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Just Released – Late Fee Advancements!

February 15, 2016 By Kristin O'Neill 15 Comments

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Need a quick way to track overdue fees from past due invoices? With the new Automated Interest feature in Bill4Time, it’s never been easier. You have the ability to turn on or off whether you would like interest to be calculated automatically or if you would like to continue manually applying fees to invoices.

Under Invoice Setup you can check the box next to Auto-Calculate Fees along with entering your Fee Type and Grace Period. Once that is saved, the system will automatically track your interest based on your settings. These settings can also be changed per Client and Project.

Late-Fees1

From the invoice, you can check to see the amount applied. You can also edit the late fee to make any changes or adjustments if you need to override the default settings. Each day an invoice is overdue it will accrue interest.

Late Fees2

Adding a late fee to your invoices gives your clients an incentive to pay their invoices on time. The automated late fee will also give you assurance that valuable time and money is not being lost.

Written by Kristin O’Neill

Kristin O'Neill

Kristin is the Director of Customer Success of Bill4Time products. She manages a team of product specialists that help clients achieve success through streamlined processes for time tracking, invoicing and payments.

Filed Under: Blog, What's New Tagged With: interest, just released, late fee, system update

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Precilia says

    February 25, 2016 at 2:17 pm

    In order to create an invoice activity needs to happen on a matter. Will this feature automatically create an invoice if no activity happened? so for example the client hasn’t paid their bill but nothing was done in the matter. When I go to create an invoice at the end of the month, will there be an invoice charging the finance charge?

    Reply
    • Staci Genet says

      March 1, 2016 at 8:14 am

      I was really hoping that an invoice would be prompted for anything with an aged balance, work or no work. So while interest accrues, we will not know, unless we do an AR report and there is no way to generate a professional looking statement to send. So we are still forced to create a time entry every month, just to show accruing interest. :/

      Reply
  2. Kristin O'Neill says

    February 25, 2016 at 2:32 pm

    Hello Precilla,

    The system does not permit the creation of an invoice when there is not any new work activity to bill. Statements are used when you have to send a document saying that a previous invoice was not paid in full. The Statement will contain a separate line item for late fees accrued on outstanding invoices This way, you make reference to a past invoice without resending the invoice. Please feel free to contact Support with any additional questions, thanks!

    Reply
    • judy r says

      August 31, 2017 at 4:28 am

      the statement is not something that can be sent to a client. I would suggest being able to create an invoice with a previous balance if there is one. it is so frustrating trying to collect the a/r without having something to send the client on a regular basis.

      Reply
  3. Tyler says

    February 25, 2016 at 5:39 pm

    Is it safe to assume that this is setup for simple interest only? Or is simple vs. compounding controlled in the settings?

    Reply
    • Kristin O'Neill says

      March 15, 2016 at 5:15 am

      Yes, that is correct, the interest is simple only.

      Reply
  4. Caleb Riley says

    February 26, 2016 at 7:14 am

    When a check mark is put in the Interest Rate box, how is that calculated?

    Reply
    • Kristin O'Neill says

      March 15, 2016 at 5:19 am

      You have the ability to charge interest based on a percentage or flat fee. Once an invoice goes past the Grace Period you setup, it charges interest based off this fee. If it’s setup to auto calculate the late fees then it will charge the past due invoices till they are paid.

      Reply
  5. Tyler says

    March 17, 2016 at 10:16 am

    It does not appear that the interest expense created by this feature transfers to Quickbooks with the B4T Connector. Can you verify this? If this is true, what is your recommendation for dealing with the interest expense in my QB accounting? If a payment is received in B4T for the principal and interest balance, there will be a credit created in the client’s QB account because the additional interest expense isn’t there to balance it out. I suppose that I can just create an invoice in QB to apply the credit, but that isn’t exactly the most efficient process. Any suggestions?

    Reply
  6. Lisa says

    June 15, 2016 at 6:25 am

    Is there anyway to change the wording “Late Fee” to “Interest” on the billing?

    Reply
    • Kristin O'Neill says

      June 23, 2016 at 7:18 am

      Hello Lisa, at the moment, there is not a way to change this term however I can certainly pass that suggestion over. Any future suggestions can be submitted here for others to vote on: https://support.bill4time.com/hc/en-us/community/topics/200188090-Ideas-Feature-Requests

      Reply
  7. Jennifer says

    July 19, 2016 at 7:27 pm

    Will this now allow for interest to be calculated only on an unpaid balance? For example, if a balance is partially paid will it still continue to accrue interest on the entire balance or will it accrue on only the outstanding balance? Has this been fixed yet?

    Reply
  8. David says

    December 31, 2016 at 3:41 pm

    I mirror Tyler’s comment. The “late fee” feature really messes up QuickBooks when using the B4T connector because the connector does not pass those additional late fee charges on to QuickBooks. It requires manual adjustment in QuickBooks which makes the Late fee feature unusable. I have started to manually enter a late fee on the latest invoice. It’s the only way to avoid this QuickBooks problem.

    Reply
  9. Jennifer says

    March 23, 2017 at 2:26 pm

    Will this allow for interest to be calculated only on an unpaid balance? For example, if a balance is partially paid will it still continue to accrue interest on the entire balance or will it accrue on only the outstanding balance? Has this been fixed yet?

    Reply
    • Patrick Vernallis says

      March 27, 2017 at 12:13 pm

      Hello Jennifer,

      The Late Fee’s accrue on only the unpaid balance of the invoice. So once a payment is applied to the invoice, the remaining outstanding balance is the figure used when calculating the amount of interest accrued going forward. If you have any further questions, please contact Support and we’ll be happy to assist you. Have a nice day!

      Reply

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