When it comes to renewable records such as business licenses, animal licenses, or food establishment permits we use periods known as “terms” (because some organizations don’t operate renewable licenses on the calendar year).
When you’re dealing with filters, lists, and reports you may see references to the “latest term”. We want to make sure you understand just what the “latest term” is. For each permit/license there is a set of terms – (often one for each year.)
The “latest term” is the last term we have on record for a permit, regardless of the status of an application or renewal.
New Application:
New applications are automatically assigned to a term when they are submitted. For a new application which came in on 10/23/18, the [01/01/18 – 12/31/18] term is the “latest term” even if it has not yet been approved:
Renewals:
When it comes to renewals, the instant a renewal for a single permit has STARTED, a new term record is stacked on, making it the “latest term” for that permit, even if the term renewal hasn’t been completed:
In the example below the latest term has updated to the 2020 term since the applicant renewed their application for the next term. So assuming the current date is 12/20/19, because a renewal has already happened for the next year, the “latest term” is the 2020 year:
Filtering Permits or Licenses Using the Last Term
Term dates can be a convenient filter to separate applications that have renewed from those that have not. Consider this set of filters below, which demonstrate a great way to see which licenses are about to expire (the expiration date is the same as the “Latest Term End Date”) – note that this set of filters also makes sure we only see licenses that have been approved and have not yet started renewals.
The All Permit section for those filters would look like this:
Columns in this report include:
Latest Term End Date: Tells us when the latest term expires.
Fees Paid for the Latest Term: Tells us how much was paid for the latest term – so this could be fees paid on a new application, or on a renewal, depending on what the latest term is.
Fees Due This or Next Term: Is not necessarily tied to the latest term. This column refers either to a) how much is due (unpaid) on the latest term (for example, new unpaid applications or renewals that haven’t been paid for) or b) how much would be due on the next term upon renewal.