Statement vs. Invoice Late Fees
SedonaOffice was originally designed with just one way to calculate late fees, and this was part of the statement process. The late fee applied to the customer as a whole, or to a specific customer bill to address as a whole, depending on your selection when you ran statements. These late fees could be made to appear on invoices, but only if you selected to print a statement section on the invoice. Not all invoice forms are capable of including a statement section.
At a later time, a specific customer paid us to add an invoice late fee feature. This feature allowed you to calculate late fees for each customer invoice individually. Again, not all invoice forms show these invoice late fees, but for the forms that do, the late fee will print without also having to print the statement detail because the late fee only applies to that specific invoice you are printing.
It is important to note that statement late fees and invoice late fees are different values and they are not related to each other. These are two separate features, and it is expected that the user has decided on one of them to use. The system will allow users to use both statement and invoice late fees, but doing so may cause confusion for the user, as well as for their customer.
The following is an example of a user who used both and contacted support for help understanding the results -
The user ran statements on the first of the month, and at that time the customer did not qualify for a late fee. The statement late fee was 0.00. Then on the 15th the user printed an invoice for the customer, and selected to calculate an invoice late fee on that invoice. At that point 15 days had past and the invoice did qualify for the minimum late fee charge. This late fee printed on the invoice. The user then re-printed a statement for the same customer, and did not select to re-calculate late fees on the statement. The last time a statement late fee had been calculated (on the 1st) the customer did not qualify for a late fee, and because the statement late fee was not re-calculated, it still printed as 0.00. The user then had a customer whose invoice showed an invoice late fee, but whose statement showed no late fee. They contacted support, and we explained that these two late fees are separate values. They were advised that if they wanted a late fee to show on the statement they would need to run the statement again and select to re-calculate the late fee. However, we warned that it may be confusing to their customer, since the statement late fee, and the invoice late fee would likely be for different amounts, since one calculates based on the account as a whole, and the other calculates based on just one invoice.