Renewal Management

Introduction

This part of the application manages calls to renew IP titles. It consists of two workflows, the first to manage calls, payment and receipts, the second to manage invoicing. Calls may be done directly via email templates that are set up in the system.

Usage

Access the tool from the menu Tools->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 renewals is displayed. Actions are performed on selected renewals, except where indicated.

Actions that cause renewals to move to the next step are represented by buttons in solid color.

The renewals are displayed with badges. A red badge indicates an overdue renewal. A yellow badge indicates an urgent renewal (to be paid within the next week). A green badge indicates the renewal has been cleared (in principle paid to the Office).

When an email is prepared, the addresses of the actors that are attached to matters with the "Contact" role are used, if at least one exists. If not, the email address 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 indicating that the renewals have been 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.

In both cases, the renewals are transferred to step Reminder.

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.

• 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 (currently the EPO and the INPI).

• Paid is used for renewals that have been paid to the offices. The renewals are cleared and added to the Invoicing step and the Receipts step.

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.

Closed

This is the arrival point of the process, which requires no more action. Furthermore, all unpaid renewals are archived here, this usually means the cases have been abandoned and have lapsed.

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.

• 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. Use the Paid button to track the payments - this will transfer the renewals to the Invoices paid step, where they remain archived.

Invoices paid

The paid renewals are archived here.

Cancelling actions

If for some reason a renewal arrives in a wrong step of the procedure, note that cancelling the done status of the renewal will reset its status in the procedure. If the renewal has not been cleared, simply clear it and cancel the done status from the renewal panel of the matter.

Logs

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

Configuration

Costs and fees

The financial information is taken by default from the fees table, which is accessible through Tools->Renewal fees. This table contains individual renewal cost and fee information for each renewal in each country you wish to follow. The "cost" is usually the office fee or the amount charged by the local agent, whereas the "fee" is your service fee.

Absent information in the fees table, the information is taken from the cost and fee columns of the individual renewals, which can be filled automatically through the rules table (Tables->Rules), or by a synchronization script with your renewal service provider.

Each cost and fee has several variants, i.e. "Standard" and "Reduced", for each of the standard deadline and the grace period. The "Reduced" variant applies to applicants having small entity status in the actor table, and, if multiple applicants are designated, only if all applicants have the small entity status. If you do not use a specific variant, just leave it empty, whereby the "Standard" variant is used by default (do not set a value to 0, since this will mean there is no charge).

Note that an "urgency penalty" may be applied upon sending the "last reminder". The "fee" values are then multiplied by the parameter fee_factor set in the configuration file (/config/renewal.php). This factor is set to 1.2 by default.

Fee discounts

A fee discount may be set for privileged clients. The discount is entered as a rate between 0 and 1 (e.g. 0.5 for a 50% reduction) or a flat discounted fee (e.g. 80) in the Discount for renewals field of the client's information card ("Others" tab).

General

General settings are included in the file /config/renewal.php. En example configuration file is provided (renewal.php.example) that you can copy to renewal.php and tailor to your needs according to the following.

The syntax is that of a PHP array. The array is subdivided in several sections:

• general:
  • paginate set the number of lines in the pages 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.
  • receipt_tabs: set to 0 if you don't wish to manage the office receipts.
• 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.
  • body contains a skeleton XML template that will be completed with data by the back-end at run-time. If you want your company to appear as the sender in the final XML file, set the COMPANY_NAME variable in the .env file (as suggested in the .env.example file). Otherwise the connected phpIP user will appear as the sender. (Whenever you change the .env file in production, you should run php artisan config:cache to reload the settings.)
  • EP_Deposit and FR_Deposit define the Office deposit accounts to debit.

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

Email templates

Laravel's mail back-end is used for sending emails, which is configured using the /config/mail.php file and settings in the .env file. Refer to Laravel's documentation for further details about setting up the mail back-end.

The emails are generated from a blade template renewalCall.blade.php in /resources/views/email.

The message bodies and subjects themselves are stored under class sys_renewals in the template_members table, accessible through the menu Tools->Email templates. Three different emails are required, having categories firstcall, lastcall, and warncall. Examples are provided in French. The email language is selected by the language field of the client or contact actor, when set. If no language is set, the system will use the current locale (French by default), that you can override by setting the APP_LOCALE variable in the .env file.

The following variables are exported to the blade template:

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