What's the deal with auto late fees only creating one line item?
Answered
Surely we're not the only ones that have a problem with this? It's not an issue for many residents to be sure, but when you have hundreds of units, a few are bound to be more than one month behind. The system doesn't have any trouble automatically charging the regular monthly rent, so I don't understand why this is like this and why I can't get any clarity from writing support on whether or not it's intended to be or if it's a problem RentPost is going to fix.
What charges should look like:
Mar Late Fees
Mar Rent
Feb Late Fees
Feb Rent
What charges actually look like:
37 Late Fees
Mar Rent
Feb Rent
We intend to use this system as our online payment vehicle, and "37 late fees" is not helpful information. We can of course break it down further on our end, but the residents should be able to see an accurate detail of what they owe when they go to pay as well, and "37 late fees" doesn't give them that. It's certainly not something I can print out and take to a judge for an eviction hearing. I will have no choice but to seek out another system if this remains the same,. but I cannot get an answer on whether or not it will.
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Official comment
Hello Rachael, you guys must have a recurring late fee schedule setup. The late fee system will assess additional receivables to the ledger in accordance with your late fee schedule. In the case of a recurring schedule, and a tenant being late for some time, the number of late fee receivables/assessments can be quite high - especially if your schedule is recurring daily.
As for the confusion around these, and especially with recurring schedules, it's important to note that late fees are assessed on a tenant's balance, not individual receivables (rent charges). This is for a number of reasons. But with recurring schedules, after a month rolls over, it's going to continue to assess late fee charges on the recurring schedule, not restart the schedule for a new month's late rent - if that makes sense.
Consider the situation where you have the following:
- Feb Rent (due 2/1)
- Feb Parking Fee (due 2/10)
- Mar Rent (due 3/1)
Now, given a current date of 3/7, and assuming you have a late fee schedule setup to charge a fee of $50 after 3 grace period days, then another recurring $5 fee every day thereafter, you'd have the following calculation.- Late Fee of $50 charged on the morning of 2/5
- Late fees of $5 charged every day from 2/6 til 3/7, the current date.This would result in a total late fee of $50 + (30 x $5) = $200 and a total of 31 late fee assessments.
Being that late fees are billed against a tenant's ledger balance (oldest due receivable that's eligible for late fees), they are not directly associated with any given month's rent charge. Late fees can apply to any late charges on a tenant's ledger. Of course, you can configure this per chart of account, as a setting, enabling or disabling whether late fees are assessed for receivables allocated to a chart of account.
I think what you may be looking for here, is just more insight into what makes up those "37" late fees you're referring to in your example. We do have this information available and I think we could provide a way to display what makes up the total late fee. I'll share this with our development team.
In the past, for recurring late fee schedules, we assessed and displayed each late fee on the tenant's ledger, directly. However, we received numerous complaints from clients that it was effectively spam and cluttering up the ledger in such a way that it made it barely legible. We don't disagree - it can be way too much noise. That's why you see "37 Late Fees" instead of 37 individual late fee entries on the ledger.
Hope that helpful. Again, I'll be sharing your feedback with our dev team. Thanks for your feedback on this and if you have anything else to add that might be helpful, please share.
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Thank you Jacob. It does make more sense now why it shows up that way - I can see how it's easier if there are various other charges throughout the month, and definitely agree that a new charge for each daily late fee would be too much.
But yes, being given an option to see the late fee breakdown would be perfect. We've set up the automated fees in anticipation of taking rent online and just want to ensure that residents can see what they're being charged for. Having only one charge also prevents someone who's more than a month behind from being able to pay all of their oldest charges, but we can always keep partials disabled and require those few residents to pay in person if they're working toward getting caught up.We've always been really happy with RentPost and y'all's responsiveness, and thank you for looking at a solution to this issue.
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Having only one charge also prevents someone who's more than a month behind from being able to pay all of their oldest charges
By this, do you mean since late fees are required to be paid first, before paying down on actual charges on the ledger?
If so, yes - tenants would be required to pay the late fee off before paying against any other charges (by default, but this is customizable). All other charges on the ledger must then be paid in order of their due dates.
So, if a tenant is more than 1 month past due, and you have a recurring late fee schedule setup, they may have late fees spanning multiple months. But, it still makes sense that all of these are to be paid off first, before paying on any other charges, unless you're stating (in your leases) that your recurring late fee schedule is to stop and restart each month.
As for keeping partials disabled - yep. You can set the number of days until payment-in-full is required, which could be set under 30 days.
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Our late fees keep accumulating, but we do allow behind residents to pay them off in order incurred - for a resident currently two months behind, we would take a payment for February rent and late fees today and would not apply that payment to March late fees, though March rent and late fees would have to be paid before we would apply any payment to April rent. I can see why accommodating our model would not work while also accommodating users who charge add ons such as pet fees or submetered utilities separately from rent now that you've explained it, and I also can solve the issue on our end simply by disabling partial online payments. The primary thing I'd love to see a feature for is just a breakdown of the late fee charge. Thank you for your response!
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