Every burial society runs on one number: what each member still owes. Get it wrong and everything downstream is wrong — who gets a reminder, whose cover lapses, and whose family finds out at the worst possible moment that the policy was not current. TamilAccounting’s Burial Society app has been reworked around that number. Arrears are now measured in money rather than receipt counts, cover amendments genuinely change the policy, and the membership lifecycle can look after itself — but only once you have seen exactly what it intends to do.
A premium that includes everything the member pays for
A member’s monthly premium is built from every piece of cover attached to them: the principal cover plan, an optional tombstone top-up, and each active dependant. All of it now feeds the premium, and all of it is paid out at claim time.
| What the member is covered for | Monthly |
|---|---|
| Principal cover plan | 60.00 |
| Tombstone top-up | 20.00 |
| Spouse | 25.00 |
| Child | 15.00 |
| Monthly premium | 120.00 |
If a member is contributing towards a tombstone benefit every month, that benefit is now part of what the society pays when a claim is settled. Add or remove a dependant and the premium is recalculated straight away.
Arrears measured in money, not receipts
Counting receipts is a tempting shortcut, and it quietly produces the wrong answer. Two payments in one month look like two months settled. Half a premium looks like a whole month. A single catch-up payment covering three months looks like one.
Arrears are now the difference between what was due and what was actually received, and each payment settles the month it is for — with any surplus carried forward.
| Payment date | Amount | What it settles |
|---|---|---|
| 3 February | 120.00 | February in full |
| 18 February | 120.00 | Carries forward and settles March |
| 5 April | 60.00 | Half of April — April stays partly open |
| 2 June | 360.00 | Clears the rest of April, then May and June |
Because every payment is tied to the months it settles, you can open a member and see precisely which months are still open rather than a single lump figure you have to take on trust.
| Month | Due | Received | Still open |
|---|---|---|---|
| January | 120.00 | 120.00 | — |
| February | 120.00 | 120.00 | — |
| March | 120.00 | 120.00 | — |
| April | 120.00 | 60.00 | 60.00 |
| May | 120.00 | — | 120.00 |
| June | 120.00 | — | 120.00 |
| Total | 720.00 | 420.00 | 300.00 |
Catch-up payments count too. A member paying off a backlog is credited for it, and a lapsed member who settles their arrears is put back on cover automatically.
Do you bill in advance or in arrears?
Societies differ, and the answer changes every arrears figure by exactly one month. Under Settings → Rules you choose Bill premium in advance: the month a member goes on risk falls due immediately (the usual arrangement for burial cover), or a month only falls due once it has fully passed.
Because this moves every number on the book, the setting shows you what each option is worth on your own membership before you commit, and asks you to confirm a change once you have members. Decide it once, before you go live, and your figures stay stable afterwards.
Cover amendments that actually change the policy
An amendment is a request to change a member’s cover, and it now carries the change itself rather than a note describing it. Choose the type and the form asks for exactly what that change needs.
- Add dependant — captures the person and their benefit; cover limits are re-checked when the amendment is applied, not just when it was requested.
- Remove dependant — pick the dependant and record the reason.
- Upgrade or downgrade cover — choose the replacement plan and, if relevant, the tombstone plan.
- Update details — contact details, pay point, region or branch.
- Termination — ends the membership.
The request still goes through review and approval. When it is applied, the member record changes for real, the premium is recalculated, and a before-and-after record of exactly what changed is kept on the audit trail — so months later you can see not just that a policy was amended, but what it looked like on either side of the change.
The lifecycle can run itself — when you say so
Three routine jobs can run overnight:
- Activation — members whose waiting period has ended go on cover on the day it ends, instead of waiting for somebody to notice.
- Age-out — children past the age limit come off cover, and the premium drops accordingly. Approved disabled children are exempt.
- Lapsing — a member lapses when the money actually owed reaches the number of months you have set. A token payment no longer keeps somebody current, and a member who paid a year up front is not lapsed for missing a month.
These are switched off when you start, deliberately. They change many members at once, and nobody should meet that for the first time the morning after an upgrade. Settings → Rules shows a preview of exactly what tonight’s run would do — how many members would be activated, how many dependants aged out, how many memberships lapsed, with sample rows — and you turn them on when the numbers look right.
Branch figures that reach your accounts
Members belong to a branch, and contributions, claim payouts and refund payouts now carry that branch into the general ledger. Branch income and claims expense show up in your normal financial reports, not only inside the Burial Society app — so a branch profit-and-loss is an ordinary accounting question again.
Fewer typos becoming permanent
Two kinds of mistake used to survive quietly and compound. A member’s national identity number is the key every contribution, claim and refund hangs off, and it can now be checked for format and length. Premium and cover amounts can be bounded, so a stray digit is caught at capture rather than being charged — and accrued into arrears — every month afterwards.
Both checks start switched off, because existing records may not pass them. Settings → Rules lists the records that would fail so you can tidy them first, and existing entries are never blocked from being worked on. Turn the checks on when the list is clean.
Built for a large membership
Societies grow, and the arrears report is the screen everyone opens. It has been rebuilt to work in bulk rather than member by member: on a book of twenty thousand members with a quarter of a million contributions, the outstanding-balances report completes in under a second, and the full overnight run in a few seconds. Summary figures, member lists and the nightly jobs no longer slow down as the membership grows.
Where to find it
Open Apps → Burial Society. The new options live under Settings → Rules, where cover limits, age bands, waiting period, lapse threshold, billing basis, the nightly jobs and the data checks are all set per company. Everything is configurable per society, so a rule that suits one book does not have to be forced on another.
Common questions
Will my arrears figures change after the upgrade?
They may, in two ways. If a member contributes towards a tombstone benefit, that amount now forms part of their premium. And the billing basis decides whether the current month is already due. The Rules screen shows the effect of the billing basis on your own book, and asks you to confirm before it takes effect, so nothing moves silently.
Will the overnight jobs start changing members immediately?
No. They are off until you switch them on, and the preview tells you exactly how many records each one would affect first.
What happens when a child reaches the age limit?
They come off cover and the member’s premium reduces from that point. Children recorded as approved disabled dependants are not aged out.
Can we still claim for a spouse or child?
Yes. When you choose the member on a bereavement claim, that member’s dependants are listed so you can record who has died, and the benefit payable is worked out from their cover.
Can a claim be paid in instalments?
Yes. A claim can be settled in full or in parts, each payment is recorded against the claim, and the outstanding balance is always visible. Reversing a payment puts the claim back to where it was and re-opens the balance.
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