First, congratulations on the purchase of your new home, and welcome to the community!
At closing, the title company should have collected the first full month’s assessment from you, so you shouldn’t owe any assessments out-of-pocket until your second full month. Sometimes the title companies don’t follow our instructions on this, but most often they do.
Once we receive that first full month the title company collected from you at closing, we will set up an account for you and mail out a welcome letter. That letter will include your account number and how to get set up with the Resident Center, if you choose to. There is nothing you need to do until you receive that letter, and since your first full month has already been paid, there should be sufficient time for the title company to send your closing proceeds to us and for us to send our welcome letter to you.
If you choose a fixed amount, the software will always withdraw that amount and that amount only on the day of your choosing. If that amount is too little, too much, no longer matches the assessments as the years go by and the amounts change, it will still just pull the same amount on the same day each month.
We recommend using the “Entire balance” setting with no maximum. This will give you the ability to set it and forget it. If you are ever underpaid for any reason, it will pull the extra amount outstanding. If you’re ever overpaid, it will reduce your payment by the amount of the overpayment. As assessments change over the years, you will not need to readjust it.
The one warning we offer is for early payers: When you use the “Entire balance” setting, the software can only see 5 days into the future. If you set your payment date too early, especially on 31-day months, it may not be able to see the future charges on the date you chose and thus won’t pull any amount out. We recommend choosing the 27th as your withdrawal date to prevent this from happening.
You may have your autopay set to a fixed amount or you have a cap on the “Entire balance” setting that is less than the assessment amount. You need to adjust this to make sure your autopay is capturing the full amount.
From the main screen in the Resident Center, click Payments in the menu, then click “Edit” on your scheduled payment to make the changes. We advise choosing the “Entire balance” setting without a maximum amount. That will ensure your autopay changes as the years go on and the assessments increase or decrease over time.
The “Entire balance” option was introduced by our software provider in late 2023. If you’ve been with us longer than that, you probably set up your autopay with the fixed amount setting because it was all that was available at the time. We recommend switching so you don’t have to remember to adjust it every year anymore as assessments change.
The other potential reason is that you are paying your assessments early, and it’s too early for the software to see the upcoming charges. Our software can only see charges 5 days into the future. Especially if you picked a date like the 25th or 26th, this may be close enough to the end of the month in some months but not in 31 day months. If you choose the 27th, you will always be within 5 days of the end of the month and you shouldn’t have this problem. If your payment seems to be pulling every other month, which may also be causing you to incur late fees on the unpaid balance, this is almost certainly the reason. Just change your withdrawal date to the 27th. If you incurred late fees as a result of an issue like this, please enter a balance dispute with us by clicking here. This is an understandable mistake, and we can waive your late fees.
It may be necessary to make a one-time payment to correct the amount your payments have been short. You can do this by clicking the “Make a payment” button. You will be warned that you already have a scheduled autopay. Proceeding by clicking the “Yes, make payment” button will not interfere with your existing autopay going forward. When you make the one-time payment, please manually enter the amount to not pay the late fees and then enter a balance dispute by clicking here so we can remove them. If you pay them and we remove them, we don’t have the ability to electronically reverse the payment back to you. You will have to wait for a paper refund check in the mail. This is more easily avoided by just not paying the late fees and entering the balance dispute for us to fix it.
First, please double-check your email. If your payment was rejected by your bank, you should have received an email with the reason your bank refused the payment.
The next most common reason is that your autopay is set to “Entire Balance” instead of a fixed amount and the date you chose your payment to withdraw is too early. Our software can only see charges 5 days into the future. Especially if you picked a date like the 25th or 26th, this may be close enough to the end of the month in some months but not in 31 day months. If you choose the 27th, you will always be within 5 days of the end of the month and you shouldn’t have this problem.
Lastly, very rarely, it sometimes just doesn’t work. In our experience, out of all of the communities and individual homes under our management, we see this occur once or twice a year. To know if the problem is on our end, when you log into your account click “Payments” in the menu and look at “Scheduled payments” at the top of the page. If the date is in the past, the failure was on our end. You can fix this yourself by clicking “Edit” on that payment and changing the date to the next date you want it to pull a payment to a future date. If you aren’t comfortable doing this, we are happy to help if you contact us via email at service@ajenning.com. Please email for help on this issue; don’t call. In order to make changes to your account for you, we need evidence of your permission in writing.
