Help Center • Landlords • Get Paid
How a late fee is priced
A lease can charge a flat late fee, a percent of the rent, or a percent of the rent still unpaid, and it can cap the total it ever charges. Your state limit is applied on top of whichever you pick.
The policy lives on the lease
Action: A late-fee policy belongs to one lease, not to your whole portfolio. Two units in the same building can price a late fee differently, because each lease carries its own policy: the grace period, how the fee is priced, and the most that lease may ever charge.
Leases you set up before this existed are unchanged. They charge the flat amount you already entered, exactly as they always have. You never have to pick a new option.
Three ways to price the fee
Action: A flat fee charges the same dollar amount every time. A percent of rent charges a share of the lease's monthly rent, so a $2,000 rent at 5 percent is a $100 fee. A percent of unpaid rent charges a share of the rent that is actually still owed, so a tenant who paid most of the month owes a smaller fee than one who paid nothing.
Percent of unpaid rent is measured against unpaid RENT only, never the tenant's whole balance. A late fee is never charged on top of an earlier late fee.
Your state limit is applied last, and it can lower the fee
Action: When Rentari.ai assesses a late fee for you, the amount is trimmed down to your state's legal ceiling at the moment it is charged. Rentari.ai saves the number you typed on the lease and does not rewrite it, so a policy that sits above your state's limit stays on the lease exactly as you entered it while the tenant is billed the smaller, legal amount.
That is the one that surprises people: you can be billing less than your policy says. If the two should match, lower the policy to the legal figure so the lease and the ledger tell the same story. A state with no late-fee rule of its own still gets a conservative default of 5 percent of the rent or $100, whichever is smaller. One exception worth knowing: a late fee you post yourself from Add a charge posts at the amount you typed, so check your state's limit before you post one by hand.
Cap what the lease can ever charge
Action: A lease can also carry a total late-fee cap. It is a ceiling for the WHOLE lease, not per month and not per year: once the fees on that lease add up to the cap, Rentari.ai stops assessing late fees on it. A lease with no total set has no lifetime cap, and only the state limit applies.
Fees the tenant already paid still count toward the cap, because the cap limits what the lease may charge rather than what is still outstanding. A fee you void or waive gives its room back. A late fee you post by hand from Add a charge counts against the cap too, even though posting it by hand is not held back by the cap.
One fee per month, never a running daily charge
Action: Rentari.ai assesses at most one late fee per lease per calendar month, once the lease's grace period has passed. There is no option for a fee that accrues per day.
That is deliberate. A per-day fee is the easiest way to sail past a state cap without noticing, because it keeps growing quietly while nobody is looking. If a percent-of-unpaid fee is larger this month than last, that is a fresh monthly fee on a bigger unpaid balance, not interest stacking on the old one.
