Business License - BILLING

In this article you will learn how to provide your businesses with a business license. You will first go over how to create and print the business license renewal bills, then the process of creating a business license certificate. It is important to remember that if your businesses file for a license, you will follow a different process. This is exclusively the process of BILLING businesses to receive a license.

The Bill Process

The first step in many of our processes is to make sure all of your settings are correct to ensure all is done correctly. You will need to check the following:

Rate Schedule- Settings, Rate Setup, Rate Schedules

• This is the math. Check if you have a rate schedule for business license for the year you are currently working in.
• Make sure the rates or flat amount within the rate schedule are correct.
• There will need to be a new rate schedule for each year so that the system knows how much and what to calculate

Click here to watch our "How to Set Up License Tax Rate Schedules" training video.

Rate Code - Settings, Rate Setup, Rate Codes

• Check the business license rate code. Make sure that the status is active, and the assigned rate schedule is correct. This is to make the relationship between the desired rate schedule and rate code.

Click here to watch out "How to Setup Rate Codes for Property Tax" training video.

To better understand rate schedules and rate codes click here to watch our training video. 

After making sure your rate schedule and rate code are both correct, you can now begin the billing process.

First, make sure your business has the correct service.

• Search the desired PIDN
• On the PIDN homepage, click View, Services.
• On this page is where you are able to add and delete services.
  • The filing code will be the business license filing code.
  • Cycle - If you bill your businesses annually the cycle must show that. Enter the annual cycle
  • Status - This field must be active in order for the system to apply charges.
  • Service Number - This field is not required. If you have more than one service on an account you can use this field to specify the service.
• The information you just entered will be what the system looks for when doing the billing.

Now that services are added we can bill the account for the license.

To begin, navigate to the billing dashboard. Dashboards, Billing. This portion will be very similar to how you would bill for any other service.

The first step is to apply charges in bulk

   Click here to watch our "How to Apply Bulk Charges to Licensing Bills" training video.

• Enter the Business License filing code
• Cycle will the the annual cycle that was added on the service.
• The Date Due and Date Past Due are simply the due dates of the bill.
• Tax Period is a text field that identifies the time the bill was created. Being a text field this can be unique.
• Service Period Start and End is the year that the license will be good for.
• Tax Year - This field is important. Whatever year you put in will link it to that years rate schedule.
• Reporting Date is simply the day you want the system to show when the charges were added to the account or accounts.
• After entering, the charges are now on all accounts that qualify but are not yet official.

Creating the bill: We will now create the bill that you will send out to your businesses for them to pay. To begin navigate to Dashboards, Billing, Create Bill

Click here to watch our "How to Create Licensing Bills" training videos.

• Application - Business License
• Step 1 - This step tells the systems which qualifying businesses to create bills for.
  • Due Date- The date the bills are due to be paid.
• Step 2 - This step will be what is physically shown on the bill.
  • Bill Template - Your customized license invoice template.
  • Pay Thru Date - Normally the day the bill is due.
  • Past Due Date - The day the bill will be delinquent, normally the next day after due date.
  • Past Due Rate - What % do you add on when delinquent?
  • Submit and create bills. Keep your batch # in mind for printing.

Print Bills: The next step is to print the bills. At the top of the create bills screen there is a shortcut to print bills, otherwise, navigate to Dashboards, Billing, and Print Bills is at the top of the screen.

• This is very simple, select your batch # that was assigned to your bills.
• Print all

After this step you have just billed out a business license RENEWAL.

The next step is for the businesses to pay the bill so that you can send them their business license CERTIFICATE.

• Do not forget to create a new session.
• When a customer pays their bill the system will automatically allow you to create a business license certificate. Remember the in office screen is found by going to Payments, In-Office POS.

Now that the businesses have paid they need their Business License Certificate. Navigate to Dashboards, Business filing, +Create License.

• Start Date and End Date are often overthought. This is simply the Date paid range, NOT the time that the license is good for.
• If you enter an individual PIDN in the PIDN field, you will only create one license. By keeping that field blank the system will know that all accounts that qualify will have a license created.
• After entering your date paid range and submitting you will have the option to "Create License".
• You will be given a batch number for printing.

Printing

Click here to watch our "How to print a Business License" training video.

• At the top of the screen you will see a hyperlink short cut that says 'Print License'. This will take you directly to the print license screen.
• Enter the batch number given and Print Sort Order.
• Submit your information and click 'Print License'.

Your business license's are now ready to be mailed.