Automatic Notifications to Parents > Billing Management

Margaret Paczynski

Hi everyone,

Have any schools set up Automatic Notifications to Parents through Core for Billing Management? I.e. Past Due Payment nonfictions.

We are curious to see how it has gone for others.

Any insights would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Margaret

Christine Adams

@Margaret Piskorz
Hi Margaret -

We are currently using all of the Billing Management notifications. They have worked well for us. We just moved to Billing Management in May, with our first tuition payment for the 23-24 school due May 31st. The past due email was a great tool for all of the parents that did not pay attention to our communications about a new billing system, to let them know they missed a payment. I edited the notification to let parents know they could respond to the email with questions and set my email up as the reply to email.

Christine

Margaret Paczynski

@Christine Adams Thank you so much Christine! This is very helpful. So if a parent had made a payment, they did not receive a past due notification, correct?

Christine Adams

@Margaret Piskorz
Yes, if there was no past due balance outstanding, they did not receive an email, so it worked as intended. We have it set to email two days past the due date. I am trying to decide if I go in and send another email 14 days past the due date for those that still have not paid since there is only one option right now.

Amalia Reef

@Christine Adams This is very helpful. In the case that someone has an amount past due but is up-to-date on their monthly payments, would they get a past due notification? It sounds like they would. How often would they get it? After each of their payment dates?

Christine Adams

@Amalia Reef We are now currently using a 2 day and 10 day past due notification, which seems to work well for us overall. What I have learned over the past few months is if a parent has a past due balance that is aged longer than 2 or 10 days, they do not receive an email. Also, if they are past due in one month but also have older charges on their account, when they get the 2 or 10 day past due email, it only includes the total of the charges that are 2 or 10 days past due. Some of this is resolved when they need to eventually login to pay for a current charge or a newer past due charge and see the older charges in the total. But I have also had to individually follow-up with families that had months old charges but no new charges, so really had no idea they were past due. It would be helpful to have a ‘total’ past due email that you could set for a certain number of days after the month end but it captured all outstanding past due charges. I hope this helps but please let me know if you have any other questions.

Margaret Paczynski

@Christine Adams
Hi Christine,

I know I started this thread last year so I apologize I never got back to you or thanked you for responding!

We never did start using this but now that Blackbaud has added the “Communication” tab directly into Billing Management we were revisiting this option.

Your feedback was useful in understanding how the emails only generate based on for example 2 or 10 days past due balances.

I agree there should be an option to be able to send out an email for total amount due.

Thanks again!

Margaret

Christine Adams

@Margaret Paczynski No problem at all - I'm glad the information was helpful. I do recommend using the reminder emails. I always see a pick-up in payments on the days the past due emails go out. These tend to get more attention than the upcoming payment emails. ?