We know getting paid on time isn’t always easy. So, better late than never, we’re very excited to release one of our most requested features: automatic late fees! With this optional feature enabled, the system will automatically charge a percentage or flat fee to the Family Account the day after the invoice due date. We think you’ll find this particularly useful for discouraging late payments.

Automatic Late Fees:

• Using this feature is completely optional and it’s disabled by default.
• You can turn on Automatic Late Fees on your “School Settings” page on the Accounts and Invoices tab.
• Late fees can either be a percentage of the amount owing on the invoice or a flat amount (i.e. $10).
• Late fees will be applied the day AFTER the invoice due date. If you do not specify a due date, no late fee will be applied.
• When a family tries to pay a late invoice online (or an auto-payment occurs for a late invoice) the late fee will be collected at that time. If a family pays you via cash or check (and doesn’t include the late fee amount), the balance will carry forward automatically onto their next invoice.
• The Invoice Reminder email and SMS templates have been updated to include a late fee placeholder.
• If an automatic late fee is created, you can remove them from the Family Account (or adjust it if you wish to reduce or increase the late fee on a one-time basis).
• When automatic late fees are created, you’ll get a Notification message in your account.

Other changes and improvements this week include:

• We’ve introduced some structural changes to how the “Pay Invoice Online” links work.
  • The payment URLs have been shortened and can now be included in the SMS reminder messages.
  • Once an invoice is paid, TutorBird won’t allow the family to pay it again online.
• On the New Student Sign-Up form, we updated the ReCaptcha to make it more obvious what the problem was when the “I am not a robot” box was left unchecked.
• We fixed an issue that would cause the “Print” button on the attendance popup to not always appear when it should.
• The “Skill Level” column was not appearing for the Waiting List, this has been fixed.
• The new Student Portal Homepage now uses the student’s time zone (for schools that teach students in multiple time zones).
• Certain screen resolutions experienced an issue where the table editor popover would appear overtop of where you were actively typing. This issue has been resolved.
• The “Policy” form item for the Sign-Up Widget (or Contact Form) can now be optionally set as “Required“. This is helpful if you wish to use a “Policy” item for something optional, (such as a photo release) but don’t require all students to opt-in.
• On the mobile view of the site, the collapsible panels that replace tabs have themselves been replaced with a drop-down list. We think this makes the information rich pages a bit easier to navigate on mobile devices.

For multi-teacher schools:

• The News & Blog Posts option was not appearing for non-admin teachers who had the “Website” privilege enabled. This has been fixed.

Did you know? We’ve modified the way that the “Paid” status on invoices is set. Now if you enter a future dated payment (such as a payment you’ll deposit tomorrow), it will toggle the paid status of current invoices.