Clearing Variant
Definition
The Clearing Variant is the central algorithmic spine inside FI-CA clearing configurations, housing the explicit mathematical rules defining precisely how open ledger items are grouped, sorted, and distributed during payment allocation.
Business Purpose and Architecture
If a customer has six different debts of varying ages and submits a partial payment, the Clearing Variant dictates where the money goes first. Architecturally, the variant splits processing into discrete programmable steps. For instance, Step 1 evaluates whether a down payment exists. Step 2 groups missing debts by due-date. Step 3 sorts the list descending. Step 4 distributes the available payment stringently covering the oldest debts first, entirely ignoring statistical Dunning fees until valid principal energy consumption charges are fully satisfied.