Controlling who can credit or write off a subscriber
How a provider controls which staff can credit, refund, void or write off a subscriber's account, and a monthly review that catches free service.
By Achekam · · 4 min read · For Telecoms businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
An internet or voice provider gives credits all the time, and mostly for good reasons: an outage, a billing error, a goodwill gesture to keep an unhappy business customer. That is exactly why credits are where free service hides. A support agent who credits a friend's line every month, a sales rep who writes off a customer's arrears to hit a retention target, a cashier who reverses a receipt and keeps the cash: each looks like an ordinary adjustment on its own.
The answer is not to stop giving credits. It is to make sure the people who give them are not the same people who check them, and that every credit leaves a trail. This article sets out how the controls in Achekam help, and a monthly review that closes the gaps.
How free service hides in credits and write-offs
There are four routes by which revenue quietly disappears from a subscriber base:
- Voids. An invoice is cancelled as if it never existed.
- Credit notes. An invoice stays, but is cancelled in whole or in part by a credit.
- Write-offs. An unpaid debt is declared irrecoverable.
- Refunds and reversals of receipts. Money that was received is shown as paid back, or as never received.
Each route has a legitimate use. Each can also be abused, and the abuse is rarely large in one go. It is the same line, credited every month, that adds up. The principle that stops it is segregation of duties: assigning the steps of a process to different people so no one person can both commit and conceal a theft or an error. AccountingTools explains the idea in its definition of segregation of duties.
Voids for administrators only
An administrator can void an issued invoice that has no payments or credits against it, and the void reverses the invoice's journal. Voiding is an administrator's action.
That restriction is useful, but it puts weight on who your administrators are. In a small provider, it is tempting to make everyone an administrator so nobody is ever blocked. Resist it. Keep administrator rights to a few people who do not handle cash or customer complaints day to day, and ask them to record why each void was done. An invoice raised in error the same morning is a reasonable void; an invoice from several months ago is a question.
Write-offs that wait for a partner's approval
An unpaid debt can be written off only once a partner approves. Use that as intended. The person who proposes a write-off, usually whoever runs collections, should not be the person who approves it, and the approver should see the evidence: the age analysis entry, the statements sent, any arrangement that failed.
Receivables are aged into 0-30, 31-60, 61-90, 91-120 and over 120 days, with overdue totals. A write-off proposal for a balance in the 31-60 bucket deserves more questions than one sitting over 120 days after several statements.
Refunds and reversals of receipts
A receipt can be re-allocated to other invoices, but refunding or reversing one is reserved for administrators. That matters, because a reversed receipt is the cleanest way to hide stolen cash: the money came in, the receipt disappears, and the subscriber's invoice looks unpaid again.
Two rules help. Every refund should have a matching payment out of your bank, made by someone other than the person who recorded the refund. And every reversal should have a written reason, such as a bounced payment or a receipt recorded against the wrong subscriber.
Credit notes tied to the invoice they correct
A credit note in Achekam is always issued from the invoice it corrects, in full or for chosen lines, and posted to the ledger. There is no credit note without an invoice, and a credit note uses its original invoice's date and tax codes. Leftover credit is held for the customer.
That design is a control in itself. A credit cannot float free of a billing event: someone looking at it can always see which invoice it reverses and what was on it. When an outage credit relates to an earlier month, crediting subscribers for an outage last month shows how it is handled.
What the system does not decide is who may issue credits and up to what amount. Write that down as policy: for example, front-line support may credit an outage up to a limit you set, anything above it goes to a supervisor, and goodwill credits need a manager's name in the reason.
A monthly review of credits and write-offs
The general ledger lists every posted line. Once a month, before the month is closed, someone outside billing and support should review:
| What to review | What to look for |
|---|---|
| All credit notes for the month | The same subscriber credited month after month; credits without a reason |
| All voids | Voids of old invoices; voids by the same administrator for the same customers |
| All write-offs | Write-offs of young debts; proposer and approver the same person |
| All refunds and reversed receipts | No matching payment from the bank; reversals without a reason |
Months can then be closed, and a closed month refuses postings from every source. If the review finds a manual journal that should not have been posted, a posted journal is corrected only by a reversal, so the original and the correction both stay visible; correcting a posted journal explains the principle. For write-offs connected to subscribers who left mid-contract, see billing an early-termination fee.
This month
Count your administrators and remove the rights of anyone who does not need them. Write the credit policy on one page, with limits and who approves above them. Then run the first monthly review on last month's credits, and keep the signed review with the month's records.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
