# Payments

Where you view what you owe, see your payment history, pay a charge, and
set up automatic recurring payments — all on one page, `payments.php`.

> **A note on this guide:** written by actually logging in as a real
> resident and walking the live page — including completing a real,
> genuine Bank Transfer payment. A safety check was done first: a
> throwaway $1.23 test charge was inserted directly (not touching the
> account's real $245 dues charge) so the payment flow could be tested
> without disturbing this account's real balance or history. That test
> charge, its resulting payment row, and the one real notification it
> triggered were all deleted afterward and confirmed gone — the account's
> balance, due date, and 8-row payment history are exactly what they were
> before this pass. ACH bank-debit setup is covered in full in
> [New Resident Onboarding](new-resident-onboarding.md#6-set-up-ach-bank-debit-payments)
> and disputing a specific charge is covered in full in
> [Disputes](disputes.md) — both are only touched on briefly here to avoid
> repeating them.

🎥 **See this in the walkthrough video:** [Resident Walkthrough, starting at 0:23](https://myaccount.joantool.com/demo.php?video=resident&t=23)

## 1. What's on this page

From the top, `payments.php` has:

- A one-line fee legend (Bank Transfer FREE, Card 2.9% + $0.30, ACH 0.8%
  capped at $5.00) and three balance cards: **Current Balance**, **Next
  Due** (amount and date), and **Overdue**.
- **Association Financial Health** — your association's Reserve Fund
  Balance, Operating Fund Balance, and Annual Reserve Contribution, shown
  for transparency. As of 2026-07-30, Operating Fund Balance is a
  live-computed figure (updates automatically as real payments/expenses
  post) rather than a number that only changes when someone manually
  re-enters it — Reserve Fund Balance is still the manually-reconciled
  figure it's always been. A footnote is explicit that these are "what's
  currently on file... not an independent audit," with a link to the
  Reserve Study document under Documents for the full picture.
- **Charges Due** — every charge you actually owe, each with its own
  Bank Transfer / Card / ACH buttons (see below).
- **Set Up a Payment Method** — save a card or bank account, covered
  briefly below; full ACH walkthrough is in the onboarding guide.
- **Recurring Auto-Pay**.
- **Payment History** — every charge you've ever had, paid or not,
  newest first.
- **Fee Schedule** — your association's standing Monthly HOA Dues rate
  and Special Assessment rate (if any), with the board's own explanation
  of what a special assessment is for when one is active.
- **Dispute a Charge**, **Contact Management Office**, and **Email
  Notification Preferences** — dispute filing is covered in full in the
  [Disputes guide](disputes.md).

## 2. Making a one-time payment

Each entry in **Charges Due** shows the charge's description, due date,
and amount, with three buttons:

- **⚗ Bank Transfer — FREE**
- **💳 Card — [amount incl. fee]**
- **🏢 ACH — [amount incl. fee]**

**Bank Transfer**, confirmed directly: clicking it opens a dialog
explaining you'll transfer directly to the HOA's bank account with no
fee. **One real thing to know:** for this association right now, that
dialog reads *"Bank account details not yet configured. Contact your
property manager for wire transfer information"* — the actual account
number/routing details aren't there yet, so you'd need to contact
management separately to know where to actually send money. The dialog
still asks you to include your unit address and account name in the
memo, then click **I've Sent the Transfer** to flag it in the system.
Doing so redirects you back to Payments with a clear confirmation
banner — *"Bank transfer recorded. Your HOA will confirm once funds
clear — typically 1–3 business days"* — and the charge moves out of
Charges Due into Payment History as **Awaiting Bank Transfer**.

**One thing worth knowing:** right after recording a bank transfer, the
**Current Balance** card at the top doesn't change — correctly, since the
money hasn't actually cleared yet — but nothing on the page marks any part
of that balance as "pending" either. If you only glance at the top balance
card and don't scroll down to Payment History, it can look like nothing
happened. It did — check Payment History for the "Awaiting Bank Transfer"
row if you want confirmation your transfer was recorded.

**Card and ACH**, confirmed directly: clicking either takes you to a real
Stripe Checkout page (a `checkout.stripe.com` URL) to enter your card or
connect your bank via Stripe. This test stopped short of entering real
test-mode payment details once Stripe's own hosted page loaded, but
getting there at all is itself the confirmation that matters — this path
had a real outage earlier in this project (an expired Stripe API key
broke it completely) that has since been fixed; Card and ACH payments are
live again.

## 3. Setting up a payment method / Auto-Pay

Under **Set Up a Payment Method**, you have three options: **Save Card
via Stripe** and **Save Bank Account via Stripe** (both instant — no
charge is made at save time, just Stripe verifying and storing the
method), or **Manual ACH Direct Debit Authorization** (always free, no
Stripe, but takes 1–3 business days for the JoanTool team to set up —
this option's full field-by-field walkthrough is in
[New Resident Onboarding](new-resident-onboarding.md#6-set-up-ach-bank-debit-payments)).

Once you have at least one saved method, **Recurring Auto-Pay** turns
into a real setup form: which saved method to use, an amount (defaults to
your monthly dues), a frequency (Monthly / Quarterly / Annually), and a
first payment date (defaults to one month out), plus a live preview of
the processing fee and total that'll be charged each cycle. **Note:**
this account didn't have a saved payment method during this pass, so this
form was confirmed by reading the real page code rather than a live
end-to-end enable test — the fields above are what's actually there, not
a guess. Once active, this section shows *"Auto-Pay is active"* with the
method, amount, frequency, and next payment date, plus a note that
**Auto-Pay turns off automatically after 2 consecutive failures** — and a
**Cancel Auto-Pay** button.

## 4. Understanding what's shown

- **Payment History** lists every charge — description, amount, method,
  and status (Completed, Pending, Awaiting Bank Transfer) — with the most
  recent first. Charges still due appear here *and* in Charges Due
  simultaneously; that's expected, not a duplicate.
- **Fee Schedule** shows your association's standing rates, not
  necessarily your own current charges — this test account's Fee
  Schedule correctly showed the standing $850 Special Assessment rate
  with the board's full written rationale (approved 4–1 at a real board
  meeting, tied to a real reserve-study funding gap), confirmed matching
  a real $850 charge already sitting in this account's own Payment
  History from March.
- **Association Financial Health** figures are informational, sourced
  from what's on file for the whole association — not specific to your
  own unit or balance.

---

That's the full page: pay a specific charge one of three ways, save a
method to speed up future payments or enable Auto-Pay, and check Payment
History any time to confirm what actually happened. Two things worth
knowing if you use Bank Transfer: this association's real bank details
aren't loaded yet (contact management directly), and the top balance
card won't visually distinguish a pending transfer from an unpaid charge
— Payment History is the reliable place to check.