Chasing arrears

An account that has fallen behind raises three questions, and the account screen answers one on each panel.

Work them in that order. The arrears drive everything else: the promise is made against them, and the statutory clock is counted from them.

How far behind, and for how long

The Aged Debtors panel ages the money the customer owes but has not paid.

Below the rows, a chart splits the outstanding across every band your organisation has configured. The band the account currently sits in is highlighted.

Two things are worth knowing before you read the chart.

Ageing counts calendar days, not business days. A weekend or a public holiday does not slow the ageing down.

Days past due counts from the oldest unpaid amount, not the newest. One old unpaid instalment holds the whole account at that age, however current the rest of it is.

If the panel says the account is not in arrears, nothing is overdue and there is no aged debt on record.

The figures are recalculated at end of day. A payment received this morning shows in the bands tomorrow.

A worked example

Alex holds an account with Woodgrove Bank on a seven-band ladder: 0–29, 30–59, 60–89, 90–119, 120–149, 150–179, and 180 or more days. All the counts below are calendar days.

Three amounts fell due and none were paid:

Read on 29 May 2026, the chart shows:

Each amount ages from its own due date. Days past due is counted from 1 March, because that is the oldest amount still unpaid.

How a payment is applied

A payment clears the oldest unpaid amount first, then works forward.

Take an account owing 100 from 1 March 2026 and 200 from 1 April 2026. Alex pays 100 on 10 April.

Read on 30 May 2026, the 30–59 band shows 200 and the 60–89 band shows 0. The payment cleared the March amount outright, and the April amount is untouched.

This matters for the statutory clock. Clearing the oldest amount moves days past due forward: on an account owing 500 from 1 March and 500 from 1 April, a payment of 500 on 10 March leaves 29 days past due when read on 30 April.

The bands themselves also drive the provision the account carries — see bad debt provisioning.

What the customer has promised

The Promises to Pay panel lists every payment arrangement recorded against the account, newest first.

An arrangement is not created here. A collector records one when they log the outcome of a call on the collections queue, choosing an outcome your organisation has marked as a promise. The arrangement then appears on this panel.

What each status means

An account carries one active arrangement at a time. Recording a new one supersedes the old one automatically, so the panel keeps the whole negotiating history rather than overwriting it.

An active arrangement takes the account’s case out of the pending queue. If the arrangement breaks, the case returns to the queue.

Grace, and why broken is final

Each instalment gets a grace period before it counts as missed. Arrangements are checked at end of day.

Sam agrees to pay 100 on 1 May 2026, on a five-day grace period, in calendar days.

1. On 5 May nothing has arrived. The arrangement is still Active — the grace period has not expired.
2. Sam pays 30 on 3 May instead of the full amount.
3. On 7 May the grace period has expired and 70 is still missing. The arrangement goes Broken with a shortfall of 70.
4. Sam pays the remaining 70 on 8 May. The arrangement stays Broken.

That last step is deliberate. A promise that was not kept was not kept, and a late payment does not rewrite the record a collector relies on. The payment still reduces the arrears; it just does not revive the arrangement.

On a schedule, each instalment is measured against everything paid so far. Paying the first instalment early counts toward the second.

What this panel does not yet do

A payment arriving on the account does not move Paid to date by itself. The payment reduces the arrears on the Aged Debtors panel, but nothing currently records it against the arrangement. Until it does, treat Paid to date and Shortfall as figures to check against the transaction list rather than rely on. See reading the transaction list.

Where the statutory process has got to

Some accounts sit under a regulatory regime that says when a lender may act on a default. The Statutory Default panel shows how far that process has run. An account under no such regime has no panel content at all.

flowchart TD
    A["An amount falls due and is not paid"] --> B["Arrears age from the oldest unpaid amount"]
    B --> C{"Has the first waiting period passed?"}
    C -- "not yet" --> B
    C -- "passed" --> D["Notice eligible. The customer's cases move to the pre-legal pool"]
    D --> E["A clerk issues the notice"]
    E --> F["The notice is produced and sent to the customer"]
    F --> G["Despatch is recorded, with the channel and the address used"]
    G --> H{"Has the second waiting period passed since despatch?"}
    H -- "not yet" --> G
    H -- "passed" --> I["Enforcement eligible"]
    B -. "arrears cleared in full" .-> J["Eligibility is cancelled and any issued notice lapses"]
    D -. "arrears cleared in full" .-> J
    G -. "arrears cleared in full" .-> J

What the panel shows

Below the rows, every notice issued on the account is listed with its status, its despatch date, the channel used, the address it went to, and any tracking reference. Each row opens the notice itself.

