This article explains how to set up renewals charges in your charge sheet, so that they can be automatically added to renewals on your system.

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How Equinox handles renewals charges

Equinox will try to automatically link one 'Fixed' charge and one 'Cost' charge to each renewal on your system. To do this, it uses specific renewal fields on a charge sheet item, as well as the category and country fields, to find a matching charge. The charge with the most specific matching filters will be used. 

Renewals fields on charge sheet items

There are three specific renewals properties on a charge sheet item: 

Renewals Charge – this should be checked for your renewal charges. Equinox uses this to identify your renewal charges when finding a matching charge for a renewal.

Renewal Year – if the charge relates to a specific renewal year, the year should be specified in this field. If the Year is left as 0, the charge can be added across all renewal years. 

Renewal Extra Charge – this should be checked if the charge should not be added automatically, but still relates to renewals, e.g., an additional charge for late payment of the renewal fee.

Example - A specific official fee for a year 7 renewal 

This example shows a Year 7 GB Patent official fee. As the renewal charge has country filter ‘GB’ and is set to category ‘Patent’ – this is the only type of case it can be added to. The Renewal Year has also been set to 7 – meaning this charge will only be linked to Year 7 renewals:

 

Example - A generic service charge used for all patent renewals

Equinox would also add a ‘Fixed’ charge to the Year 7 renewal. In this example, the same Fixed charge is used for all patent renewals, regardless of the Year or Country. 


As the year is set to 0 and there is no country filter set, this charge would be used for all Patent renewals.

Default charge profile settings

You need to specify a Default Charge Profile for Fixed and Cost charges in the Renewals > Settings section. These act as fallback charges that will be used when nothing specific matches. Typically, these would have the amount set to 0 on the charge sheet items, so that you can manually input the amount after they are linked to the renewal.