A brief guide to the automatic write-off system
AngelTrack will automatically write off (i.e. will automatically advance to "Finished") any dispatch that has seen no billing activity -- neither payment events nor committed invoices -- for 24 months.
Such extremely stale receivables are best removed from the workflow, and may be declared on the year's taxes as a writeoff.
To learn more about how writeoffs are recorded in AngelTrack, and how to pull reports about them, refer to the Writeoffs Guide.
How Staleness is Calculated
AngelTrack calculates a dispatch's staleness by means of the date of last billing activity, which is the later of:
- The dispatch's activation date;
- The "Date Received" of the youngest active payment event attached to the dispatch; and
- The commit time of the youngest committed invoice that includes the dispatch.
Ergo, adding any payment event or any new committed invoice will reset the dispatch's staleness clock.
Each stale dispatch's count of staleness days is displayed in the Stale Receivables Queue.
Configuration of Automatic Writeoff
You can change the time interval for automatic writeoff to as little as 18 months, or as many as 36 months, by visiting the Preferences page under Settings.
All stale dispatches are subject to the automatic writeoff threshold, even those still languishing in QA. AngelTrack does this on the assumption that any PCR or QA review still not finished after two years is not going to happen in time to bill the trip to anyone, and so best to get it out of the workflow.
Automatic Price Quoting
When an automatic writeoff occurs, if the dispatch is ☑ Billable and does not yet have a price quote or a price allowed, it will be quoted at retail.
This situation will probably never come up if you are using AngelTrack to do your billing and tax calculations, but in any case it guarantees that every receivable has an accounting basis for future tax calculations.
Journaling of Automatic Writeoffs
When an automatic writeoff occurs, a journal entry for the affected dispatch will note the event; you can find these using Journal Search to find entries containing the words "Automatic writeoff".
Of course you can always un-write-off any affected dispatches, by moving them back to the workflow and adding them to a committed invoice or filing another insurance claim or payment.
If You Do Not Use AngelTrack's Workflow...
If your organization does not use AngelTrack's workflow, then you probably have a large number of dispatches accumulated at "Awaiting QA review", "Awaiting corrections", or "Billing office". There is no benefit in letting them pile up there, clogging the queues and slowing down the relevant page load times, so the automatic writeoff feature will advance them to "Finished" and thereby keep the queues clear.
You can always change your mind later, and use the Bulldozer to drag them back into the workflow for invoicing.