Harvest App: Bulk Appliance Payments in Harvest

Harvest App: Bulk Appliance Payments in Harvest

Overview

Added functionality to apply household credit towards an appliance in a bulk amount, which will pause the automatic daily deductions (and lower the daily credit minimum) until the household is no longer ahead in their lease. When the house is behind in payments, the automatic deductions will restart automatically.
                       
Common Scenarios To Use
  1. If a household wants to ensure a sum of their money goes to their appliance without worrying that this might be deducted from their total energy balance, they can allocate a bulk amount of credit towards an appliance.
  2. To charge a down-payment or upfront amount towards an appliance when it is installed.
Tool Used: Harvest mobile app
Steps:
  1. Using the Harvest Mobile App, access the household's page, by clicking the "House" button in the bottom right.
  2. Open the "Appliances" menu
  3. Click the "Apply credit to balance" button which opens page to input the amount that the household wants to pay towards the appliance.
  4. When the amount is reviewed and submitted, a household with receive an SMS confirmation.
The SMS will contain the remaining balance to be paid on the appliance and the number of days before the automatic billing will restart.


Important Notes
  • Cash must be converted to Household Credit FIRST, via normal topup collection. Credit can then be transferred to the appliance
  • All appliances should stay as ACTIVE, and only be moved to inactive (via an Okra Support Request), when an appliance should not be billed at all (i.e. broken, removed)
    • Inactive appliances cannot receive bulk payments
  • When a household pays a bulk amount, their daily appliance payment will skip, for as many days into the future that they are in their lease. See the section below for more explanation of what ahead vs. behind in lease payments looks like.
    • As the asset owner, this logic will help correct household's scheduled lease end date to the original lease schedule. 
  • Clarified terminology
    • Household Credit: the money sitting in that households account. 
    • Top-ups: previously in the app as “payments”, referring to cash collected.
    • Appliance (remaining) Balance: Amount that is still outstanding to finish paying off that appliance

Ahead vs. Behind in Lease Payments?
  1. A household is considered "ahead"  or "behind" in payments, based on how many days into their lease have passed and how much of the appliance lease they have repaid. 
  2. When a house is "ontime" or "behind", they will automatically be billed every day for their appliance. When a house is "ahead" their appliance billing will pause, but it will automatically restart when they are back on-time with their lease.


    • Related Articles

    • Harvest App: Adding new appliances to a Household

      The tool to be used: Harvest Mobile This article is written to help the Support Team know how to add a new material to a house while using the tool that is the Harvest mobile application. You will need this information before adding a new material to ...

    • Download the Harvest Mobile App

      You will not find the Harvest Mobile App on the Google Store. You will navigate to m.harvest.okrasolar.com and download the app from there. Listen to Kenneth explain in more detail to you how to get the app.

    • Download the Harvest Mobile App

      Harvest Mobile App is currently not on the Google Play Store or Apple Store. It operates only on Android devices and runs only on Google Chrome. To download the mobile app, navigate to m.harvest.okrasolar.com and download the app from there. Listen ...

    • Harvest App: Mobile App Activities Syncing

      When an action is done within the Mobile App (collect a payment, signup a household, complete a Todo, etc...), the activity stream (click the centre button on the bottom navigation bar) will keep a record of the activity and indicate the status of ...

    • Harvest Desktop: Delete a user on Harvest

      Tool Used: Harvest Desktop app This article details the steps to delete a user from Harvest so they will no longer have access to Harvest functionality.You will require the following info before proceeding: User email Harvest Desktop Steps: Login to ...