Why an Automatic Late Fee Did Not Post on a BHPH Loan

Automatic late fees on a buy-here-pay-here loan are driven by the Late Fee Settings panel on the individual loan — Automatically apply Late Fees, Grace period days, Late Fee %, Late Fee Amount and Whichever is — not by the dealership defaults in BHPH and Deal Settings. This article explains what has to be true before a fee posts, what the Whichever is selector does, where grace days come from, and how all of this reaches CarPay.

Questions this answers

• "I turned on automatic late fees for this loan weeks ago and the customer is way past due, but no late fee has ever been added. What am I missing?"
• "For our late fee setup, if I set the comparison to 'Greater' versus 'Less', how does that actually change the fee the customer gets charged?"
• "I never set a grace period on one particular loan, but late fees still seem to wait a few days before applying. Where is that grace period coming from if I didn't set one?"
• "If I change our in-house late fee grace days or fee percentage, does that also update what gets sent over to CarPay, or do I have to set it up twice?"

This article is only about automatic late fees on buy-here-pay-here loans. It does not cover bad check fees, which are posted when you mark a payment bounced. For where late fees show up in the amount due versus the payoff, see the payoff article.

The two places late fee settings live

Dealership defaults: in Setup, open BHPH and Deal Settings. The Late Fee Settings section holds a grid with a column for Weekly, Bi-Weekly, Semi-Monthly and Monthly, and rows for Late Fee %, Late Fee Amount, Whichever is and Grace period days, plus the Automatically apply Late Fees and Adjust late fee based on partial payment checkboxes.

Per-loan settings: on the account, choose More > BHPH Settings. The same Late Fee Settings panel appears there with a single set of values.

These are not linked. When the deal is first locked, the loan copies the dealership defaults for its own payment frequency into its own Late Fee Settings — the monthly column for a monthly loan, the weekly column for a weekly loan, and so on. From then on the loan uses its own values. Changing the dealership defaults later does not change existing loans; edit the loan's own BHPH Settings for that.

That also answers where a grace period came from on a loan you never touched: it was copied in from the dealership default for that loan's payment frequency when the deal was locked. Whatever number sits in Grace period days on the loan is the one that counts.

Why no late fee ever posted

The nightly process only adds a fee when all of these are true:

1. Automatically apply Late Fees is ticked on the loan's own Late Fee Settings. The dealership-level checkbox does not drive an existing loan.
2. The lot is set up for buy here pay here in your DeskManager Online plan. The nightly late fee run skips any lot without it, no matter how the loan is configured. Contact support if you are unsure whether a lot has it.
3. The loan is a retail buy-here-pay-here loan and the account is still open. Closed accounts are skipped.
4. The due date has passed by more than the Grace period days on the loan. If grace days are generous relative to the payment frequency, a chronically-a-few-days-late customer may never cross the line.
5. The customer has not already paid enough to cover the schedule to date. Payments are measured against what the amortization schedule required by now, excluding money that went to side notes; a customer caught up in dollars gets no new fee.
6. No automatic fee has already been applied for the same payment period. Only one automatic late fee is added per period — fees are not stacked on the same missed payment.
7. A fee amount greater than zero actually calculates. If both Late Fee % and Late Fee Amount are zero, or Whichever is is left blank, nothing posts.

One more thing to check: the BHPH Settings option only appears under More for users whose role has been granted the buy-here-pay-here settings permission. If you cannot see it, you cannot confirm or change the loan's late fee configuration.

What "Whichever is" Less or Greater does

The system always works out two numbers and then picks one:

• the percentage figure — Late Fee % applied to the scheduled payment amount, and
• the flat figure — the Late Fee Amount you typed.

Whichever is Less charges the smaller of the two, so the flat amount acts as a ceiling. Whichever is Greater charges the larger of the two, so the flat amount acts as a floor.

Worked example — a monthly loan with a $400 scheduled payment, Late Fee % of 5, and Late Fee Amount of $25:

The result is rounded up before it posts. If Adjust late fee based on partial payment is ticked, the percentage is applied to the amount still short rather than the full scheduled payment, so a customer who paid most of the payment gets a proportionally smaller fee.

Late fee amounts and grace periods are subject to your state's rules. DeskManager Online applies the numbers you enter; deciding what is permissible is up to you.

Does CarPay need to be set up separately?

No. The CarPay upload copies the loan's own late fee configuration rather than keeping a second, CarPay-only set:

• Grace period days becomes the days-before-late value sent to CarPay, and Late Fee % is sent as the percentage.
• With Whichever is Greater, the Late Fee Amount is sent as a minimum; with Whichever is Less, as a maximum.
• The fee is flagged as charged once per payment, matching how DeskManager Online applies it.
• If Automatically apply Late Fees is off on the loan, zeroes are sent and CarPay does not charge a late fee.

Because the values come from the loan and not the dealership defaults, editing BHPH and Deal Settings will not change what CarPay has for an existing customer — change the loan's own BHPH Settings. The change reaches CarPay on the next scheduled upload, which sends accounts changed since the previous one, so allow a day.

When to contact support

Contact support if the loan's Late Fee Settings look correct, the account is well past the grace period, the customer is genuinely short on the schedule, and still no fee has been added.