Late Fee's

[VALLEYWIDEPA]

does anyone here charge late fee's and if so what do u charge and how many days do u wait before u charge

i would like to set up mine as "a late fee of 5% or $10 whichever is greatest will be assessed if payment is not made by the 15th and recieved no later than the 20th"

[Lawn Lad]

Valley -

There are law related to collection of late fees, check your state/federal guide lines. For instance, credit card companies can't charge more than a certain percentage per year.

Is your 5% number on the oustanding balance? So if company xx owed you $1,000, would you charge them $50.00 for that invoice? Or would you charge them $4.16 (5.0%/12 = .004166 x $1,000)?

You could also simply apply a late fee of $xx regardless of amount. If you give a percentage that you will charge in essence you are saying you are a credit company and that you are willing ot accept late payments at the price of xx%. Is this the business you're in?

In answer to your orginal question - we charge a late fee when we want to levy it against someone who is not paying and when we finally have to go to court. We simply stop providing service for those that choose to overlook their bills. Then we worry about collecting. Usually suspended service gets them to wake up.

Terms that I've seen are net 10 or net 15 days. Charge a fee, cancel service, etc. at 30 days. Some businesses may take 30 to 60 days to process payment. Will you charge these folks or will you waive the charges?

[wyldman]

I do have a late fee if required,but rarely use it.If it goes beyond 60 days,or they are trying to avoid payment,it's stop service until we receive payment.I've had checks hand delivered in the middle of a storm,as they realized we weren't plowing due to non-payment.

Some of the larger companies can hold you out for 90 days or more for payment,but they always do pay.Part of the game I guess.You have to decide just how long you can hold out before stopping service.If you cut them off early,they may just dump you for someone else.

[Gypsyking]

We have a late fee charge on all acounts over 30 days
And no i am not a financial institute and that is why we have the late fee charge

But in almost 30 years of business we have never lost a customer due to this

If i have to borrow money from my bank to finance my contracts the cost of borrowing the money is passed on to the client
Most of our customers know and realize this so they always tend to pay on time
:canada

[JD PLOWER]

Lawn lad is correct laws do vary from state to state regarding "extra fees" as our lawyer told us. The fees cannot be considered excessive but excessive is in the judgment of the courts here.

We have found that if it is necessary to tack on extra fees then the account is really not worth having after all. Just today I talked to an account that had a seasonal with us and they said the new policy was 60-90 days for payment on the contract. When I questioned them they said well its now company policy. I mentioned that they signed a contract that stated to be paid on the first of the month they said they did not care and that was their new policy, no exceptions. We informed them they should exercise the buy out clause in the contract since they would not be serviced by us under those terms. They did and we are not sad to see them go. Always the first one's to bitch and moan about the smallest of things and didn't seem to realize that the contract didn't include machine work? So for me the threat of non service works around here no better or worse then late fees.

[snonut12]

In NYS the max you could charge is 18% per year. So that mean you can only charge 1.5% late fee for each month it is past due.

[snowjoker]

There is no National Average?::confused:

[4evergreenlawns]

Valley Wide,

No late fees and I do not collect any payments until the 1st offical day of spring.

Hope that helps. I think that is the National Average.

[Silverhowie]

Ouch!:shades

[Lawn Lad]

4 Evergreens -

I think we do it the same way, we just ask the customer to pay us what they think is fair when they can get around to it.