What it produces
Correct late fees, consistent waivers, an aging that matches your notice thresholds, logged outreach, and demand notices with the right amount and expiry date.
Workflows
Delinquency & Late Fees
the handling of past-due rent, from charging late fees under the lease to resident outreach and formal demand notices
The job in one minute
Who owns it
The property manager decides waivers and approves notices. The AR specialist posts the payments the fee run depends on. The collections specialist owns outreach and payment plans. A staff accountant ties the aging to the books.
How often
Daily through the collection window, every month. The Atlas plans 8 to 35 hours a day across these processes. Hours are planning estimates.
Why it hurts
The platform posts a late fee on a schedule. The schedule does not know the lockbox file for the 3rd posted on the 6th, that a resident's autopay failed on the bank's side, or that the next state counts days differently. Every wrong fee becomes a reversal, a dispute and, in some states, statutory liability.
Waivers drift by manager. Demand notices get drafted from last month's file, with last month's amount.
Systems it touches
- Yardi Voyager
- RealPage
- MRI
- AppFolio
- Entrata
- Buildium
- Payment portal
- Lockbox and bank
- SMS
- Outlook
- Excel
- SharePoint
12 steps · 6 actions · 4 decisions · 2 human reviews
The workflow, step by step
Action Decision Human review Select a step in the flowchart to jump to it.
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Decision · Portal
Readiness. Lockbox, portal ACH and NSF reversals are posted; if not, stop.
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Action · Agent
Export open charges and payments by lease.
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Decision · Agent
Fee eligibility per lease: state grace days, lease clause, prior fee, active payment plan.
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Action · Agent
Post the fee as the lesser of the lease amount and the state limit.
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Action · MES
Read waiver requests from resident messages into reason, claimed payment date and method.
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Decision · Bank
Inside the waiver policy (first in 12 months, bank-side failure, already paid)? Apply it.
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Human review · Outside policy
Outside policy, the manager decides with the ledger history beside the request.
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Action · Agent
Build the aging with buckets that match your notice thresholds.
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Action · Agent
Send outreach by text and email within consent and your cadence; log each contact.
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Decision · Agent
Notice eligibility by balance, days late, pending payments and covered-housing flags.
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Action · Agent
Generate the notice from the jurisdiction's template and compute the expiry date with the holiday calendar.
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Human review · The manager
The manager approves each notice before service; the agent records service and schedules follow-up.
✓ Done
Rules vs judgment
The fee, the date and the notice period never go to a model.
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Exact rule
- Grace periods, day counting, holidays
- Fee caps and lesser-of formulas
- Notice periods and expiry dates
- Waiver policy and aging buckets
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The model reads
- "I paid Friday and it bounced"
- Bank return codes and remittance PDFs
- Whether a reply is a promise, dispute or hardship
- Handwritten notes on money orders
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A person decides
- Every waiver outside policy
- Every demand notice before service
- Hardship, payment plan and dispute accounts
- Anything touching an accommodation request
When it stops
What you end up with
Fees you can defend line by line, waivers applied the same way at every property, an aging that ties to the books, and notices with the amount traced to each open charge and the excluded days listed.
Questions
Can the agent sign and serve a pay-or-quit notice?
No. It drafts the notice and computes the dates. The manager signs, and service follows your state's method.
Should we turn off the platform's late fee engine?
Usually not. Keep it for the routine fee and let the agent audit its setup monthly against the rules table. The agent earns its time on waivers, outreach and notices.
Can the agent text residents about balances?
Yes, to residents who consented, from approved templates. Anything that reads as a dispute or hardship goes to a person.
More in Workflows
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- Vendor Invoices & COIProperty Management
- Work Orders & DispatchProperty Management
- Affordable Housing RecertsProperty Management
No prompts. No babysitting. No Integrations.