OVERVIEW
Once you have gone through the Global Late Fee Options guide, you may wonder “What next?” This guide will show you how to produce the late fees you want to charge.
USER GUIDE
There are two distinct ways to produce late fees in OfficeTools WorkSpace, and which is applicable to you is entirely based on your options.
First if you recall, when you setup your late fees there was an option that read “Calculate Late Fees on New Invoices”. If you selected that option you determined that you wanted your late fees for an expired invoice to be displayed on the next invoice that you create. If you want that option your late fee is only going to show when you create a new invoice. There is nothing special that you need to you at that point. When you create a new invoice, you will get your late fee at that time.
A lot of offices do not want it to be based on the next invoice that is created.
The second method of producing late fees does not care whether you have the above option selected or not. You can always run late fees at any time, with or without a new invoice. If you choose this method a “Late Fee Invoice” will be created for the amount of the late fee.
To begin this process, go to the Billing tab and click on the Invoices button. In the toolbar, you will see a Late Fee button click that. It will come up with a dialogue box that introduces you to the Late Fee invoice process.
The next window will allow you to choose which date you would like to apply your late fees as of. If you typically charge late fees on the last day of the month but that day happens to fall on the weekend when you aren’t in you can charge late fees forward on the preceding Friday, or charge them backwards on the following Monday.
Once you have decided the date you would like the late fees to be based off, OfficeTools WorkSpace will run through all the outstanding invoices in the system to identify which ones are late. This process may take a few moments depending on the size of your database, the speed of your hardware, and how many outstanding invoices you have.
The next window will display all the contacts that WorkSpace has determined have accrued a late fee based on your global options. On screen you will also see, any unapplied payments, unapplied credits, and the actual late fee amount. If you would like to see the details of what invoices make up the outstanding balance you can also click on the details button.
As you go through you can use the “Apply” checkbox to exclude certain balances from having the late fee applied. Once you’re ready to run your late fees, only the contacts who have their “apply” box checked will be charged a late fee, however the remaining balances are not removed and will be available next time late fees are ran. If you want to fully write off a balance, see the appropriate guide.
When you hit apply, the corresponding invoices will be created. The invoice that is created will look exactly the same as any normal invoice, and while it does have a “Late Fee” designation attached behind the scenes, it will functionally be exactly the same as any other invoice in WorkSpace.