Forwarding Agency (FWD)
The Forwarding Agency feature provides the tools necessary to be able to track debts that have been forwarded to an outside agency for debt collection. All monies received from the debtor by the Forwarding Agency are automatically allocated to the Client/Agency and Forwarding Agency per defined commission schedules. You must create a Forwarding Agency prior to assigning a debt to a Forwarding Agency.
Forwarding Agency Browse Screen
To find this screen, go to Admin > left list under "legal" section > FWD Agency. This screen will display a list of all of the forward agencies that exist and you can add more. Fwd Agencies can be searched by name or id.
This browse screen displays the following information for each Forwarding Agency:
- Company name: Name of the Forwarding Agency
- ID Number: This is the Unique ID number that is assigned by Lariat to the outside agency
- Contact: Contact name for the Forwarding Agency
- Full Service: Yes – Designate the debt as being serviced completely by the forward agency or No – The agency is servicing the debt and the forward agency gets commission
- Agency Owes FA: This amount reflects the balance that your agency owes the Forwarding Agency.
- FA Owes Agency: This amount reflects the balance that the Forwarding Agency owes your company.
- Action: This allows you to suspend the Forwarding Agency, and lists the number of debts that are currently assigned to the Forwarding Agency.
To edit an existing forward agency choose a name listed on the browse screen.
The top of the screen displays links to associated information for this Forwarding Agency. These options will be described in the following section. The main screen lists the following fields, fields marked with a red Asterisk are mandatory, all others are optional.
- Company name: Name of the Forwarding Agency
- Name: Contact name within the Forwarding Agency
- Agency Owes FA: This amount reflects the balance that your agency owes the Forwarding Agency
- FA Owes Agency: This amount reflects the balance that the Forwarding Agency owes your company
- Address Information: The address and contact information
- Commission Schedule: for the Forwarding Agency. This is the percentage of a debtor payment transaction that the Forwarding agency will receive. It should be noted that the actual monies allocated to the Forwarding Agency will be deducted from the Agency commission percentage. Therefore, when a debt is assigned to a Forwarding Agency, the forwarding agency commission rate can NOT exceed the agency commission rate, collector commission rate and sales agent commission rate.
- Commission rate:
- Full Service: This designates if the Forwarding Agency is a ‘Full Service’ Agency or not. Full Service agencies will perform all collection activity for any debts assigned to them. Lariat will not print any letters, perform credit reporting and will not display forwarded agency debts on the internal collection agent screens (based on access levels) for debts assigned to full service agencies. If a Forwarding Agency is NOT designated as Full Service then all collections activity will continue within your agency and the only affect will be a commission split. This is similar to a sales commission to the outside agency.
Forwarding Agency Add Transaction.
This screen is used to record a payment to, or a payment from the Forwarding Agency. You can also enter adjustments or any type of accounting transactions via this screen. The transactions will affect the Forwarding Agency trust account balance.
The following fields appear on the transaction screen:
- Account number: Lariat assigned account number for this Forwarding Agency
- FA Name: Forwarding Agency name
Balance: Current balance for the Forwarding Agency trust account. This is a positive number for amount’s that are owed by you TO the Forwarding Agency and a negative amount indicates monies owed to you BY the Forwarding Agency. - Description: Short description of the transaction
- Amount: Amount of the transaction
- Use in Statement: Designates whether the transaction appears in the agency statements.
- Transaction Type: There are two common transaction types that should be used here, (unless you are making an adjustment), and they are Payment to Forward Agency and Payment from Fwd Agency to Agency.
How the add transactions work:
- FA Owes Agency is negative – Use transaction type “Payment from Fwd Agency to Agency” to reduce the money owed by FA.
- Agency Owes FA is positive – Use transaction type “Payment to Forward Agency” to reduce the money owed by the Agency.
- Received: Transaction date
- Note: Short note about this transaction
*Note: After adding a transaction it must be posted in the Reconcile area before it will affect the Forwarding Agency trust account.
View Transaction
The View transaction screen lists all transactions for this Forwarding Agency. The far left column contains a method for reversing previously entered transactions. All transactions must be reconciled before they will be displayed and used in reports.