enter description of charge (limited to 20 characters).

5. Fund and Balance Sheet Account

   Required, if applicable. Enter the code to be credited. (Accountant assistance is available.)

6. Agency/Org

   Required, if applicable. Enter the code of the department that is to be credited. (Accountant assistance is available.)

7. Sub-Org

   Required, if applicable. Enter the code of the sub-organization that is to be credited. (Accountant assistance is available.)

8. Revenue/Sub-Revenue or Object/Sub-Object

   Required, if applicable. Enter the code of the goods or services that is to be credited. (Accountant assistance is available.)

9. Amount

   Required. Enter the total amount that is to be billed.

10. Date Due

    Required. Enter the date that payment is due if not the 25th day of the following month.

    and

11. Prepared By

    Required. Enter the initials of the person completing the document.

Note:

No A/R billing statement is produced if the individual’s or entity’s total A/R balance is less than $12.50. All balances less than $12.50 are retained in the A/R system. When the total A/R balance reaches $12.50, all previous charges are billed at that time.

Cross-Reference

For more information, see FIN 407, “Internal Purchase Orders.”

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