Our users have reported that a late fee motivates students to register for exams in a timely manner, which allows for a more efficient registration process. A late fee period provides a coordinator additional time to double-check the overall registration status and encourage students who have not registered to get signed up for exams. If students register after the late fee date, they will pay more to take exams, but they will still get the chance to take exams, where they may not if it was after the deadline.
You can set up late fee dates on the Late Fee Configuration page in the Fee and Payment Set-up section of the AP Registration Site Configuration. When considering late fees, remember that exams ordered after the College Board date will incur additional fees. Schools often use a second late fee to cover these additional College Board order costs. Some schools even report collecting enough in late fees to cover the cost of our registration service.
You can automatically charge a late registration fee using the Late Fee Info page in the Fee and Payment Set-up section of the AP Registration Site Configuration. You can enter the date you wish the system to assess a late fee to any student registering after this deadline.
If you would like students to be able to register themselves online during the late fee period(s), it is important that the registration end date is set beyond the late fee date. After the registration end date (set in the General Info Section) students cannot register themselves online and will need to come see you to register.
Schools have the ability to charge tiered late fees and/or late fees based on the semester (or block) the associated class meets. Please note that the late fees are not cumulative, in other words, only the most recent late fee will be calculated, previous late fees will be ignored.
If you did not include the late fee in your initial set up of your registration site, you can still assess a late fee to students. This article explains how to charge a late fee after the deadline has passed.
You can learn more about using late fees by reading https://www.totalregistration.net/docs/Using_A_Late_Fee_For_AP_Registration.pdf