In Intelec, linking refers to the grouping of different accounts which belong 
 to the same debtor. The accounts may have been placed by a single client or   
 may belong to several different clients. The objectives are to provide the    
 ability to recognize the fact that a debtor has multiple accounts, to provide 
 information about each account and be able to work the accounts as a group.   

It is important to rememember in RMEx, We work the Debtor not the debt, we do this by presenting to the collector, within thier work queues, (Genreally) The oldest account first, and calling this the Primary Account. By linking all the accounts for this Debtor to the Primary, when you call a debtor that has 5 accounts, and notate the Primary, all the accounts in that link group can can also be updated at the same time. You have worked 5 accounts with one call. 
                                                                               
            
                                                                               
 The Linking System Control file allows the user to define the rules for       
 linking new accounts. 

The rules that you setup are based on the Debtors demographics such as Name, address, and Social Security, etc. In essesance, it's as if you were looking at each, new, individual account and determing what accounts you would consider belonging to the same debtor.. RMEx does this by giving each different debtor demographic a numaric value, and if those values are high enough, RMEx links thouse account

When an account links to an existing account, it is often desirable to change 
the collector code on the new account to that on the existing account, so    
that the group can be worked by the same collector.
... We have to assign account at time of entry...

RMEx can even look to see If the existing account is a small balance, lets say $25, and the new account it links to  is a large balance, say $10,000. you may not want that 10,025 linked group worked by the small balance collector, so RMEx can be setup so that it will give the smaller balance accounts to a Large balance collector                
                                                                              

When setting up linking, it's important to keep in mind how linking can affect other areas of the collection proecess.

For example:                         
LETTERS. In the area of letters, linking is very important, because it   
is possible to generate a letter for a single account or to include the  
linked balances. The letters need to be defined based on the type, and   
there are different merge codes which must be used for linked letters.   
                                                                         
Also in SMART CODES (Which are used to take actions on an account). Many features of the Smart Codes refer to linking. Some examples are the ability to make decisions based on linked balances,     
payments received on all accounts and the duplication of Smart Codes on  
linked accounts. 

 When new accounts are entered, the system will attempt to link them to        
 existing accounts based on rules defined by the management.  It is also possible to link accounts as and when they are discovered, if they fail to link at the time the account is new.