Payment plan fees are a convenient way to have an automatic surcharge added on whenever a payment plan is generated on the invoice. The issue though is that since this is an automatic charge, there are certain situations where a payment plan fee needs to be removed. Unfortunately, we do not currently offer a way to select when a payment plan fee. However, there is a workaround to this involving discounts.
Creating a Discount for Payment Plan Fees:
One of the first things you'll notice when setting up a payment plan fee within the time period is that there is not an option to make this fee discountable. This doesn't rule out the ability to apply the discount to this fee, rather it does not allow a direct discount to be applied with first application.
In order to have the discount apply to this invoice, we would need to have a discount set up to "Apply to All Items". If you're not sure how to set up a discount within ASAP, please refer to this support article for more details on how to do this:
In my current configuration, these are the settings I've used. Notice that the discount amount is the same as the Payment Plan fee:
Applying the Discount:
Once you've created the discount you want to apply, will need to add this to the invoice. In my example below, I've already created an invoice with a payment plan found on it:
Since our discount is configured to "Apply to All Items", I can go ahead and have the discount applied to this particular invoice since it will apply to all items that are eligible for a discount. (Just a note, if no items are eligible for a discount such as the class fees, then this workaround will not work)
After I've selected to "Apply to Total", I want to make sure all calculations are correct on the invoice. The way to ensure that is to select the "Recalculate Invoice" button, which will factor in any new discounts added on after a payment plan is created.
So now that my invoice is updated properly, I would need to make sure that the discount is actually applying to the correct item. To do so, you would need to select the "Re-allocate Discounts" to have it pointing towards a specific fee. Doing it this way allows the discount to be tracked to a specific item (in this case, the payment plan fee). Once you've applied the discount, just have it re-allocated to the payment plan and it should be tracked properly. This button can be found at the bottom of the invoice:
Once selected, you will be brought to a new screen in order to select the discount you would like to update. In this case, I'm selecting the "Waive Payment Plan Fee".
As you can see, the discount is pointing towards the incorrect item. We actually want it to allocated towards the payment plan fee. Here is what it looks like to set it as such:
Once done, just select "Update Discount Allocation" and you're all set.
Now when you run any financial reports, the payment plan fee will show as receiving the discount, not the class associated with it. Lots of extra steps to accomplish this but this is the current work around until we factor in having payment plan fees to be discountable.