Zetu

Obligations

Start with what should happen.

An obligation is what someone is expected to pay, why they owe it, and when it is expected. Everything else in Zetu is a comparison against it.

Amounts.Reasons.Schedules.States.

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  • Recurring obligations on any schedule
  • One-off obligations and special assessments
  • Installment plans with their own schedules
  • Variable and usage-based amounts
  • Obligations that exist without an invoice
  • Policy per obligation type: grace, penalty, waiver rights

Part of one system

Members & accountsObligationsBillingPaymentsReconciliationCollectionsCommunicationsMember portalStandingEntitlementsReporting. See how they fit

Obligation statesAn invoice has two. An obligation has ten.
StateWhat it means
  • UpcomingUPCOMINGScheduled, not yet due. Already countable as expected revenue.
  • DueDUEThe date has arrived and nothing has settled it yet.
  • Partially fulfilledPARTIALSome money has landed against it. It is not late — it is partial.
  • FulfilledFULFILLEDSettled in full, by whatever combination of payments, credits and adjustments.
  • OverdueOVERDUEPast due and past any grace the policy allows.
  • DisputedDISPUTEDThe charge itself is contested. Chasing it is the wrong action.
  • RescheduledRESCHEDULEDMoved to new dates or split into installments, with the original preserved.
  • WaivedWAIVEDForgiven by someone with the authority, recorded as a decision.
  • CanceledCANCELEDShould never have existed. Reversed rather than deleted.
  • Written offWRITTEN_OFFJudged uncollectible. Still visible; still part of the history.
No transition deletes what came before. An obligation that was disputed and then paid still shows that it was disputed.

Most payment systems begin with a transaction. Most subscription systems begin with a subscription. Most accounting systems begin with an invoice. Zetu begins with what should have happened.

That sounds like a philosophical distinction until the first month closes. If your record of what was owed is the set of invoices you managed to send, then an invoice you forgot to raise is revenue that never existed, an invoice you reissued has erased its own history, and “how much should we have collected?” is answerable only by counting documents.

An obligation exists because of a relationship and a policy, whether or not anyone generated paperwork for it. A member owes annual dues because they are a member. A resident owes service charge because they occupy a unit. That fact is durable, and it is the only honest denominator for every ratio a finance team cares about.

In the wild

The same shape, in very different organizations.

Different words, different amounts, different schedules. Structurally identical: a party, a reason, an amount, a date.

  • Membership dues

    $50 monthly

    Owed because they are a member in good standing.

  • Annual professional dues

    $240 yearly

    Renews on a date; often paid in installments.

  • School fees

    $1,500 per term

    Frequently split across a payment plan and two parents.

  • Service charge

    $120 monthly

    Owed because they occupy a unit, not because they signed this month.

  • Savings-group contribution

    $200 monthly

    Missed contributions may attract a penalty obligation of their own.

  • Internet subscription

    $30 monthly

    Non-payment has a service consequence, not just a balance.

  • Property installment

    $750 monthly

    A schedule with a defined end, not an open-ended subscription.

  • Special assessment

    $400 one-off

    Raised by a decision, apportioned across owners.

  • Pledge

    $100 monthly

    Voluntary. Tracked, gently followed up, never enforced.

  • Franchise royalty

    Percentage, monthly

    Variable amount on a fixed schedule.

  • Maintenance contract

    $900 quarterly

    Tied to a service agreement with a term.

  • Late penalty

    $5 per month overdue

    An obligation created by the breach of another obligation.

Relationship → obligation → settlement

Why the obligation sits between the person and the money.

The relationship explains why money is expected

Member, resident, student, subscriber, franchisee, contributor, owner. The relationship is what makes the obligation legitimate, and it is what tells you what should happen when it ends.

The obligation says what, why and when

It carries the amount, the reason, the schedule and the policy that governs it — grace period, penalty, whether it can be waived and by whom.

Settlement says what actually happened

One payment, several payments, a credit balance, a waiver, an adjustment, a write-off, or a mixture. The obligation records what settled it and what is left.

The payer need not be the party

A company settles eighteen memberships. A parent settles three children's fees. The obligation belongs to the beneficiary; the payment came from somebody else. Both facts survive.

One payer, eighteen membershipsCorporate membership · linked records

Payer

acc-3307

Northbridge Design Partners

Not a member. Holds no entitlements of its own.

Obligation

obl-8841

Annual corporate membership · $5,400

18 named architects, billed as one agreement.

Settlement

2 payments
  • Payment 1 · 14 Feb$3,000
  • Payment 2 · 11 Aug$2,400
  • Settled in full$5,400

Two payments, seven months apart, against one obligation. Neither is a whole membership; together they are eighteen.

Standing

Good standing
+13

18 individual memberships active. Each architect votes, appears in the directory and renews their certification in their own name — none of them has paid the association anything.

Payer, account holder and beneficiary are three separate records. Most systems collapse them into one.

History

Zetu preserves obligations rather than silently rewriting them.

When a charge is corrected in most systems, the previous version stops existing. The invoice is edited, or voided and reissued, and the record now says the new amount was always the amount. That is convenient right up to the moment somebody asks why the figure they were shown in April is not the figure in the ledger in August.

In Zetu, an obligation that is adjusted, rescheduled, disputed, waived or written off keeps its history. You can see what was originally expected, what changed, when, who changed it and why — and the reports for April still reconcile to what April actually said.

An audit trail nobody can reconstruct after the fact is not an audit trail.

Capabilities

What is in obligations

  • Recurring obligations on any schedule
  • One-off obligations and special assessments
  • Installment plans with their own schedules
  • Variable and usage-based amounts
  • Obligations that exist without an invoice
  • Policy per obligation type: grace, penalty, waiver rights
  • Full state model, including disputed and rescheduled
  • Partial fulfillment as a first-class state
  • Beneficiary separate from payer and account holder
  • Penalty obligations generated by breach of another
  • Adjustments and credits that preserve the original
  • Complete change history with attribution

Questions

Obligations, in practice

How is an obligation different from an invoice?

An invoice is a document you send. An obligation is the underlying fact that a specific party is expected to pay a specific amount, for a specific reason, by a specific date. One obligation may produce several invoices, or none at all — plenty of money is owed under standing agreements that nobody invoices monthly. Keeping the obligation separate is what lets Zetu tell you what should have been received even where no invoice exists.

Do we have to change how we invoice?

No. Zetu generates invoices from obligations in the normal way, and they look like invoices. The difference is what happens underneath: the invoice becomes one representation of the obligation rather than the only record of it, so reissuing, crediting or disputing an invoice never destroys the history of what was owed.

Can obligations be irregular?

Yes. Monthly dues, termly fees, quarterly maintenance contracts, annual renewals, one-off special assessments, installment schedules and variable usage charges are all obligations with different schedules. The schedule is a property of the obligation, not a different product.

What happens when someone disputes a charge?

The obligation moves to disputed and stops escalating — it does not disappear and it does not keep aging into a collections queue. When the dispute resolves, the obligation is either confirmed, adjusted or waived, and the whole sequence stays visible. That record is usually the first thing anyone asks for when the disagreement resurfaces a year later.

Keep reading

Bring us one messy month.

Bring one month of obligations and one month of payments. We will show you what reconciles, what does not, and what that is costing you.

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