Glossary

PeopleCopy Anchor Link

• Admin: A member of your agency who can change agency settings, manage the team, assign postings, and close, archive or delete them. Admins can also do everything an agent can on any posting.
• Agent: A member of your agency who works postings. An agent can create postings, start reviews and work the postings assigned to them.
• Assigned agent: The agent carrying a posting. Only the assigned agent and your admins can make changes to it.
• On duty: A setting each member turns on or off from their own menu. When a posting has no assigned agent, Vonda sends your agency's messages about it to whoever is on duty.
• Defendant: The person in custody. Every posting has exactly one.
• Co-signer: A person who signs for the defendant's bail and is responsible for it. A posting can have several.
• Primary co-signer: The one co-signer who receives the price, pays, and can invite another co-signer. Usually the person who started the bail request. An agent can make a different co-signer the primary before the payment is in, or while a payment plan still has principal owed.

Postings and bondsCopy Anchor Link

• Posting: The job of getting one defendant out of one jail. It holds the defendant, the co-signers, one or more bonds, the payment, the documents and everything that happens along the way.
• Bond: One court case the defendant needs bail for. A defendant held on cases from two courts has two bonds on the same posting. Each bond has its own court, case number, bail, charges and premium rate.
• Bond number: The number Vonda gives each bond, starting with your agency's prefix, for example AAABB-000123. A posting doesn't have a number of its own: it's known by its defendant and its bond numbers.
• Bail: The amount the court set for a bond.
• Power of attorney: The surety's document that backs a bond. You attach the signed power and its number to each bond.
• Facility: The jail or detention center holding the defendant.
• Booking number: The number the facility gave the defendant when they were booked.
• Status: Where a posting is and whose move it is. See Posting statuses.
• Closed: A posting that ended without a release, for example because the family went elsewhere. Only an admin can close or reopen one.
• Archived: A posting an admin has filed away. Nothing on it can change until it's unarchived.
• Shelf: One of the groups on the Postings page: Open, Liability, Exonerated, Closed and Archived.

MoneyCopy Anchor Link

• Premium: What your agency charges for a bond: its bail times its premium rate.
• Premium rate: The percentage of the bail charged as the premium. Each bond starts at your agency's default rate, and you can change it per bond before you approve.
• Premium total: All of a posting's premiums added together.
• Fee: An extra charge on a posting, on top of the premiums. It's either a fixed dollar amount or a percentage.
• Fee rule: A fee your agency sets up once. Active fee rules are added to every new posting automatically.
• Amount due: The premium total plus the fees. It's the only amount a co-signer is ever charged, in full or through a payment plan, and it's locked once you approve the posting.
• Collateral: Cash an agent may ask the primary co-signer for before approving a risky posting, held until the bail is over. One amount per posting, never part of the amount due, never paid in installments and never counted as collected. Its return is governed by the indemnification contract. See Request collateral.
• Collateral request: The agent's ask for collateral on a posting under review. It can be edited or withdrawn while unpaid, and the posting can't be approved until it's held. A withdrawn request stays in the posting's history, and the agent can ask again while the posting is Reviewing. It ends returned or forfeited, as the agent records.

Payment plansCopy Anchor Link

• Payment plan: An arrangement for the primary co-signer to pay the amount due as a down payment followed by equal installments, at the plan's APR. An agent sets its terms, and the co-signer accepts it by paying the down payment. From then on its terms can't change. A posting has at most one. See Set up payment plans.
• Payment plan request: The primary co-signer's ask, from their bail page, to pay through a payment plan instead of in full, with an optional note. The posting shows Review Plan Request until an agent approves or declines it, or the co-signer withdraws it.
• Down payment: The part of the amount due a payment plan collects up front. Paying it accepts the plan and moves the posting on exactly as paying in full does. The installments are scheduled from the day it's paid.
• Installment: One of a payment plan's equal scheduled payments after the down payment, due a week, two weeks or a month after the one before. The last one can differ by a few cents.
• APR: The yearly interest rate a payment plan charges on its amount financed. Your agency sets a default, and the agent can change it for each plan. 0% is allowed.
• Amount financed: The amount due minus the down payment: what the installments repay.
• Outstanding principal: What's left of the amount financed after the installments paid so far, shown as Principal still owed. Paying off a plan costs this, plus the interest any overdue installments already carried.
• Overdue installment: An installment still unpaid after its due date. It carries no late fee and grows no extra interest.
• Payment plan agreement: Your agency's own contract for a payment plan: a co-signer template switched to plan-only, generated once per posting for postings with a plan.

DocumentsCopy Anchor Link

• Co-signer documents: The paperwork your co-signers read and sign, such as the indemnity agreement, and the payment plan agreement on a posting with a plan.
• Facility documents: The paperwork that goes to the jail with the submission.
• Internal documents: Files you attach to a posting for your agency's own records. Nobody outside your agency sees them.

Links and pagesCopy Anchor Link

• Intake link: Your agency's public web address, where co-signers start a bail request on their own. You can copy it with Share intake link on the Dashboard.
• Bail page: Each co-signer's own private page for their posting, sometimes called the portal. It's where they follow progress, pay, sign documents and see court dates. Every co-signer gets their own link.
• Appear: The page where a jail receives a posting's submission, reads the paperwork, and accepts, rejects or records the release. Facilities use it for free, with no login. See What is Appear.
• Facility PIN: The 6-digit code a facility enters on Appear to accept, reject or release. Vonda issues it to the facility. Agencies never see it.

After releaseCopy Anchor Link

• Court date: A hearing the defendant has to attend, recorded on a bond. Co-signers are reminded before each one.
• Attendance: Whether the defendant attended or missed a past court date. You mark it after each hearing.
• Liability: The bail your agency is on the hook for: every posting that's been released and not yet exonerated.
• Exonerate: To close out a released posting once every court date is behind the defendant and marked. It takes the posting off your liability. See Exonerate a posting.
• Google review link: The address of your agency's Google Business Profile review page, where a co-signer can leave your agency a Google review. You paste it into Settings when you turn on Google reviews. See Ask co-signers for a Google review.
• Review request: The invitation to leave your agency a Google review, sent to every co-signer when the defendant is released: in the release email and text, and at the top of their bail page while the posting stays Released. It's off until you turn on Google reviews, and it's asked of everyone, never only of co-signers who sounded happy.