The two waiting periods

Both periods are counted in business days on the calendar your organisation names for that regime, so weekends and public holidays extend them. See business day conventions.

The first period runs from the oldest unpaid amount. It is not read off an age band. Bands count calendar days, and a twenty-business-day period is roughly twenty-eight calendar days — which falls inside a thirty-day band. Counting off the band would let a lender act early.

The second period runs from despatch, not from issue. What a court asks for is proof that the notice was delivered, and the waiting period after that delivery. A notice sitting in a queue has not started the clock.

Woodgrove Bank’s South African consumer lending is configured at 20 business days to notice eligibility, on the South Africa calendar. An account whose oldest unpaid amount fell due on 1 June 2026 is not eligible on the day before the twentieth business day, and is eligible on it. Add one public holiday inside that window and eligibility moves one business day later, with no change to the configuration.

The second period is configured at 10 business days. Enforcement eligibility arrives on the tenth business day after despatch, and not on the day before it.

Issuing a notice

The Issue Enforcement Notice button appears on the notices table once the account is eligible and no notice stands.

1. Open the account and select the Statutory Default panel.
2. Check the stage reads Notice eligible.
3. Select Issue Enforcement Notice.

The notice is then produced and sent, and the despatch is recorded against the account without further action. Issuing can require a second approver — see countersign.

Three things refuse the notice outright:

• The account is not eligible yet. The waiting period has not passed.
• The customer has no address on file. A notice cannot be despatched without one.
• The customer is held. Enforcement is barred while the hold runs — see hold.

Notice eligibility does not wait for you to notice it. An eligible account moves the customer’s whole case set into the pre-legal pool on the collections queue, so the work arrives where collectors already look.

What paying does to the process

The process is re-derived every end of day from the oldest unpaid amount.

A lapsed notice never revives. If the customer falls behind again, the waiting period starts over from the new oldest unpaid amount, and a fresh notice must be issued. This is deliberate: a surviving notice over a cleared account would let a lender enforce a default that no longer exists.

What this platform claims, and what it does not

The behaviour above is registered against two rows of our standards register: National Credit Act 34 of 2005 (South Africa) §129(1) — notice of default, and National Credit Act 34 of 2005 (South Africa) §130(1) — when enforcement may begin.

Both rows are recorded as partial, and here is exactly why.

• Only the email channel is proven. A notice is sent by email, and the despatch record captures the channel, the address it went to, and the moment it was sent. That is the case the platform demonstrates.
• There is no registered-mail channel. The tracking reference column exists and is shaped for one, but nothing fills it today. If your jurisdiction expects registered mail, the platform does not yet send it.
• The notice wording is not lawyer-reviewed. The mechanism ships — the timing, the document, the proof of despatch. The drafting of the notice itself is an open legal question, and reviewing it before you rely on it is your organisation’s job.

What the record does answer, precisely: which day the account became eligible, which day the notice went out, to which address, and which day enforcement became available. That chain is what a court asks for, and it is reconstructible from the account alone.

Charges and interest keep running throughout. Where a regime caps what may be charged during a default, that cap is separate — see in duplum. Where nothing more will be collected, see writing off a bad debt.

What your organisation configures

• The age bands. How many, and where each one starts and ends. The seven-band ladder in the example above is one choice, not a platform rule.
• Which balances count as arrears. Each account type names the positions the ageing watches, so a product can age its instalment arrears without ageing its fees — see position types.
• Which outcomes record a promise. Your outcome list decides which call results ask a collector for arrangement details, and which put the case on hold.
• The grace period on an arrangement. Five calendar days out of the box. Changing it today needs an administrator, not a screen.
• Whether a regime has a statutory process at all. A regime with no rule configured has no waiting periods, no eligibility, and no notices. Nothing is assumed.
• The two waiting periods, and the calendar they count on. Both are per regime and dated, so a change in the law is configuration with an effective date rather than a release.
• Where eligible accounts go. The pool an eligible customer’s cases move to is named on the regime’s rule.
• Whether issuing a notice needs a second approver.

The whole capability switches off per tenant — see switching features on and off.