When you receive an online payment from your tenants, Stripe (the merchant processor) processes the funds before releasing the payment to you. Processing a payment usually requires around 2 days based on the payment method used, and Stripe will then disperse those payments to you. However, some issues could arise where Stripe isn't able to collect the payment from the tenant due to such issues as insufficient funds from the tenant's bank or if the tenant initiates a stop payment. This results in a Reversed Payment on their lease transactions. The funds are never taken from the tenant's bank and thus do not need to be "returned." However, a returned payment fee will be incurred.

Reversed payments are transactions in which the tenant attempts to make a payment, but due to some type of error, the funds can not be processed and are reversed. The most common reason for reversed payments is insufficient funds or payment disputes. When this happens, a tenant's payment is reversed in the system, the reversal fee is deducted from your merchant account, and the tenant is charged a returned payment fee. DoorLoop will handle all this on the backend. Once that fee is paid by the tenant, that money will go back into your account.

You can also set up DoorLoop to automatically notify you when your tenant has a reversed payment.

You can review reversed payments and how they affect your deposits by clicking Reports on the main menu and then clicking on the Deposit Transactions report in the Accounting section.

Here, you can click on each deposit, and it will show exactly what made up that deposit, including reversed payments and reverse payment fees.

If you want to see the reason why your tenant's payment was reversed, click on the Reversed Payment report in the Who Owes You section.

You can filter by ePay only to see only online reversed payments and take out reversed payments you recorded manually.

In the Memo column of this report, you will see the reason for the return as reported by our payment processor. If they were ACH payments, you'll also see a special code attached to the reversed payment. (To see a complete list of each ACH Error Code, you can read the article ACH Payment Return Codes and What They Mean.)

Reversed payments will incur a Returned Payment Fee. Stripe will debit your bank account first for the Return Payment Fee plus any platform fees. That means any time a payment is reversed, you, as the merchant account owner, will be incurring the costs of the returned payment fee at first.

Fear not, though, because those return payment fees and platform fees will be charged to your tenant's lease automatically, so when they make their next payment with those fees included, it'll be paid back to your bank account and zeroed out.

When the tenant makes a payment through the tenant portal, they agree to the terms that if a payment is reversed, there will be a return payment fee plus any platform fees charged to them on their account. It is shown to them on the payment screen as well as in the Tenant Portal Terms of Service.

This fee is passed through to the tenant when their online payments are reversed for any reason.

Fees associated with payment reversals will be reflected on their lease ledger as a charge labeled --Split Values-- line item will vary based on the platform fee that differs per subscription tier.

If you click on the charge, you'll see the Return Payment Platform Fee and the Returned Payment Processor Fee.

That's it. The Return Payment Fee is for Reversed Payments when your tenant's payments fail. Now you'll know what to look out for and what to do with those fees from Stripe.