Setting up late fees and grace periods

Late fees are an unpleasant but sometimes necessary part of running a school. Rosterra has them built in, so you do not have to track who needs charging manually.

When to use late fees

The honest answer: when families are taking advantage of your goodwill. A small late fee changes behavior for the families who would otherwise drag out payment for weeks, without punishing the families who simply forgot.

A larger reason to add one: it covers your real costs. Failed payment retry fees, time spent following up, and the cost of carrying unpaid receivables all add up.

Setting up

Go to /settings/billing/late-fees.

• Grace period. Number of days after a failed charge before the late fee kicks in. Most schools use 7 days.
• Late fee amount. A flat dollar amount (most common; 10 to 25 dollars), or a percentage of the unpaid balance.
• Recurring late fees. Whether the fee is charged once per overdue period or every week the balance stays unpaid.
• Communicate when. Send an email to the family on the day the fee is applied, explaining what happened.

What families see

• When tuition fails, the family gets a "payment declined" email immediately.
• During the grace period, no late fee. The system silently retries the card.
• If the balance is still unpaid at the end of the grace period, the late fee is added to the balance and the family is notified.

Waiving a fee

A family had a real emergency. You want to waive the late fee. From the family's billing page:

1. Click the late fee line item.
2. Click Waive.
3. (Optional) Add a note about why.

The waiver is logged. The family sees the line item removed from their next invoice.

Stopping late fees for a family

Some families just need different rules. Maybe they pay in cash on the 15th every month and that works for everyone.

Open the family profile, scroll to Billing rules, and toggle Apply late fees off. Their account is exempt from automatic late fees forever, until you turn it back on.

What about service interruption?

If a family is too far behind, eventually you stop letting them attend until they pay. Rosterra does not auto-pause membership for late tuition (one too many things has gone wrong with billing for that to be safe).

Instead, the At-risk families report at /reports/at-risk-members flags accounts that are 30+ days past due. From there you can pause, cancel, or have a conversation.

State laws

Some U.S. states cap late fees. If you operate in California, New York, or anywhere with strict consumer-protection rules, check the local cap before setting yours. Most states allow at least 5 percent of the overdue balance.