Tenant locked out of facility for $.40 balance!

tbaginski

Our "lock out" threshold is a minimum past due balance of $24.00. I double checked our program defaults. Tenant owed us .40 cents from last month.  The day they tried to come in through the gate, their new rent came due so they owed us their regular rent plus the $.40  Wouldn't let them in as account was marked as delinquent?  Not sure why as the only amount actually past due was the $.40.  Thank goodness I was here when she came.  She always pays on time so I would have felt bad if she couldn't access her unit for less than $1.00!  Am I missing something?

ESS

If the .40 was rent and not part of a late fee, it was technically 30 days past due. You would need to check your gate settings for the days past due threshold.

tbaginski

Thanks.  I may call Support as I double checked our gate settings and the threshold is indicating $24.00 past due so I'm not sure where the problem is.

teamcapitola

Another setting for this in Sitelink is in Setup -- Under Setup --> Program Defaults--> General.

There's a box for "Minimum balance before gate lockout", doublecheck the amount its set at. (Might be the exact same setting, but worth a look)

Worst case, you can always check the "never lock out at gate" box in their ledger settings as a temp fix until things are sorted.

storable_support

Hi, @tbaginski. When the new rent was added, the tenant was past-due for 30 days (or more) with a balance of rent + $0.40. As you mentioned, this means that this tenant would have been locked out at the gate. This is the expected behavior of our software as it's currently designed since the Gate Setup setting is "Minimum balance before gate lockout" and not "Minimum past-due balance before gate lockout." We will consider creating a feature request to have the logic changed to "minimum past-due balance" to handle day-of-creation balance changes and we appreciate you bringing this to our attention.

The setting @teamcapitolamentions is the same as the one in Gate Setup (changing one changes the other.) "Never lock" is a potential workaround you can choose when a tenant is left with a small partial remainder.

However, the basic answer remains the same: (currently) the minimum balance applies to any current balance if the tenant is past-due. On a tenant's anniversary, that will become the previous past-due amount plus their rental amount.

E.g. Tenant leaves $1.00 owed on rent. On the day before their anniversary, they are 29 days past-due and owe $1.00 -- no lockout. On the anniversary, they are 30 days past-due and owe $1.00+rent -- lockout.  The program does not take into account that they are only 30 days past-due on the $1.00 portion. Balance includes all currently owed.

Again, we'll discuss this user experience and appreciate you giving us visibility to it. ~Amy C.

teamcapitola

@storable_support - is this a newer thing? I don't recall ever having this issue with small rent balances causing gate lockout in the past. 

We run into "small rent balances" a lot after rate increases; tenants not updating bank billpay or sending the wrong amount leaving a small $4 - $10 balance on the account usually until the following billing cycle.

I've not had to worry about them being locked out, but it seems that is the case now.

ESS

The gate won't lock out for other charges such as late fees, damages, clean-up fees, etc, only rent. It doesn't happen often, because when a tenant makes a payment, most facilities are setup to pay rent first and then fees, depending the order they are charged. Rent is applied first, late fees after. So when a tenant makes a payment, any small balance owed usually isn't for rent, it's those late fees applied after the rent. To which SL does not lock out for anything but a rent balance owed. Just like if a tenant has a balance for rent and late fee, pays the rent but leaves the late fee balance, they will not get the second late fee of the month, because the only balance owed is for a late fee. The tenant in question must have either not had late fees to have such a small balance or their last payment went to late fees first before the rent, leaving a balance due on rent. Or the facility doesn't do late fees, they were waived, etc.

MamaDuke7

But when it's from a missed rate increase, it IS rent.  I've never had it lock out for that, either.

GlenMark

teamcapitola said:

@storable_support - is this a newer thing? I don't recall ever having this issue with small rent balances causing gate lockout in the past. 

We run into "small rent balances" a lot after rate increases; tenants not updating bank billpay or sending the wrong amount leaving a small $4 - $10 balance on the account usually until the following billing cycle.

