The most common support question we receive relates to the fees associated with electronic filing in the Odyssey eFile program. Please read this article carefully for a thorough explanation.
The Odyssey eFile Court Convenience Fee
With the implementation of electronic filing, courts are presented with a new challenge; collecting court filing fees (both those mandated by State court rules and local court rules) in an automated fashion. The most readily available solution for this is the use of credit cards. As such, the court’s EFM software vendor, Tyler Technologies, collects court filing fees via their Tyler Online Payment Gateway (TOGA). They then pass back those monies back to the court. However, when allowing credit cards, credit card vendors charge the courts a transaction fee. Not willing to lose that money, the court charges filers their own Court Convenience Fee. The amount varies from state to state, and they add the fee to the credit card transaction.
The Odyssey eFile California Service Fee
Perhaps the most alluring benefit to California courts participating in the Odyssey eFile California program is their access to the software they need in order to receive, review, and process electronic filings at little cost to the court. This software is commonly referred to as the court’s Electronic Filing Manager or EFM.
Ultimately the EFM software is funded by the court’s decision to implement a service fee for each filing, what we refer to as the Odyssey eFileCA EFM Fee. In a nutshell, without this service fee, the court would not be able to fund and implement electronic filing, and would continue to suffer from the inefficiencies and expense of receiving, pushing, and storing paper.
As such, those courts participating in the Odyssey eFile California program have adopted a per filing submission service fee of $5.00 for those courts allowing permissive e-filing, and $3.50 for those courts mandating e-filing.
Sample Filing Fee Confirmation
Our application breaks down the court filing fees due for each document submitted in the transaction. Additionally, we list the Transaction Fees, Convenience Fees, and/or our Provider Service Fees there. Also, note that none of these line items describe any fee due to, or collected from us. Odyssey’s eFile system via TOGA charges and collects the fees; our service does not.
EFSP Provider Service Fees
The EFSP may collect their Provider Service Fees in one of two ways:
(1) upon the court’s acceptance of a filing,
(2) via a monthly invoice
Accounts with our Provider Service Fees collected upon acceptance
Most accounts have the EFSP collect the provider service fees upon the filing clerk’s acceptance of a submission. The user will see the fee displayed on Section 7. Filing Fees.
Accounts with fees collected via monthly invoice
Some Green Filing accounts in California bill filers one time per month based on the number of accepted submissions during a particular billing period. By way of example, if a user created an account on the 5th of the month, then on the 5th of each month, Green Filing will invoice that account for those filings submitted in the previous month.
If at any time, a user no longer wants monthly invoices, and instead would like to switch to our provider service fees collected at the time of acceptance, please reach out to one of our chat agents to update the account.
