Ideas for colleting acct receivables

Ebony,
Our management company took over the management of an HOA which had this problem.
The first thing we did was suggest the following procedures which the Board approved.
Rewrite the Rules on collection of delinquent accounts to be owner friendly rather than attorney friendly.
The new Rules were drafted, approved, and provided to all owners.
The new Rules had 3 month, rather than 1 month, before referring a delinquent account to an attorney.
The new Rules allowed delinquent owners to set up a Board approved schedule for payments with no late charges.
And finally the delinquent accounts where removed from the collection attorney and taken over by the management company. No struggling homeowner could catch up when they had to pay the high fees of the attorney.

Within a few months this resulted in the number and dollar amount of delinquecies being cut in half.
Now, 4 years later, only a couple of delinquent accounts, which required going to court for garnishment of assets, are with an attorney.

We also have similar rules to David and Roger.

Once upon a time we kicked that idea around. AFter 60 days, our HOA refers homeowners - in addition to the late fees, they're charged a collection fee (paid to the management company for sending out late notices and monitoring the account) and all remaining npaid fees for the year (we pay monthly) are accellerated, so the homeowner has to pay all of it.

In our case, we haven't waived anything, but if we did, we'd probably limit it to the late fees. Late fees are extra income to the association and since everyone expected to pay fees in full and on time, it really doesn't hurt us if we don't receive that money.

The collection cost is another story - the Association pays that to the management company and so the homeowner must reimburse the Association. the homeowner would also reimburse the Association for all legal fees related to collection (lien filing fees, attorneys fees and so on). There are some other threads on this board about waiving late fees and such - check them out for more ideas.

As treasurer of my HOA, I'm revising the waiving of late fees again - I suspect the Board would be willing to drop them if the homeowner paid up within 90 days or less. We also have a serious problem with delinquencies and perhaps that offer would help us eliminate some of them.

Hello everyone, i'm brand spanking new at this. The reason i'm on here is that we just signed on with a new management company. We couldn't get the former management company to turn over any clear records (they gave a disk that apparently doesn't open w/quick books). The problem is that we have 41 consistent paying homeowners and 24 totally non paying. the new management company sent out (what seemed to me) a lukewarm warning letter. Very few responses were given. My suggestion was that we contact the homeowners in arrears and arrange a meeting with the Board, offer to cut a percentage of arrears provided they start paying each and every month. Our Board Presidente thinks we can be sued for harrassment by the homeowner(s) in question. Does anyone have thoughts on this?

Thanks to all, we have decided to not offer any type of discount. Thanks for all the suggestion. We will make suing the last resort, work on payment plan options, lenghting the time before they are turned over to an attorney.. Hopefully these methods will improve the 2012 collection process