Business Management, Records, and Consumer Protection
This domain tests how a Georgia firm prices, documents, and defends its conduct: the FTC Funeral Rule's required price lists and disclosures, the records that prove compliance, and the consumer-protection statutes that apply on top. Items often hinge on timing - when a document must be given, not just that it exists.
The Funeral Rule core (16 CFR Part 453)
- General Price List - itemized, given to anyone who asks in person and to anyone who begins discussing arrangements. Prices must be available by telephone on request.
- Cremation Price List if the firm offers cremation; Outer Burial Container Price List if it sells them.
- Written itemized statement of selections and total cost, given before services are provided.
- Mandatory disclosures: embalming is not required by law except in specific cases; an alternative container is available for cremation; you may not condition funeral goods or services on the purchase of other funeral goods or services; the firm must accept a casket purchased elsewhere and may not charge a casket-handling fee.
Georgia overlay
- The Fair Business Practices Act (O.C.G.A. § 10-1-390 et seq.) reaches deceptive or unfair practices in consumer transactions, including funeral sales.
- A burial-transit permit must be obtained from the local registrar before interment or removal - no permit, no disposition.
- Preneed contracts must be funded and disclosed as the law requires (trust or insurance). Record the funding vehicle, refund terms, and any guarantee.
- Retain the contract, authorizations, identification records, price lists, and permits for the period the Rule and Board rules require; superseded price lists are evidence and belong in the file, not the shredder.
Management judgment
Know your cost of goods against price, track preneed receivables separately from operating cash, and never commingle preneed or client funds with general accounts. Set retention schedules so records can be produced during a complaint or inspection.
Worked example
A family asks to buy a casket online and have the firm receive it. Staff quote a "handling and receiving fee" and hand over the General Price List only after the family has chosen a unit. Reasoning: the Rule bars conditioning and bars a casket-handling fee for a casket bought elsewhere, and the GPL is due before discussion of selections, not after. Answer: accept the casket, no handling fee, and provide the GPL at the start of the arrangement conversation with the itemized statement after selections.
Traps that cost marks
Thinking the GPL is at-need only; forgetting the cremation price list; bundling embalming consent into a package; and believing an itemized statement given after the funeral cures a price-list failure.