Regardless of the reason your autopay didn’t pull, it may be necessary to make a one-time payment to correct the error. You can do this by clicking the “Make a payment” button. You will be warned that you already have a scheduled autopay. Proceeding by clicking the “Yes, make payment” button will not interfere with your existing autopay going forward.
First, please double-check the date on the late notice versus the date your payment cleared. Very often late notices and payments cross each other in the mail.
Second, please review the statement attachment to the late notice, and log into the Resident Center and click Payments if you need to see more of your account history. It’s possible you have an outstanding balance from previously and your payment didn’t sufficiently cover it.
Third, if you paid via online banking, please be advised these are not true electronic transactions. A check is sent on your behalf from your bank, which does make it subject to the same potential issues with USPS had you mailed a paper check yourself. Please also be advised, some banks will show the payment as “cleared” on your end either as soon as they send the check or when they believe the check will arrive. The only way to pay from truly electronic means is through the Resident Center, and payments made using a bank account’s routing and account number carry no convenience fees and are instantly credited to the account.
If after reading this you still don’t understand the reason for your balance, you can dispute or inquire further about your balance by clicking here and completing the form.
Your payments are considered due by the first of the month and late if not received by the 30th. If payment is not received by the 30th, a late fee of 25% of the outstanding balance applies.
Assessments are decided by the budget, which is approved by the Board of Directors each year. Your association’s known, contracted and reasonably anticipated expenses are totaled each year, the amount of income needed to pay those expenses is totaled, and each owner is assessed their proportional share of the expenses in accordance with the community’s governing documents.
A copy of your association’s budget can’t be shared on this public-facing page, but if you log into the Resident Center, under the Documents menu item and the Budgets & Assessments category, you can download a copy of the current budget. Likewise, under the Financial Reports category in the documents section you can download the monthly financial reports to see how your association’s money is being spent.
This arrangement doesn’t work this way, and this is a very common misconception.
A. Jenning Properties is a contracted property management company, much in the sense that your community contracts for lawn care. And just as the lawn care company can be hired, fired and renewed when its contract ends, the same applies to our company. We do handle collecting your assessments, but that’s not “our money”. We are paid a contracted fee for our services, just like the lawn care company.
Likewise, we don’t provide any physical maintenance services, and with only minimal exceptions of the lowest, non-recurring costs, we don’t choose which companies provide services at your community. These decisions are made by the Board of Directors. Our job is to oversee those contractors, make sure they are performing to their contract specifications and address any issues that may arise. But their contracts are with your association, not with our management company.
The entity you are paying is your community association, not our company. The association is a non-profit entity, and it does not require homeowners to pay any assessments beyond what is needed to fund the community’s expenses and make contributions to its long-term reserves. Of course, part of your money goes towards paying our management contract fee, but that’s not a direct payment. You pay your association, and your association pays us, among its other bills.
Yes. Please click here to download a copy of the form. Please print this out, complete it and mail it into us at the address on the form. Do not mail this form to the Phoenix P.O. Box, as that is for payments only. Please don’t fax or email this form. It will contain your sensitive bank data once complete, and these are not secure submission methods.
Please note the form is designed to accommodate automatic payments for both credit cards and bank accounts. You do not need to fill out sections that aren’t relevant to your payment method. It is recommended that you use a bank account’s routing and account number, as there is no additional fee for this payment method. If you are at all unsure which information is being requested, please simply send a voided check in with the form.
This can occur if you send an online bill pay payment from a bank who posts the payment when they mail it or when they anticipate it will be received instead of when it actually clears. We see this commonly with Bank of America, US Bank and Regions Bank, among others. The date our records reflect your payment was received is 100% accurate. If our records show we haven’t received your payment, we have not.
When you send a check through online bill pay with your bank, this is not a true electronic payment. The bank is mailing a check on your behalf, and those checks are subject to the same delays or losses as anything else sent through USPS. We have inquired about true electronic processing with the bank, and expressed willingness to pay for this service. We are told our company doesn’t do a significant enough volume of payments to qualify. This isn’t only because we are a small management company. According to them, only the largest management companies qualify, none of which operate in St. Louis.
The only way to make true electronic payments is through the Resident Center. There is no fee to process a payment if the payment method is the routing and account number from a bank account. You can log into your account or request one if you don’t have one by clicking here.
