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Standard Tuition vs Tuition As a Fee

Geoffrey Goodfellow

We have been long-term users of Enrollment Management (EM) and Tuition Management (TM). We currently use EM-integrated contracts that have been working well. Our original implementation of TM had us setup “Tuition As a Fee” rather than “Standard Tuition” in TM. I'm not sure if “Tuition As a Fee” was the only option back then when using an integrated contract or not. However, according to

it seems that it is possible to use either. With the launch of the new TM PDF invoices, because we use “Tuition As a Fee”, page 1 shows Tuition as $0.00 and our entire tuition under the “Fees” area of the invoice which has caused us to receive lots of parent calls thinking that something is wrong. (On page 3 of the PDF invoice, it does provide a little more clarification to parents, but many parents don't make it down that far before they call.)

After a call with support, it seems the only way to have these new invoices display correctly is to use “Standard Tuition” in TM. Unfortunately, this cannot be changed now that our contracts are done for this year, but in preparation for next summer, I'm considering making the change.

Is there anybody that has any experience with the differences between “Tuition As a Fee” and “Standard Tuition” that could give me more insight into any unintended consequences I might experience by changing next summer? If “Standard Tuition” is the best-practice, then what is the purpose of having “Tuition As a Fee”? It seems like Standard Tuition needs to be setup in EM and not TM. Do the amounts then get populated in TM correctly when the contract is published? Any other reporting problems by making the change? We also post to FEnxt, but it seems like I would be able to map the Standard Tuition to the correct accounts.

Thanks in advance for any wisdom anybody can share.

Geoffrey Goodfellow

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Comments

Erin OKeefe

@Geoffrey Goodfellow I hope the following information is helpful! The primary reason for using tuition fees is if you need to map different tuition categories into different GL accounts. You cannot do this if you use standard tuition so that may be the deciding factor for your school. There is some more information here : Tuition Fees (blackbaud.com) . The good news is that the request to show Tuition fees in the Tuition line on the invoices instead of down below in the fee section has been accepted as a planned future enhancement HERE .

Geoffrey Goodfellow

Many thanks, @Erin OKeefe! That information is very helpful. You are correct that we do map to different GL accounts for each of our tuition types, so staying with “Tuition as a Fee” will be our preferred model then. I'm thrilled to see the invoice improvement idea as “planned” and have also subscribed to that idea so that I can monitor its progress. Thanks for the timely and helpful feedback to my Community post.

Erin OKeefe

@Geoffrey Goodfellow I'm glad to assist! Have a wonderful day