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Renewal Management

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Jean J. de Jong edited this page Jun 23, 2020 · 21 revisions

Introduction

This part of the application allows to manage calls to renew IP titles. It consists of two workflows, the first to manage calls, payment and receipts, the second to manage invoicing. Calls are done via email.

Usage

Access the tool from the menu Matters->Manage renewals.

Different steps are accessible. At each step, specific action buttons below the step tabs are proposed. At each step, a contextual list of renewal tasks is displayed. Actions are performed on selected renewals.

When an email is sent, address of all actors with "Contact" role from the last matter in renewals list are used if at least one exists. If not, the email of the client is used.

First call

The available actions are Send call email (for sending first call emails directly from the application) or Call sent manually (for simply clearing the renewals as being notified by other means).

The emails can be configured to be sent either directly to the client and/or contacts, or to the connected phpIP user for review. This is set by the mail_recipient parameter in the configuration file (/config/renewal.php). See below.

After sending or clearing, the renewals are transferred to step Reminder.

The cost values used in the emails are taken from the fee and cost columns of the fees table, or from the fee_reduced and cost_reduced columns when all applicants in the matter are small entity.

Reminder

The available actions are:

  • Send reminder email to send reminder calls by email directly from the application. Only the subject of the message is changed, the content is still the same as the first call email.
  • Send last reminder email to send a reminder just before the due date. After this action, the renewals are tagged with grace period. The cost values are issued from the fee and cost columns of the fees table, or from the fee_reduced and cost_reduced columns when the classifier "SME status" is present in the matter, but the fees or fee_reduced value is changed with the fee_factor from the configuration file (/config/renewal.php).
  • Payment order received to mark that instructions have been received to pay. The renewals are then transferred to the Payment step.
  • Abandon to mark that instructions have been received to abandon the case. The renewals are then transferred to the Abandoned step and marked as done.
  • Lapsed to mark that the Office has declared the case as lapsed, without received instructions. Tasks are then transferred to the Closed step.

Payment

  • Download XML order to pay produces an XML file that can be uploaded to office portals.
  • Paid is used when the payment or the order to pay is achieved with external means or with the previous XML file. This action is used also when an order has been generated. The renewals are added in both cases to the Invoicing step and the Receipts step.

Any of theses actions sets the renewals as done.

Receipts

  • Official receipts received tracks the receipts issued by the Office. The renewals are transferred to Receipts received.

Receipts received

  • Receipts sent tracks the receipts sent to the client. The renewals are then transferred to Closed.

Abandoned

  • Lapse tracks lapse communications from the Office.

Lapsed

  • Lapse communication sent tracks that the communication from the Office has been sent to the client. There are no more actions and the renewals go to the Closed step.

Invoicing

  • Invoice (when not disabled) generates invoices, the renewals being grouped by client, using the open source accounting tool Dolibarr. The renewals are transferred to the Invoiced step. The cost values are taken from the fees and cost columns of the fees table, or from the fee_reduced and cost_reduced columns when the classifier "SME status" is present in the matter. When grace period is checked and the due date is not past, fee_factor is applied. When the due date is past the done date, the cost values are taken from the fees_sup and cost_sup columns of the fees table, or from the fee_sup_reduced and cost_sup_reduced columns when the classifier "SME status" is present in the matter.
  • Export all exports all the renewals in the tab with additional information for merging with standard letters, for instance. The captions of the exported table are defined by the captions parameter in /config/renewal.php.
  • Invoiced is used to mark renewals invoiced by other means.

Invoiced

This step displays the list of invoiced renewals. There are no other actions.

Logs

Each action is logged. Logs can be viewed via the URL /logs. Lines can be filtered by job, client, date, case number or user.

Settings

General

Some settings are included in the file /config/renewal.php. The syntax is that of a PHP array. The array is subdivided in several sections

  • general:
    • paginate set the number of lines in the page listing renewals.
    • mail_recipient: set to client for sending immediately to the client and contacts, or to anything else to send the emails to yourself for inspection before resending.
    • vat_column: set to 0 if you don't want to see the prices including VAT in the emails.
  • api: used to specify access to the Dolibarr API, allowing invoicing. If another tool is used for invoicing, the invoice method of RenewalController.php is to be changed.
  • validity: configure indications about the validity of the call.
    • instruct_before: in days, the delay before the earliest due date of the call;
    • fee_factor: factor applied to fees for late instructions;
    • before: in days before the due date, delay to consider instructions as late,
    • before_last: in days before the due date, delay to ask for last limit instruction.
  • invoice: set backend to dolibarr if you are using Dolibarr. Modify captions to your needs.
  • xml: used to configure xml files for orders according to EPO-batch-payment.dtd https://www.epo.org/law-practice/legal-texts/official-journal/2015/etc/se3/p75.html. The setting has header and footer, and fees will be inserted between them. It has also EP_Deposit and FR_Deposit tags to include the Office deposit account to debit. The following items will be replaced:
    • NAME: the user name
    • TRANSACTION: the date
    • DEPOSIT: the account according to the office/country
    • TOTAL: the total fee amount in the transaction
    • COUNT: the number of transactions

Note that the payment portals of different offices will ignore some of these fields.

Email templates

Laravel's emailing backend is used for sending emails. Refer to Laravel configuration according to your infrastructure for settings.

The message bodies of the emails are generated from a blade template renewalCall.blade.php stored in resources/views/email.

They use the variables:

  • $dest for greetings;
  • $instruction_date
  • $renewals to iterate for renewals;
  • $validity_date
  • $total_ht: total without VAT;
  • $total: total with VAT.
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