If you would like late fees to be automatically calculated you must first enable the feature for your funeral home by adding payment terms and auto-calculation settings and turning on late fee calculation. If you have enabled automatic late fee calculations, late fee amounts will be calculated and added to each contract that has accrued a late fee. You may optionally receive an email detailing each contract and the late fee that was automatically added. This document details the process and what you need to do to enable automatically added late fees.
System Configuration
In order to enable late fee calculation for your funeral home you must set the “Automatic Adding of Applicable Late Fees is Currently:” to Enabled. This tells the nightly program to check your funeral home for any late fees that are due.
You may define email addresses that should receive the summary listing of late fees added. We highly recommend you take advantage of this feature. You will only receive an email if late fees were added to one or more contracts.
Before you can enable late fees you must first setup at least one terms setting.
Terms Details
You may have any number of terms settings but only one is active for a particular contract date.
Effective Date
This is the date the terms go into effect. When you add an at need contract the terms that you have defined as in effect on the contract date are associated with the contract. This allows you to change your terms without affecting prior contracts.
Enable Automatic Late Fees for All New Accounts
When a new AN contract is added this will turn on automatic late fees for this contract. If this option is set to No then you must visit the Account screen and manually turn on late fee auto calculation for each contract. This will be discussed further later in the documentation.
Enable Automatic Late Fees for All New AddOns
This works the same as the At Need Contracts, but it is for AddOns.
Initially Set Balance Due Date to __ Days(s) After ____ Unpaid Balance Due By Date
This will calculate and add the initial balance due date when the contract is added. You may choose either the Contract Date, Service Date or Date of Death as your date basis. This balance due date is editable via the Contract page at any time.
Apply First Late Fees every __ Day(s) After Unpaid Balance Due By Date
This is the number of days after the balance due date when the first late fee should be applied.
Calculate and Apply Late Fees Every __ Day(s)
This is the frequency which you would like the late fees applied.
Interest Rate
This is the interval rate, i.e. 1.5%, NOT the annual rate.
AN Payment Terms Text
At Need Contract Payment Terms Text. (For future use)
PN Payment Terms Text
Preneed Contract Payment Terms Text. (For future use)
Editing Terms and Late Fee Settings
You must be careful when you edit terms and late fee settings since it has the potential to affect existing contracts. You will be shown a warning if you edit terms that have been assigned to one or more contracts.
Deleting Terms and Late Fee Settings
You may only delete terms if they have not previously been assigned to a contract.
Auto-calculate Late Fee Maintenance on the Account Screen
The above screen shot shows that this At Need contract has automatic late fees enabled and that the next date the late fees will be applied will be on 3/9/2016. The terms in effect for this contract defined late fees to be applied every day so you can see there were automatically added late fee records added
on 3/7 and 3/8.
This client also has an Add On where automatic adding of late fees is disabled.
If you wish to disable auto-late fees you can simply change the Enabled drop down to Disabled.
If you wish to enable, or re-enable late fees, just change the setting to Enabled. The next late fee applied date will default to “tomorrow” but you may change it to any date in the future. Subsequent additions of late fee records will occur on the interval you have defined as “calculate and apply late fees every ___ days” in the setup for the applicable terms record.
Any edits, deletions or additions you make to the client’s account may affect late fee amounts so be aware you may need to manually adjust late fee amounts if you make changes which would affect the balance due.
Auto-calculate Late Fee Maintenance on the Contract Screen
There will be an informational message on the screen if automatic late fees are currently enabled for a contract or add on. You will not see any automatic-late fee related message if automatic late fees are disabled for your entire funeral home or for the individual contract or add on.
You will be shown a warning message if you change the balance due date on a contract and automatic late fees are enabled. This is because automatic late fees initially use the balance due and your other terms setup variable to determine when late fees should be applied. You may or may not need to adjust the next late fee applied date if you change your balance due.
Summary Email
A summary email will be sent to each email address currently defined in the Admin setup whenever automatic late fees are added. An email will only be sent if late fees were automatically added.
In this example, contracts an1233 and 15092 have had late fees added. In addition the addon dated 2/26/16 for contract TestLateFees2 has also had a late fee automatically applied.
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