When adding one-time charge services such as Turn On, Turn Off, and Service Fees to your accounts, it is important to remember that they are not one-time charges by default. They will generate bills for everyone that has them every time you choose to calculate them unless you control them appropriately. So what is the appropriate way to control them?
First, we need to remember that no service can generate a bill when calculated unless it is active. You can control whether a service is active or not by checking or unchecking its Service Active check box in Service Information Maintenance. You can actually control one-time charge services by setting them active prior to any calculation in which you want them to generate bills, and resetting them back to inactive before any calculation in which you do not want them to generate bills.
Perhaps an easier way to control one-time charge services is by setting the “Calculate Date” for the service in Service Information Maintenance. This is the only date that will generate bills when calculated. If the effective date of the calculation does not match the calculate date that you have set, then that service will not generate a bill when calculated. This value needs to be set prior to calculating your bills whenever you want the service to generate a bill. Once this value is set, you should not need to change it unless you wish to generate additional bills for the service. When using this method, you can leave the service active all the time.
It is important to note that if there is no “Calculate Date” set and the service is active, it will continue to generate bills each time you calculate it.
Finally, remember that these Service Information Maintenance values are set for each account, so setting them for one account will not affect another.