How will changing the date of a recurring payment affect an owner's payment for that month?

Question: "If a homewner wants to change their Recurring Payment date from the Portal, how will that affect their payment for that month?"

Answer:

Homeowners have the freedom to change their payment dates and amounts from the Portal, but changing that payment date before the payment has been processed could affect how your database takes that payment and posts it.

The rules on Association > Assessments determine when a homeowner needs to be charged for an assessment and when a homeowner needs to be charged for a late fee if the assessment is not paid on time.

This process happens after midnight for each database, approximately between 12 am and 3 am, and posts onto the owner's account for that day. For example, if a late fee rule is set to look for accounts that are past due on the 10th of each month, then between midnight and 3 am on the 10th, the system will look for assessment payments, and between midnight and 3 am on the 11th, the system will place that late fee on an owner's account.

Suppose a homeowner wishes to change their payment date from the 15th to the 10th. They make this change on the 10th after the point in time when the database has already searched for accounts set up to process payments on that day. The system will not retroactively look backward to process a homeowner's payment so now, on the 11th, the system will look at that account, see that a payment has not yet been posted, and charge them a late fee.

If a homeowner wants to change their ACH information and they do this in the period between when the ACH file is generated in your Association (In the screenshot below, 3 days before the 5th). In that case, the changes will not be applied to this month's ACH. Note: You can always make changes within that period manually. 

On the flip side, if the homeowner wishes to change their payment date from the 5th to the 10th, and they decide to make this change on the 9th, the system will process a second payment, in addition to the payment processed on the 5th.

If a homeowner claims they were charged twice, or not charged at all, despite a payment being set up, you can first look at their Activity Notes to determine when changes were made to payments via Homeowner > Activity Notes. That screen will show you exactly when they made changes on the Portal, and help you to solve the issue for them to avoid any payment issues in the future.