Introduction

To improve cash flow and ensure smooth financial operations, timely fee payments are essential. To enforce this, implementing a late fee policy becomes important. Collexo provides you with a flexible and powerful system to configure and collect late fees once the due date has passed. You can set it up to apply late fees on a daily, weekly, monthly, or even a custom schedule (e.g., every 2 days or every 3 months). The configuration is fully customizable to suit your institution’s specific needs.

Steps to Configure Late Fees are:

1. Add/Activate a Late Fee Head: Start by creating/activating a Late Fee Head from the Institute portal. It is designed to collect late fees based on predefined logic. Some predefined fee heads are already available by default, such as Late Fee (Daily), Late Fee (Monthly), and Late Fee (One-Time), each determining how and when late charges are applied. To learn more, refer to this article.
2. Configure Fee Studio: Activate due date and activate late fee (surcharge). When setting up fees in Fee Studio, follow these steps:
   
   
   
   
   
   
   • Activate Due Date: Toggle the “Enable Due Date / Late Fee" option. Once enabled, a new field name “Due Date” will appear on the Fee Connect page. You can choose how the due date should be set based on your requirements:
     • Calendar: Select the “Calendar” option from the dropdown and choose the specific date if you want to define the same due date across all applicants for the fee.
     • Custom: Select the “Custom” option from the dropdown if you want different due dates for each applicant. After selecting this option, you'll be able to choose a Date Field from the dropdown. To learn more about creating and using Date Fields, refer to this article. Note: Late fee won’t be applied for the applicants for whom the selected date field has no data.
     • Due Date for Recurring Payment: If you are using Collexo’s Recurring Payment feature, you can configure the due date for each installment while configuring the payment plan for the applicant. To learn more about it, refer to this article.
        
   • Activate Late Fee: Enable the Toggle to collect late fees after the due date has passed. After enabling it:
     • Select the Late Fee Head from the dropdown.

     • Enter the late fee amount you want to collect for each period.

       Example: If the selected Late Fee Head is configured to apply fees daily and you set the late fee amount as ₹20, then an applicant who pays 3 days after the due date will incur a total late fee of ₹20 × 3 = ₹60.
        

   • Activate Late Fee Surcharge: Toggle the "Late Fee Surcharge" option if you want to collect a surcharge on the late fee amount.
   • Example: If a surcharge of 18% is enabled, then along with the ₹600 late fee, a surcharge of ₹108 will also be added to the total payable amount.

Applicant’s View

On the checkout page, the Late Fee along with the Late Fee Surcharge is displayed under the Order Summary section.

As you can see in the screenshot, the applicant is paying the Tuition Fee, where the base amount is ₹11,000 and a late fee of ₹1,000 has been accumulated. A surcharge of 18% GST is also configured, which is applied on the combined amount of ₹12,000 (₹11,000 + ₹1,000). This results in an additional ₹2,160 as GST, making the total payable amount ₹14,160. The GST is calculated on both the base amount and the late fee.
If partial payment is enabled for a particular fee, and the applicant enters an amount and clicks on the Update button, the next action depends on the selected payment mode:
 

• Pay Now: The system will automatically add the late fee amount to the entered amount, so the total payable amount includes late fees.
• Cash/DD/Bank Transfer:  The entered amount remains unchanged. The system will adjust the fee breakup- distributing the payment towards accumulated late fees first, and then applying the remaining balance to the other fee heads.
  
  
  

Tracking Late Fees and Surcharges

Once you've configured late fees and surcharges, you may want to track how much has been assigned or collected.

• Track Payments: Hovering over the paid amount will display a detailed breakup, including the portion covering late fees and surcharges.
• Applicant Profile:  Helps you to view a |fee-wie breakdown at the individual applicant level. Here, you can see how much late fee has been accumulated for each fee and how much of it has already been paid by the applicant.
• Payment Ledger: Helps you to view the total late fees accumulated across all applicants, as well as for each applicant. It provides an overview of the total late fee and surcharge amounts that have been collected as summary cards and the amount that has been accumulated for each applicant in the listing.
• Payment Dashboard: This page provides the following dashlets to help you track late fees:
  
  • Fee Head Summary: Helps you to view the late fee amount collected under each late fee head separately.
  • Fee Ledger Summary: Helps you to view the total late fee paid across all fees and for individual fees. Here, you can see the total late fee paid at a glance and also view the late fee paid for each fee in the detailed list. 

Conclusion

So, if you want to encourage timely payments and track late fees with complete clarity, Collexo gives you all the tools to do it effortlessly. With its flexible setup, you can configure the late fees exactly as per your institution’s policies.