Seven-day Processing: Late Charges Can Now be Applied on Sundays

It was almost one year ago when I wrote the blog post about our system processing afterhours seven days a week…except when it comes to late charges. Remember that blog post? You can read it here if you need a refresher:

7-day processing: What about payments due on Sundays?

Well, we’re about to blow the roof off this place, because guess what? We have adjusted our system to now assess late charges on Sundays!

What does that mean? It means any account where the Due Date plus Grace Days lands on Sunday, the late charge will be assessed in the afterhours of Sunday instead of waiting until the afterhours of Monday.

This makes sense in our 24/7 world. Payments can be accepted any time, day or night, using web or phone payments. Therefore, late charges should be applied any day of the week as well.

Previously, our system was operating on the banking model, which doesn’t assess late charges on days where your physical business isn’t open or the U.S. mail doesn’t deliver. So we had two options as to how our system would handle late charges that would be assessed on Sundays:

1. Assess the late charge in the afterhours on Saturday before the Sunday date.
2. Assess the late charge in the afterhours on Monday after the Sunday date.

With this new option of allowing late charge assessments on Sundays, our system will process late charges every day of the week. This is an option, and should your institution want to allow this, you’ll need to contact your GOLDPoint Systems account manager to set up that option. A one-time setup fee is required.

How will this help your institution?

The biggest bonus of assessing late charges every day of the week is better accountability. Sometimes while looking through Loan History, tellers or customer support would wonder, “Why did this late charge assess on Monday instead of on Sunday?” They’d add up the Due Date plus Grace Days and might assume they were counting wrong. Perhaps they didn’t know your institution didn’t assess late charges on Sundays. So for eliminating confusion, this will be much easier on front-end tellers.

Another benefit is you may have lost out on some late charge revenue over the years because borrowers made payments on Monday after the Sunday date where the late charge would have been assessed. But because the late charge doesn’t assess until Monday afterhours, they were technically on time with their payment. Therefore, they were not assessed a late charge. That small extra grace day will be eliminated.

Contact Us Today to Set Up This Option

This option will be available with this month’s release (January 17, 2021). Your GOLDPoint Systems account manager will need to set up the option LTED (Assess Late Charges Every Day) on your beta and production machines. You may want to test it first before having them turn it on production. A very useful report to monitor while testing this option is theLate Charge Activity Report (FPSRP079). If you currently do not use this report, your GPS account manager can help you set this up.

This will also affectPast Due Notices and Report (FPSRP018)andDelinquency Notices for Mortgages (FPSRP317). Past due notices you send to borrowers can now be printed for account owners every day of the week. If you do not have staff that work on Sunday to print the notices for that day, they can be printed Monday through GOLDView Plus within CIM GOLD.

If any of your loan agreements or notices to customers state that you do not assess late charges on Sundays, you will obviously need to update those.