I've not had to worry about them being locked out, but it seems that is the case now.

Yeah, we have never run across that issue here either. When there are rent balances remaining, it will show on our collections list as only being so many days late; depending on how much of the rent balance was already paid. Though it's not common, we have from time to time, taken partial rent payments. This extends the grace period and pushes the late fee/gate suspension back too.

Sounds like a settings thing.

ESS

GlenMark said:

teamcapitola said:

@storable_support - is this a newer thing? I don't recall ever having this issue with small rent balances causing gate lockout in the past. 

We run into "small rent balances" a lot after rate increases; tenants not updating bank billpay or sending the wrong amount leaving a small $4 - $10 balance on the account usually until the following billing cycle.

I've not had to worry about them being locked out, but it seems that is the case now.

Yeah, we have never run across that issue here either. When there are rent balances remaining, it will show on our collections list as only being so many days late; depending on how much of the rent balance was already paid. Though it's not common, we have from time to time, taken partial rent payments. This extends the grace period and pushes the late fee/gate suspension back too.

Sounds like a settings thing.

Ours is the opposite: If there is any rent balance due, even after a partial payment, the gate will stay suspended. The only time SL will prompt to remove an overlock, is if the tenant only owes a balance for fees. I've even gone into StorLogix to manually un-suspend a tenant with partial rent balance, but as soon as it refreshes with SL, StorLogix adds the suspension back in accordance with SL settings.

MamaDuke7

ESS said:

GlenMark said:

teamcapitola said:

@storable_support - is this a newer thing? I don't recall ever having this issue with small rent balances causing gate lockout in the past. 

We run into "small rent balances" a lot after rate increases; tenants not updating bank billpay or sending the wrong amount leaving a small $4 - $10 balance on the account usually until the following billing cycle.

I've not had to worry about them being locked out, but it seems that is the case now.

Yeah, we have never run across that issue here either. When there are rent balances remaining, it will show on our collections list as only being so many days late; depending on how much of the rent balance was already paid. Though it's not common, we have from time to time, taken partial rent payments. This extends the grace period and pushes the late fee/gate suspension back too.

Sounds like a settings thing.

Ours is the opposite: If there is any rent balance due, even after a partial payment, the gate will stay suspended. The only time SL will prompt to remove an overlock, is if the tenant only owes a balance for fees. I've even gone into StorLogix to manually un-suspend a tenant with partial rent balance, but as soon as it refreshes with SL, StorLogix adds the suspension back in accordance with SL settings.

There is a setting for minimum balance due before gate lockout.  I would assume this happens when the remaining balance is more than whatever that threshold is for your company.

ESS

MamaDuke7 said:

ESS said:

GlenMark said:

teamcapitola said:

@storable_support - is this a newer thing? I don't recall ever having this issue with small rent balances causing gate lockout in the past. 

We run into "small rent balances" a lot after rate increases; tenants not updating bank billpay or sending the wrong amount leaving a small $4 - $10 balance on the account usually until the following billing cycle.

I've not had to worry about them being locked out, but it seems that is the case now.

Yeah, we have never run across that issue here either. When there are rent balances remaining, it will show on our collections list as only being so many days late; depending on how much of the rent balance was already paid. Though it's not common, we have from time to time, taken partial rent payments. This extends the grace period and pushes the late fee/gate suspension back too.

Sounds like a settings thing.

Ours is the opposite: If there is any rent balance due, even after a partial payment, the gate will stay suspended. The only time SL will prompt to remove an overlock, is if the tenant only owes a balance for fees. I've even gone into StorLogix to manually un-suspend a tenant with partial rent balance, but as soon as it refreshes with SL, StorLogix adds the suspension back in accordance with SL settings.

There is a setting for minimum balance due before gate lockout.  I would assume this happens when the remaining balance is more than whatever that threshold is for your company.

That makes sense. I don't have access to our setup so I've never seen how it's setup here.