Someone at every board meeting asks the treasurer the same two questions: who hasn't paid, and how far behind are they? The delinquency report answers both on one page. It lists each past-due account, sorts the balances by how long they've gone unpaid, and shows where each account sits in the collection process.
The board uses its HOA delinquency report to apply its HOA collection policy to every account on the same schedule. If the policy sends an account to the attorney at 90 days, the report is where the board sees which accounts crossed that line this month.
Keeping it current belongs to the treasurer's monthly routine, next to the bank reconciliation and the budget comparison.
What an HOA delinquency report is
A delinquency report is an accounts receivable aging report built for an association. AccountingTools describes an accounts receivable aging report as one that "lists unpaid customer invoices and unused credit memos by date ranges." For an HOA, the invoices are the dues and other charges posted to each lot, and the credit memos are prepayments or credits sitting on an account.
The same source calls the aging report "the primary tool used by collections personnel" for spotting overdue items. In a self-managed association, the collections personnel are usually the treasurer and one or two other directors. Management also uses aging as "a tool for estimating potential bad debts." A board can put it to the same use when it drafts next year's budget and decides how much unpaid dues to plan around.
The four aging buckets and what each one asks of the board
The usual columns are 30-day buckets: 0 to 30 days past due, 31 to 60, 61 to 90, and over 90. AccountingTools notes the buckets can be adjusted to fit payment terms, so a community that bills quarterly may want wider ones.
Each bucket tends to line up with a step in the collection policy. Accounts in the first column usually need nothing more than the reminder the policy already calls for. The 31 to 60 column is a natural point for a formal written notice. By 61 to 90 days, the board should know whether the owner has asked for a payment plan and whether the next notice has gone out. Over 90 days is where a policy might refer the account to an attorney or begin the lien process, and those steps usually come back to the board for a vote.
Some reports place each account in the column for its oldest unpaid charge. Others split one account's balance across columns by the age of each charge. Either works. Pick one, write it down, and use it every month, or the columns won't compare from one report to the next.
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A worked example: total delinquent as a share of the year
Take a 40-lot community where each lot pays $100 a month. The year's assessments are 40 lots x $100 x 12 months = $48,000. This report places each account in the column for its oldest unpaid charge, and it leaves out late fees and interest to keep the arithmetic plain. The buckets appear here as rows to keep the table narrow.
| Bucket | Accounts | Balance |
|---|---|---|
| 0 to 30 days | 4 lots, one month each | $400 |
| 31 to 60 days | 2 lots, two months each | $400 |
| 61 to 90 days | 1 lot, three months | $300 |
| Over 90 days | 1 lot, eight months | $800 |
| Total | 8 lots | $1,900 |
The total delinquent is $400 + $400 + $300 + $800 = $1,900. As a share of the year's assessments, that's $1,900 / $48,000 = about 4.0 percent. Eight of 40 lots, or 20 percent, have a past-due balance.
The over-90 bucket holds $800 of the $1,900, or about 42 percent of everything past due, and all of it belongs to one lot. A board looking at that table can see that most of its accounts are a month or two behind and one account needs a decision.
How payments are applied changes the numbers
When an owner pays part of a past-due balance, the order in which the payment is applied decides which column shrinks. In Florida, the statute on payment for assessments and lien claims sets that order for homeowners' associations: payments go first to accrued interest, then to the administrative late fee, then to costs of collection and reasonable attorney fees, and then to the delinquent assessment. The statute applies that order regardless of any restrictive endorsement on the payment.
Suppose an owner owes $300 in assessments, a $25 late fee and $10 in interest, for a total of $335, and pays $100. Under that order, $10 goes to interest, $25 to the late fee, and the remaining $65 to assessments, leaving $235 in unpaid assessments. If the treasurer had put the whole $100 toward assessments, the report would show $200 in assessments and $35 in fees. Both versions total $235, but the assessment columns differ.
Other states' statutes and many declarations may set a different order. The declaration and your state's statute decide for your community, so find the rule that applies and write it into the policy.
Payment plans, collections and liens get their own columns
Add a status column so the report also shows where each account stands: reminder sent, notice sent, on a payment plan, referred to an attorney or agency, or lien recorded.
An owner on a written payment plan who's making every installment shouldn't look the same as an owner who has stopped responding. Show the plan's start date and whether the latest installment arrived. For accounts referred to an attorney or agency, show the referral date and the balance at referral. For liens, show the recording date.
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Under the table, add a short summary line: how many accounts are on plans, how many have been referred out, how many have liens, and the dollars in each group.
The open-session version of the report
The full report, with owner names, stays with the treasurer and the board. What goes into the open-session packet depends on the board's policy and your state's law. One approach is to show the aging table by lot number or account number in open session and use names only where the policy and state law allow. Check with the association's attorney on what the open-session version may include.
The report also belongs next to the balance sheet and income statement in the packet. The receivables line on the financial statements should match the report's total, and if it doesn't, the treasurer can find the gap before the meeting.
Put the headline figures at the top: total delinquent, that total as a share of the year's assessments, and the dollars over 90 days.
Reading the report month over month
One month's report is a snapshot. Keep the prior month's report in the packet beside the current one, and compare the headline figures and the count of accounts that moved to a later column.
In HOA-OS, each unit's page carries its payment ledger, with every charge and payment, and the software applies late fees by the board's rules and sends reminders for upcoming and overdue dues. Its Delinquency report, one of five financial report types, lets the treasurer read the list on screen or export it to CSV for the packet, and lien management tracks each lien the board records.
Sources
- Accounts receivable aging definition, AccountingTools
- Florida Statutes 720.3085, Payment for assessments; lien claims, Online Sunshine, Florida Legislature
Related Reading
- HOA Board Meeting Packets: What Goes In and Why
- How a board collects dues online and tracks who hasn't paid
- HOA Budget Deficit: What to Do When You Fall Short
The lot numbers that moved one column to the right since last month's report are the accounts where no payment cleared the oldest unpaid charge.