Help CenterUnderstanding Payment Processing Fees
As a manager/admin of an HOA, you can process owner payments for the owners in your HOA through the EasyHOA software.
An example of an owner payment could be:
1- Monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, or annual dues
2- An assessment
3- A late fee
4- A violation fee
There are 3 different ways a payment can be made in the EasyHOA software:
1- The owner is setup on Autopay(either you as a manager/admin can set the owner up or the owner in the HOA can enable it when they login to their online portal)
2- The owner can log in to their online portal and make a manual one-time payment
3- You as the HOA manager/admin can manually process a one-time payment on the owners account if you have the owner's payment information i.e credit card information or banking and routing data.
Hint: If you are processing these manual payments, it is recommended to store the payment data on the owners unit so that future payments can be processed in the EasyHOA software automatically
There are 3 main payment types that are accepted in the EasyHOA software:
1- Credit Card(all major types)
2- Debit Card(processed as credit card payments when/if they have the visa/mc logo)
3- Electronic check (e-check) aka ACH payments (routing and bank account number)
To help you as a manager/admin of the HOA visualize the flow of funds when a payment is made see example below.
Payment Example:
Monthly due payment of $100 paid via credit card by an owner logging in and paying online.
When the EasyHOA software processes the $100 payment, EasyHOA charges your HOA a percentage of the transaction + flat transaction fee.
Let's say for example the percentage on the transaction is 3.29% and the transaction flat fee is $.50. On the example above, the total expense to process that payment is $3.79($3.29+$.50). EasyHOA will then take $96.21($100.00-$3.79) and through its payment partner deposit $96.21 into the HOA's bank account. This may take a few days to clear and show up in the HOA bank account.
*Holidays and weekends affect the timeframe of when funds are available in your HOA bank account
Note: The HOA's bank account is initially setup and integrated with the payment processing when you work with EasyHOA to initially get setup with it's payment partner to be approved to process payments. This is a necessary step in order for you as a manager/admin to process credit card and echeck payments.
How does the payment transaction show up in EasyHOA's built-in accounting feature or in Quickbooks?
After the payment has cleared and is now showing in the HOA bank account, if you have enabled the EasyHOA accounting feature and you have integrated your bank account transactions to feed into the EasyHOA software, the $96.21 (from example above) will show up as a transaction in the EasyHOA accounting module that can now be reconciled and assigned to a category in the chart of accounts. Transactional information relating to specific credit card or echeck payments can be also referenced by visiting the Reports section in the EasyHOA software, specifically the report called 'Bank Account Deposits'.
If your HOA bank account is automatically connected to Quickbooks online and bank account transactions automatically feed into your Quickbooks account, the same is true, the $96.21 will show as a transaction as in Quickbooks and you can then reconcile and categorize where needed in your Quickbooks account.
*If your HOA charges owners a convenience fee to process payments, see below for a detailed explanation/visualization of the flow of funds as if differs from above mentioned payment example:
Payment Example(with convenience fees):
An owner in the HOA logs in and wants to pay their monthly due payment of $100 via credit card. The owner clicks to pay the $100 invoice and is then shown a payment summary which includes the convenience fees that you as a manager/admin have setup in your payment settings.
Note: To set up what you want your convenience fees to be at your HOA as a permanent fee to be paid by all owner payments regardless of how the payment is made(see above for all different types/forms of payments) go to Tools>Payment Processing and you will see a section to set up your convenience fees that will be added to all owner payments(credit card, debit card, and/or echeck payments)
If your HOA chooses to set up a convenience fee of 3.39% and a transaction fee of $.55 for all owner payments made via debit/credit cards the payment amount shown to the owner for his/her $100 monthly due payment(including the convenience fees) before paying would be (($100*1.0339)+$.55) = $103.94. When the owner clicks 'pay' and the payment is processed, EasyHOA will then process the $103.94 payment but will charge your HOA a percentage of the transaction + flat transaction fee.
If we were to use the same fee structure example shown above, the percentage on the transaction would be 3.29% and the transaction flat fee would be $.50. EasyHOA would then process the $103.94(the owner payment amount)through its payment partner, subtract it's fees from the $103.94($103.94-((103.94*3.29%)+$.50) =$3.91 and deposit $100.03($103.94-$3.91) into the HOA's bank account as the net amount the HOA would receive. As noted above...this may take a few days to clear and show up in the HOA bank account.
Note 1: Most HOA payments will batch out to the HOA bank in one “batch” and each payment will not show up in the bank as individual deposit. This applies when there are more than one HOA payment processed in a particular calendar day. So, using the above convenience fee example, if there were two $100 owner payments made via CC, the amount deposited in the HOA bank account would equal $200.06
Note 2: In some scenarios, if your convenience fee structure is too low, the net amount that is deposited into the HOA bank account may be less than what the owner's due payment should be. Make sure your convenience fees are substantial enough to cover the fees that EasyHOA charges you to process the payment or else you will end up receiving less than the expected amount.
For more information on how your HOA can account for these credit card or e-check fees as “expenses” in your accounting software, watch the video on this page of our support site:
https://support.easyhoa.com/accounting-reconciliation-of-deposits-fees/