💰 Accounting: Payment Fees

Online and mailed payments can include a processing fee. Billing settings decide who pays that fee: the association, or the member. That choice changes the journal entry. It does not change the fact that a line on the bank feed might say VLGE PAY.

Read the amount and the suggestion on the transaction before you pick an account. A processing fee is not always an expense.

The payable account is usually created automatically in the liability section of the chart (often in the 2100s) and named Processing Fees Payable. The expense account is the one mapped for payment processing. If none is mapped, Vlge uses an expense named like “payment processing,” “merchant fee,” or “bank fee,” or creates Payment Processing Fees.

A vendor on these lines is optional. The account is what keeps the books right. Use the same vendor every month if you want reporting by payee.

VLGE PAY on a Western Alliance account can also be the Vlge subscription or postage. Those are not payment-processing fees. A subscription debit belongs on the platform-fee expense account (many associations use a software account). Postage belongs on the postage account. When one debit pays an invoice that mixes subscription, postage, and association-paid processing fees, the inbox splits that debit across those accounts.

This is You pay the fee on card or ACH in payment settings.

Stripe takes its fee before money reaches the association. The payout in the bank is the net deposit, often several residents in one payout. There is no second bank debit for the fee.

Each resident payment is journaled when it succeeds:

Example: a $100.00 assessment and a $3.20 fee the association absorbs.

Match the later bank deposit to the Stripe payout. Do not book that deposit as new income, and do not book a second fee. The fee is already on the payment entry.

The deposit account and the fee expense account are set under the Stripe mapping on the bank accounts screen. If the association owes a fee and the fee account is not mapped, that payment is not posted to the general ledger until the mapping exists.

This is Your member pays the fee.

The member is charged the assessment plus the fee. Stripe keeps the fee. The association’s payout is the assessment amount. The fee never lands in the operating account, so it is not income, not a payable, and not an expense.

Example: $100.00 assessment, member pays a $3.20 fee, Stripe’s fee is $3.20.

If Stripe’s actual fee is higher than the fee the member paid, the difference is an association expense on that same entry (debit the Stripe fee account for the difference, and cash is lower by that difference). When the member’s fee covers Stripe’s fee, there is no expense line.

This is You pay the fee, with ACH processed by Western Alliance.

The resident’s payment deposits the assessment only. The processing fee is not in that deposit.

The fee is added to the association’s Vlge usage and included on a later Vlge invoice. That invoice is collected as an ACH debit described VLGE PAY. The processing-fee portion of that debit is an expense: debit Payment Processing Fees (or the mapped payment-processing account) and credit the bank.

Example: a $100.00 assessment, association-paid fee $2.50.

When the resident pays:

When the Vlge invoice is drafted for that $2.50 (alone, or inside a larger invoice):

Do not also expense the fee on the day the resident paid. That would record it twice.

This is Your member pays the fee.

The resident pays the assessment plus the fee in one ACH debit. Western Alliance deposits the gross into the operating account. The fee is not dues income.

When the payment settles:

Vlge then pulls the fee back out of the operating account. That pull is its own ACH debit, also described VLGE PAY, usually for the fee on one payment (or a few fees that settled together). That debit clears the liability. It is not an expense.

Example: $100.00 assessment, member-paid fee $2.50.

When the resident pays ($102.50 deposit):

When Vlge drafts the $2.50:

Cash left in the bank is $100.00. Profit and loss never shows the $2.50. If you book that VLGE PAY line to Payment Processing Fees, the association takes an expense for a fee the member already paid, and Processing Fees Payable stays open.

Several fee pulls can arrive as one bank debit. A $5.00 VLGE PAY line may be two $2.50 fees. The whole $5.00 still clears Processing Fees Payable. The inbox sometimes leaves that combined debit for review because it could not match it to a single fee.

This is You pay the fee on Lockbox / Physical Check.

The coupon and the check are for the amount owed. No processing fee is added to the resident’s balance. When the check is applied:

No processing-fee expense, no Processing Fees Payable, and no separate VLGE PAY pull are created from that check.

This is Your member pays the fee.

The coupon total is the amount owed plus the per-check fee. When a deposited check matches that coupon, Vlge adds a Mailed-check processing fee charge on the unit for the fee, then applies the check to the assessment and to that fee.

The fee is recorded as income (a service, convenience, administrative, or check-fee income account when the chart has one), and the deposit clears it:

Example: $100.00 assessment, $2.50 fee on the coupon, check for $102.50.

The $2.50 stays in the association as income. It is not Processing Fees Payable, and it is not remitted by a VLGE PAY debit. A check that does not match a coupon which included the fee is applied for the check amount only, without that fee charge.