What does a hardship instalment change look like when one step is missed?

A utility's hardship team handles account **ACCT-5530**, which carries arrears of $1,240 and an instalment plan, **PLAN-0912**, set at four fortnightly payments of $310.

The customer contacts a service agent after losing casual shifts and says the second payment will be missed. The agent opens **CASE-0412** and attaches the income statement. Policy says a plan can be extended only with hardship team lead approval, and any extension must cancel the open direct debit before the next billing run.

The team lead approves a revised plan of twelve fortnightly payments: eleven of $103.33 and a final payment of $103.37 to absorb rounding. The agent must now do four things in order: cancel the open debit, replace the instalment rows, record the approval reference, and leave a note for the next handover.

In this run the agent replaces the rows but leaves the debit active. The old $310 debit fires, the customer's bank rejects it, and a dishonour fee is added to ACCT-5530. That breaks the hardship policy and reopens the case.

**What it teaches:** a schedule change is an ordered operation across several records and systems. A model must track approvals, side effects and rounding, not just produce a plausible new table of dates. An evaluation can score each step separately and check the final state of every linked record.