Automation Utilities
Automation Utilities are built to help you automate and improve your workflow.
Automation has inherent improvement when it comes to workflow because it typically reduces both time and errors from manual intervention. Tamarack has developed and demonstrated automation across the leading Contract Management Platforms in two ways: functional utilities and automate a new workflow and integration of existing workflow software applications. In both cases productivity of the finance workflow is augmented by function and in many cases accelerated in time.
Available Automation Utilities
Extension of Terms Automation Utility
The Extension of Terms Automation Utility (ETAU) was developed in early 2020 in anticipation of a wave of payment deferment requests created by the economic shutdowns of COVID-19. ETAU allows customers to insert a deferral period into the payment stream thru the “Extension of Terms” process on a list of contracts. A deferral period from 1 – 11 months can be specified, as well as a begin month/year of deferral. The system will calculate the new payment amount to retain the existing yield (COMBINED.IRR) on the contract. The ETAU also allows a second extension process which will allow further deferring a contract after the initial deferral. It will also allow variable payment contracts if they have a monthly billing cycle, and it is recognized that the payment stream will remain level after the deferral to retain the yield.
The base product includes the functionality above. Additional functionality may be needed to accommodate specific needs and available upgrade options are listed below.
- Matching to the Blended Income Yield
- Matching to a user defined yield
- Specifying a payment amount without retaining the yield
- Uploading a specific payment without retaining the yield
- Incorporating the yield retention into the final payment
- Restructuring without changing the original term
- Increase blended income term to match new term of contract
- Increase term on additional income to match new term of contract
- Increase term on miscellaneous billable items to match new term of contract
- Updating the renewal begin date on certain contracts that have a renewal entered but not active
- Floating rate contracts that are not truly floating
- Token or loyalty payments
- Updating of specific change logs and user defined fields
Generic Field Utility
The Tamarack Generic Field Update Utility is used to update specific Non-Financial fields in the CMS to a fixed value. Using a saved list of contract, customer, or asset IDs, the program will prompt and validate field name and new value. The utility will create change logs at the appropriate entity level. Additionally, a report will print to the default printer if any errors were encountered.
Generic Contract Interface
The Tamarack Generic Contract Interface enables contract setup in CMS platforms like Solifi Portfolio Management (formerly InfoLease) using tab-delimited data. Typically, this is completed using a MS-Excel worksheet to structure the data. Each row in the file would represent a contract number. The header row must contain the corresponding CMS field name for that column of data.
For example:
| CUST.CREDIT.ACCT | CD.NAME | CD.ADDRESS1 | CD.CITY | CD.STATE | CD.ZIP |
| Customer Name 1 | 123 Main St. | Melrose Park | IL | 60160 | |
| + | Customer Name 2 | 456 Elm Rd | Wilmette | IL | 60091 |
| 43023 | Customer Name 3 | 1002 Valley Rd | Toms River | NJ | 08753 |
Although it is not required, it is common practice to group the fields/columns in the following order:
- Customer entity fields
- Contract entity fields
- Asset entity fields
One-time ACH Processing
The “One-Time ACH” utilities allow for payment collection outside of the standard monthly billing cycle. Specifically, these utilities allow for the collection of “One-Time” ACH entries throughout the day into a work file. At the end of the day, or prior to any cut-off time determined by the bank, a payment batch and ACH file for transfer will be generated from the records found in the work file.
There are no limitations to the number of times a payment batches, and the resulting ACH file, can be created during the day. Additionally, records will reside in the work file until either a payment batch is created or the records are deleted.
In addition to support for all unpaid receivables, the One-Time ACH processing supports Buyout Quotes and Rental “Overpay”.