How do payment plans work?

How do payment plans work?



Payment plans allow you to track your customers' payments and ensure that they are re-paying the cost of their solar systems.

In the Payment Plans section under My Organisation you can create an unlimited number of payment plans to suit your customer base. You can give each plan a name to make it easier for you to identify when setting up customers. You can also set 'automatic load switch off' and 'negative charge limit' as the default for the payment plan, however you can customise these options per customer when assigning the plan to a customer.

Also see: What happens when a customer runs out of credit?

 

Automatic load switch-off

Enabling this forces the Cloud Solar device to shut off the load when the customer’s credits fall below the negative charge limit.

 

Negative charge limit

This is the amount of debt you allow the customer to go into before their appliances are automatically switched off. For example, if you set this to -100, your customer will be able to reach -100 credits before the load port on the charge controller is disabled. This will only happen if the automatic load switch-off is enabled. If nothing is inputted, the default is 0.

There are two types of tariffs available on the Cloud Solar platform, usage based and instalment based plans.

 

Usage based

This decrements the users' credits based on energy consumption, the number of watt-hours consumed via the load port and USB ports on the Cloud Solar device. The device continually counts the consumption of energy even when not sending data, so if the device goes offline for a period of time, the next time the device connects and updates the server, the consumption is calculated compared to the previous reading and the number of credits is removed from the customer's account.

 

Instalment based

Credits are decremented from the customers' account every day/week/month depending on which is selected. These regular payment instalments begin one day/week/month after the first credit deposit is received. For example, if a customer is setup on the platform on a $1 per week weekly plan and we receive a $2 payment via mobile money or through manually inputting it into the system on the 1st June, their credit balance will be $2 until 8th June, when their credits will be depleted to $1.

 

Customer specific features

Down-payment

The down-payment is the amount of money the customer has put down as a deposit or down-payment for their solar home system. This does not count towards the customer's credits but is included in the pay-back of the total system cost.

 

Total system cost

The total system cost represents the cost of the system to the customer. Once the customer has paid this amount including the down payment and the total credits they have paid, the payment plan becomes inactive and the customer’s account is no longer charged. If you do not enter a total system cost, the payment plan will continue forever.

 

Negative charge limit

As above


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