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.
Recording a late-dated payment assesses the fee immediately. If you pick a Payment Date that falls past the installment's grace deadline, the Record Payment dialog shows an inline note under the date field: the required minimum, which installment the date is late for and when its grace ended, and the new minimum including the late fee. Recording the payment posts that charge in the same transaction, so it appears under Fees & Suspense right away instead of waiting on the nightly job. That matters because the payment you are recording also marks the installment paid, and the nightly job skips settled installments. Without this the fee wasn't merely delayed, it was never charged at all. The amount is computed by the same rules the nightly job uses (grace, tolerances, per-diem and tiered models, forbearance and deferral suppression), and an installment that already carries a charge is never charged twice.
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 interacts with a charge
A regular payment is applied to the installment through the waterfall configured for the loan. A late charge is not part of that: it's billed on top of the amount due, so recording a payment never silently pays one off. Instead the Record Payment modal asks you to apply, waive or defer the outstanding charges and won't save until you answer, so Waive and Defer are available both here on the card and at the moment you take the money. The borrower's servicing fee is likewise billed on top, not taken out of the payment. 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.