Judgement Information

Judgement information is handled in two places in Collect! Both are accessed while viewing a Debtor form. Judgements are normally set up after the original information has been entered for the debtor. The important fact to remember about Judgements is that Collect! completely ignores any financial information prior to the Judgement Date. Therefore, if you should need to keep pre-judgement financial information, there are a few extra steps that you need to complete.

Judgement Date and Judgement Principal are entered using the Financial Detail form. To access this form, select the field labeled Principal on the Debtor form. If it is not important to you to keep previous financial information, then simply fill in the Judgement Date field and then the Judgement Principal field will display for you to enter the judgement amount. If you need to keep the prior financial information for this account, you will need to post transactions to capture the accrued values, PRIOR to entering the Judgement Date.

Judgement interest is set through the Debtor form by selecting the Interest field. This will show you the Interest Detail form. Enter the Original Judgement Interest and/or the Interest Rate for the judgement. If you need to save any prior fees or accrued interest, you should post transactions to capture these amounts, PRIOR to setting up the judgement information.

When a judgement is entered in Collect!, all calculations on a go forward basis will use the Judgement Principal. Any interest calculated will use the new Judgement Principal starting from the Judgement Date. Collect! changes the field labeled Principal to Judgement. The field actually changes color to notify the operator that this is now a judgement account. All transactions and Original Principal information will be ignored prior to the Judgement Date entered.

Collect! will make sure Judgement values in the Financial Detail and the 194 Judgement Principal transaction are always synchronized. When a Judgement exists, the fields will be greyed out in the Debtor's Financial Detail. You can enable them by deleting the 194 Judgement Principal transaction. If you modify the Date or Amount on the 194 Judgement Principal transaction, the Financial Detail will be updated automatically.

When calculating interest on Judgement accounts, Collect! will always use the Judgement Date as the earliest date to calculate interest from. Multiple 194 and 195 transactions are ignored. The active one is the most recent of each. If a Judgement Date is set, ALL other principal type transactions are ignored.

If you need to post additional interest transactions on the account, you can use any other interest type transaction, such as the Type 495, Additional Judgement Interest.

Collect! looks for Financial Type "Interest" when adding up all the interest on the account, posted AFTER the Judgement Date. It displays this total interest on the Debtor form. However, the Judgement Interest field will only display the Original Judgement Interest amount stored in the 195 transaction.

Many users have extra information such as case number. Or, perhaps you have scanned the judgement documents. This kind of information can easily be entered using an Attachment on the Debtor form.

See Also

- Debtor Basics - Introduction/Accessing
- Financial Detail
- Interest Detail
- Debtor Transaction Summary
- Debtor Financial Summary