***Please read first before starting with late fees. Late fees will not apply to the existing invoice that is late. The current design allows you to add the late fee to the next invoice or manually invoice them in between billing cycles. After the grace period late fees will not update on the existing invoice***
Setting up / Creating Late Fees
Start by going to Pricing > Late Fees
Select the + button to create late fee
Required Fields:
NAME
DOLLAR AMOUNT
PRICING PERIOD
Optional Fields:
General Ledger Account
Business Line
Grace Period
Linking fees to customer profiles
There are two options for linking a late fee to a customers profile.
Bulk link through the Late Fee settings
Link the fee from the customers profile
Bulk Link -
After creating the fee, select the 3 dots next to the amount of the fee and select Add accounts.
In the pop up window, select the accounts to add to the Late Fee.
(example: I have selected all Residential Bill Profiles to add to the fee. Once the bill profiles are selected, you can select specific accounts or select All, then click Add)
You can filter by Bill Profile, Tags or searching specific account names
Linked from Customer Profile
From the Customer detail page, select the Fees tab
Select the fee that applies
Select Add
Invoicing Late Fees
Billing > Create draft invoices
Select the Customer billing profile & Billing period
When you select Create Invoices a pop up window will ask you to confirm if you wish to change the invoice date, if you want to eliminate the generation of $0 invoices and if you want to include late fees
(example, one time late fee per late invoice)
(example: monthly late fee with 30 day grace period)
(example: Rental Fee & Late Fee on the same invoice)
Invoicing from the Customer detail page
Late fees can be applied to Manual or Recurring invoices
Late Fee Only Invoice
To create an invoice for only late fees, select the manual invoice option from the customer detail page and make sure that there are no On Request work orders marked ready for invoice. This will allow you to create an invoice that has the account balance as well as the late fees.
BULK Late Fee only invoicing
These steps are recommended for when you wish to invoice customers for ONLY late fees and no other charges/work orders
Apply the filter READY ON REQUEST WORK ORDERS = 0
Additionally you can apply the filter - Unbilled Late Fees is greater than 0 (not required). This extra step, adds another layer of invoice review to ensure that Balance only invoices are not created in this step.
More filters can be applied, for example if you wish to create invoices based on Billing Profile, Tags, etc. These filters are not required, they are just additional steps you can take while creating bulk invoices.
🛑 WARNING: Ready On Request Work Orders that have not been filtered to Operator = Value 0, may cause On Request Work Orders set Ready for Invoice to populate on the invoices you are creating during this work flow. We recommend filtering out those Work Orders to ensure you're only billing/invoicing for late fees
With the filters applied, select all or the specific customers to be invoiced
Select to Preview charges or skip right to Create Invoices
In both Preview charges & Create invoices, start by selecting the toggle for late fees
Adding a custom invoice note (message on invoice) available from the preview screen
Removing a late fee from customer's account
To remove the late free from an invoice, the late fee(s) need to be unlinked from the
customer. To do this, go to Pricing > Late Fees, select the 3 dot menu. Select remove accounts.
Select the account(s) to be removed
With the linked fee removed you can regenerate the invoice (even if previously sent to the customer) to remove late fees.
Waive a late fee but keep the fees linked to a customer's profile
All columns are filterable
Select the applicable Accounts / Invoice
Select Waive Fees
To waive late fees for a previous period or to set late fees to start assessing after a specific date -
We recommend these steps for any Business who has imported data, including but not limited to invoices from your previous invoicing system where our system may attempt to assess a late fee. Another option for filtering a date range is if your business has not charges late fees prior to a specific date and you're starting fresh from this point forward.
Additional Information
Ticket icon with number indicates an associated late fees
Current Limitations -
Backdating invoices will not trigger late fees. If you create invoices today for dates in the past and then create a current invoice to capture the late fees of those past invoices, the fees will not populate.
While we do intend to release an enhancement to improve these workflows, for now you can do one of the following:
Remove the late fee from the customer account and add the late fee back - this triggers a recalculation of late fees
Come back to it the next day and generate or regenerate the new invoice with the late fees - the late fees get automatically recalculated based on the latest data every night
Late Fees can only be calculated as a fixed dollar amount. Percentage based charges will be added as an additional option soon.
Additional Note:
Bulk billing and individual customer billing, late fees are not enabled on previous period invoice generation.
If you are trying to invoice a customer for a past bill period and the period is not displayed, please uncheck the Include late fees
Avoiding Unintended Late Fees When Using Account Credits
Our system applies late fees based on the status of an invoice rather than the amount owed. This means that even if a customer has enough account credit to cover their invoice, a late fee may still be applied if that credit is not used to pay the invoice before the due date or grace period.
To prevent this from happening, we recommend applying any available account credit after sending the invoice to the customer. This ensures the system correctly recognizes the invoice as paid and prevents unnecessary late fees.
By following this approach, you can avoid confusion and ensure your customers are not charged late fees when their invoice is actually covered by account credit.
My customer paid after the grace period but before I invoiced the next cycle, would they still be subject to a late fee?
YES! The intended design is to help recover late fees after your designated grace period. If the invoice is due on the 1st and you allow a 5 day grace period, the late fee would not calculate until the 6th day. When you create your next cycle invoice, select include late fees and you the fee will automatically apply. Additionally after the grace period you will have the option to manually invoice your customer for the late fee.
Monthly late fee with __ Day Grace Period example -
If you create a monthly late fee with a 10 day grace period, how that applies to your customer like this:
Customer John Smith was sent his March invoice in February. It was due March 1 with a 10 day grace period (considered late on March 11)
You create your April invoices and select Apply Late Fees
John's invoice for April is created with an attached late fee and reference to the March invoice.
The month comes and goes and now we're creating May's invoices. John still never paid March (and likely now hasn't paid April). Since you created a monthly late fee, instead of just charging a late fee on the March invoice once, now when you create May, it's going to charge John for March being 2 months late (double the fee) plus one month late for April (if it's past April 11). This will repeat until the invoices are paid or they are suspended and no longer sent an invoice.
The grace periods are wonderful because if we take that same scenario of John not having the March invoice paid by the 11th, but lets say he pays it March 16th and you create your April invoices a few days after that, the customer is still charged a late fee because they did not pay on time. You can choose to remove it because the customer has paid, but if you have a due date with a grace period, this is the best way to get customers who notoriously pay past the grace period to start paying on time.
Late fees are assessed based on the settings of each fee.
Pricing period = How often do you want the fee to recur until paid?
Grace Period = How much wiggle room are you offering past the due date before the customer is charged a late fee?
Example:
LATE FEE SET UP - Monthly pricing period, $5 per month with a 5 day grace period.
ASSESSED LATE FEE ON CUSTOMER'S INVOICE:
Invoice due 12/16/2022
5 day Grace Period makes the invoice subject to a late fee as of 12/22/2022 (12/16 + 5 = 12/21. Late fee will be assessed the following day).
May 2025, customer has yet to pay for their invoice. They have accrued a late fee of $145. 29 months x $5 per month.
Linking accounts to late fees after invoices have been created. Can I regenerate to update the invoice? Unfortunately, no, not at this time. We recommend deleting the group or individual invoice and recreating it once the accounts have been linked to late fees. Regenerating the existing invoice will not pull the newly linked late fee onto the invoice.