Rents account action management overview
It is very important for a housing organisation to have good visibility of the status of all tenant accounts and can readily access a concise picture of historical events and outcomes at any point in time. Managing the collection of rent has a number of themes - policy, collection procedures, preventative measures, arrears (current and former tenants), legal action and bad debt write off - with an increasing emphasis on preventative, rather than reactive strategies. There will, however, be occasions when a tenant's failure to pay rent may result in more serious measures being taken, culminating in court action and eventual eviction. Of course, eviction should be viewed as a last resort and only used when all other avenues have been exhausted. Nonetheless, all conceivable actions that could be taken on a rent account, matching those configured within the rent arrears policy, can be applied through Civica Cx Housing in a consistent way. With the appropriate access privileges, an end user can add any action manually to a rent account, and specifically to serve notice on a tenancy, to initiate a court application and to secure an eviction. All applied actions are maintained as a chronological history against the account, with a particular focus on 'key actions'. Any account that is a cause for concern, irrespective of whether it has fallen into arrears, can be added to a watch list, effectively placing it under the microscope, either for a set period of time, or indefinitely. Where appropriate, an account can also be flagged as 'suspended', thus preventing further arrears actions from being taken, perhaps in response to a repayment arrangement having been established.
Separate help articles have been created for each key aspect of rents account action management, including: