Is It Time To Bill Tuition? Tackle Billing Schedules Like A Pro

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Billing Schedules are a handy way to easily accommodate the tuition and fee billing options commonly offered by independent schools. Automatic Billing, Financial Aid, Advance Deposit, and TRP Billing Items help you accurately manage your receivables and they make it easy for families to understand what they owe your school monthly by coordinating the transaction dates, post dates, and due dates of charges and credits on student records. Added benefits include more meaningful aged accounts receivable reporting and more timely data for use in forecasting how your student billings will influence cash flow.


 Choices! Choices! So many choices!                      


Do you offer more than one installment option for families to pay their tuition charges? Can families pay tuition in two installments? Maybe families at your school can pay in 10 equal installments. How can you be sure that credits from Financial Aid and Advance Deposits are easily generated on the same dates as the installments so that balances due can be accurately shown on statements and aged accounts receivable reports?


 You might find billings can be even more complicated to manage when your school’s tuition and fee structure allows families to choose from multiple due date options. For example, families might be allowed to choose either the 1st or 15th of the month as their installment due date.


 You Can Do It!


In Student Billing, when you create Automatic Billing Items, Financial Aid Items, Advance Deposit Items, and TRP Items, you define a date schedule for the generation of charges and credits. There are some choices to make when you set up these 4 billing item types.


Let’s say for example your school’s tuition is $10,000 per student and your billing cycle begins July 1st. You allow families to choose from the following installment plans:


Plan 1: Pay in one installment on July 1st.


Plan 2: Pay in two equal installments July 1st and January 1st;


Plan 3: Pay in 10 equal installments monthly from July 1st through April 1st.


Also assume that your school collects advance deposits, offers financial aid, and manages a Tuition Refund Plan. Families can also choose a due date for their payment as the 1st of the month or the 15th of the month.


You could create one of these Billing Items for each installment plan date schedule. If you offer many different plans, it is easy to see that the number of Billing Items to manage could become quickly overwhelming.


Use Default Schedules!


To deal with this dilemma, use Default Schedules on student records.


When a student record has a Default Schedule defined, the transaction dates of any Automatic Billing Item, Advance Deposit Item, Financial Aid Item, or TRP Item you use to add charges or credits is modified to the dates in the Default Schedule.


This occurs as long as the date of the transaction is within the valid dates of the Default Schedule. The practical effect is that you only need to define one of each scheduled Billing Item for any Billing Cycle because the Items are adapted to any installment plan. This ensures that your charge and credit transaction dates will be coordinated. Also, when you generate these scheduled transactions on records, you can specify due dates and post dates to follow the schedule in whatever way needed for your aged accounts receivable and posting requirements.


Go ahead and give it a try. Tackle your billings like a Pro!


Need more information on billing? Register now for our 4 hour instructor-led training called Transactions in Student Billing.


Check out the following Knowledgebase articles on more on the setup of the processes above:


How to create an automatic billing item schedule


How to automatically add billing schedules, charges and credits to a student’s record in Blackbaud Student Information System


Have any questions? Leave a comment below!


 

News Blackbaud K-12 Education Solutions™ Blog 06/29/2015 6:30am EDT

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