Late Fees

A tenant calls: "Why is there a 125.00 fee on my account?" This article lets you answer that with confidence. When a rent invoice goes overdue, REDA can raise a late-fee invoice against it automatically — and it does so on a policy you set. Here you'll learn which invoices qualify, exactly when a fee arms, how the two kinds of fee (a monthly charge and a per-day charge) are calculated, why a monthly fee only ever appears once, and where the per-day cap comes from. No prior REDA experience is assumed; every term is defined as we reach it.

How a late fee is born

A late fee is itself an invoice — a child of the overdue one. The chain runs like this: an invoice passes its due date and remains unpaid; it clears a set of qualification conditions; a scheduled run picks it up; and REDA raises a new late-fee invoice linked back to the overdue invoice through its Parent Invoice field (which is what puts it on the parent's Related Invoices list). The fee invoice sits on the same lease and points at the same source charge as its parent.

The policy fields

You set the late-fee policy on the Leasing Rule, and REDA stamps it onto each lease when the lease turns active. These are the fields that shape a fee:

Which invoices qualify

An invoice only accrues a late fee when all of these hold. When a tenant is overdue and no fee has appeared, this is the list to walk:

The trigger date is worth stating plainly: a tenant has Late Fee Charge Days days from an invoice's billing date before a fee can arm. Set it to 5, and a fee can't appear until the sixth day. This value must fall between 1 and 28 — set it outside that band and the Leasing Rule won't save ("Late Fee Charge Day - must be a number between 1 to 28.").

Monthly fee math

A monthly fee is a flat component plus a percentage of the principal above a base — but only if the principal clears the minimum due. In words: take the flat Late Fee on Base, then add the Late Fee % applied to whatever the principal exceeds the Late Fee Base by (never less than zero).

Plus interest, if your policy sets a rate. When the lease carries a Late Fee Interest % (Monthly), REDA adds simple interest for the days the invoice has been overdue: principal × (rate ÷ 100 ÷ 30) × days overdue, counted from the invoice's Due Date to the day the run raises the fee. It uses the same principal the percentage fee uses (the invoice amount on Rent, the balance on Debt). The interest is simple — it never compounds, and no monetary index is applied. Leave the rate blank or zero and no interest is added. This applies in Monthly mode only: Per Day and Monthly and Per Day already charge for elapsed time, so adding interest there would bill the same days twice.

A monthly fee is charged once per invoice, ever. Once REDA has raised it, the parent invoice is marked as having had its monthly fee, and it won't get another — no matter how long it stays unpaid. Ongoing pressure on a stubborn balance is what per-day mode is for.

Per-day fee math

A per-day fee accrues a fixed amount for each uncharged day the invoice stays overdue. Each run charges from the day after the last charged-through date (the first time, from the trigger date) up to the processing date, at the Late Fee Per Day rate, then advances the parent's charged-through marker to the end of that window.

Per-day accrual doesn't run forever. It stops at the trigger date plus Late Fee Days — the cap recorded on the parent invoice as its per-day charge-till date.

One fee, once — how REDA keeps count

Two markers on the parent invoice stop a fee from double-charging:

The runs must be scheduled

Late fees come from two separate scheduled runs — one for monthly fees, one for per-day fees — and, like the recurring-billing runs, neither ships scheduled. An administrator must schedule them in the REDA Admin Console before any late fee will ever appear. A common cadence is the per-day run nightly and the monthly run on the first of each month.

The invoice produced

The late fee is a child Opp Invoice: its Parent Invoice points at the overdue invoice (which lists it under Related Invoices), its billing date is the day it's raised, and its due date follows the late-fee charge code's grace days. It carries the same lease and source charge as its parent, and its routing honors a pass-through code the same way any other invoice does.

Worked example: Aisha's overdue rent

Aisha Rahman's February rent invoice on Meridian Court #101 goes unpaid, with a balance of 2,500.00. Her lease's policy is Monthly and Per Day, On = Rent, with Minimum Due 100, Base 1,000, Fee-on-Base 50, Percent 5, and a per-day rate of 15.

On the trigger date, the monthly run raises a single monthly fee of 125.00. From then on, the per-day run accrues 15.00 a day — reaching 75.00 by day five — up to the Late Fee Days cap. Both fees appear as child invoices under the February rent invoice's Related Invoices list: one monthly, one per-day that grows run by run.

The late-fee policy block on a leasing rule, filled with the worked example: a 1,000 base, 50 on-base, 5%, 15 per day, and a 100 minimum due — plus the charge day and late-fee charge code that drive it.

An overdue rent invoice — its due date has passed and its balance is still outstanding, which is what makes it eligible for a late fee.

The late-fee invoice itself: a separate invoice on the late-fee charge code, tied back to the overdue invoice that triggered it, so the fee and the debt stay linked.

Looking down from the overdue invoice: its related invoices list shows the flat monthly fee sitting alongside the separately accumulating per-day fee, each on its own line.

Fee math at a glance

Where to go next

1. Invoices Explained — the Parent Invoice link and the balance chain a fee works from.
2. Charge Codes — the Charge Late Fee switch and the grace days on fee invoices.
3. How Recurring Invoicing Works — the invoices that go overdue in the first place.
4. Month-to-Month Fees — the separate holdover-fee engine.

Frequently asked questions