Yes. Go to Core › Late Fee Automation, choose when the fine should apply, preview it, then switch it on.
Your policy does not change. How much a late payer is charged is still decided by Core › Late Fee Fine — the method, the amount and the Max Limit. This screen only decides when it is applied, so nobody has to press Add Fine any more.
Setting it up
- Go to Core › Late Fee Automation
- Pick the campus — each campus has its own schedule, because each campus has its own policy
- Choose on the due date, the day after, or after a grace period of however many days you allow
- Set your weekly off days, and whether to skip your Holiday Calendar dates too
- Press Preview today's run — you are shown exactly which children would be fined and how much. A preview charges nothing
- Only then tick Apply late fees automatically and press Save
Nothing happens until you switch it on
It ships switched off for every school. And when you do switch it on, the first run looks at that day only — it will not go back and fine months of old challans.
After adding a fine policy — what happens to challans already made?
- Paid challans stay exactly as they are, under Admissions › Paid Challans. Nothing changes for them and there is nothing to do.
- Unpaid challans on Pay or Print Fee Challans: the Payable After Due Date figure on a printed challan is worked out from the campus's Active policy at the moment it is printed, so a challan generated before the policy still prints the after-due-date amount. The fine itself is written on to the challan when the parent pays late at the counter, when staff press Add Fine, or by the automation on this screen.
- Partially paid challans stay on Pay or Print Fee Challans and the rest can be paid later as usual.
- Do not delete and regenerate unpaid challans to "apply" a new policy. There is no need: printing, paying at the counter, bank payments and the automation all read the campus's Active policy at that moment, for every challan whenever it was generated. Deleting only loses the challan's history.
- One exception: a challan that already has a fine on it keeps that fine. A new or changed policy does not reprice a fine already written on a challan; change that one by hand if needed.
📺 HOW SET LATE FEE FINE POLICY — https://youtu.be/kcOizz-jaK0
Weekends and holidays
If the day a fine is due falls on your weekly off, or on a date in Core › Holiday Calendar, the fine is moved to the next working day. It is never charged on a day the school is closed, and it is never skipped — a fine due on Sunday lands on Monday, and Monday's run applies both days.
Your weekly off is set on this screen, not in the Holiday Calendar, so you never have to enter 52 Sundays a year.
If your policy is per day, the fine keeps growing
A per-day policy charges for every day a challan is late. So the fine is applied on your chosen day and then increased every day the challan stays unpaid, up to the Max Limit on your policy — the same total the parent would have been charged at the counter, just visible from the start.
It stops the moment the challan is paid, any payment is made against the fine, or somebody changes the fine by hand.
Two things that stop it working
- The campus needs an Active late fee policy. Without one there is nothing to apply, and the screen will not let you switch the schedule on.
- Your policy's Max Limit must not be 0. The limit applies to every policy, so a Max Limit of 0 gives a fine of 0 — for automatic and manual fines alike. The screen warns you when yours is set that way.
What was charged
Run history, at the bottom of the screen, lists every run for that campus: the date, whether it was the schedule or a person, how many challans were fined, the total, and why a run was deferred. Run now applies a run by hand and appears in the same list with your name on it.
Nobody can see it until you grant it
It is a controlled screen and starts with nobody holding it — including your own school administrator account. Go to Admin › Users & Privileges and tick Core Settings :: Late Fee Automation for whoever runs your fee office.