Every loan has an always-visible Late Charges card on its Overview tab, listing what's currently owed in late fees and giving you two ways to manage them.
How fees are assessed
Late charges are assessed by a nightly job, once per unpaid installment, when the installment's grace period has expired within the last ~45 days. Two consequences worth knowing:
- Backdated history is never retro-charged. If you import or record a loan with months of old unpaid rows, the nightly job doesn't pile fees onto installments whose grace expired more than ~45 days ago — only recent lapses draw a fee.
- P&I-satisfied rows never draw a fee. An installment paid with the P&I application type (principal + interest covered, escrow still owed) is not late-fee eligible.
If a recalculation (like a payment edit or waterfall reorder) shows a fee should never have been charged, NoteHarbor auto-waives it as a system correction — you'll see it in the fee list with that annotation rather than it silently vanishing.
Waive vs. Defer
- Waive — forgives the charge. It leaves the amount due and the payoff for good. Only an Owner or Admin can waive. See Waiving a late fee.
- Defer — holds the charge out of the current amount due but still collects it at payoff. It doesn't forgive anything, and it's reversible.
Defer a charge
- Open the loan (Overview tab) and find the charge in the Late Charges card.
- Click Defer, type a reason (5+ characters), and click Confirm.
The charge moves to a Deferred list on the same card and drops out of "Currently Due." To bring it back, click Restore — one click, no reason needed.
How a payment is applied
A regular payment flows through the waterfall in the order configured for the loan. New loans default to escrow → interest → principal → late fees; legacy loans are serviced fees-first. The borrower's servicing fee is billed on top of the payment, not taken out of it. See Recording a payment.
Any team member can defer a charge — it's a servicing decision. Waiving forgives money, so it stays with Owners and Admins. For a full read-out of every charge (outstanding, deferred, waived, or paid) see The Fees & Suspense tab.