Tuition Management

Coco Parham
Coco Parham
Eighth Anniversary Kudos 3 Name Dropper Participant
in Blackbaud K–12 Education Solutions™ General Discussions

Hello, we will start using Tuition Management with the 2022-23 contract season this spring. Does anyone have any tips/tricks or advise about rolling it out to parents?

Thanks in advance,

Coco Parham

Comments

  • Bryan Lorenzo
    Bryan Lorenzo Blackbaud Employee
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 5 Name Dropper Participant

    Hi @Coco Parham -

    When we went with the tuition integrated contracts, our biggest challenge was parents who had not logged into Tuition Management via the resource board tile on the portal, so their My School App and TM accounts were not linked.

    This caused a lot of calls into the school to help obtain this information & duplicate accounts. If their account is not linked, it asks them:

    • "Yes, I already have a Blackbaud Tuition Management account with …." or
    • "No, I don't have a Blackbaud Tuition Management account with …."

    As the years have passed, this has become a moot point as the account have been linked. The integration between EM and TM has improved tremendously over the years. One thing happens infrequently is that the account gets created in TM, and their payment is processed, but the contract does not get marked as returned in EM. We've had 720 submitted so far, and this has happened twice.

  • Coco Parham
    Coco Parham
    Eighth Anniversary Kudos 3 Name Dropper Participant

    Bryan,

    Thank you so much for this information. We are sending out first time user instructions so hopefully the parents wont be too confused. Wish us luck! Thanks!

  • Jess Moxsky
    Jess Moxsky
    Kudos 5 Fourth Anniversary Name Dropper Participant

    Seconding Bryan's comment about the SSO/resource board tile. It's getting better every year so this shouldn't be a huge issue moving forward. One positive I LOVE pointing out is that TM has its own parent help line - you can take those questions off your plate and have them contact TM directly for questions and issues that aren't school-policy related.

    If your school allows families to pay offline via check, you will want to set up a separate non-integrated contract form for that purpose. In the past we had issues when parents who were paying in cash were still prompted to go into TM and possibly incur a processing fee.

  • Coco Parham
    Coco Parham
    Eighth Anniversary Kudos 3 Name Dropper Participant

    Jess, thank you for your help! I do like that families can go straight to TM for questions. We were told to use the ACH option in the contract and parents can use the integrated contract. Also, we need to have a non-integrated contract at the ready for use if families FA changes. Thanks again, Coco

  • Jess Moxsky
    Jess Moxsky
    Kudos 5 Fourth Anniversary Name Dropper Participant

    The only note I have about ACH is that families who want to pay in full up-front typically do not want to pay the processing fee for TM, hence the non-integrated contract option. Best of luck!

  • Bryan Lorenzo
    Bryan Lorenzo Blackbaud Employee
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 5 Name Dropper Participant

    Jess Moxley:

    The only note I have about ACH is that families who want to pay in full up-front typically do not want to pay the processing fee for TM, hence the non-integrated contract option. Best of luck!

    Hi @Jess Moxley - am I missing something here? What do you mean by ACH and processing fees? All of our contracts are TM integrated, and parents can either pay by CC or ACH.

  • Coco Parham
    Coco Parham
    Eighth Anniversary Kudos 3 Name Dropper Participant

    I am only talking about the contract deposit. Thanks, Coco

  • Jess Moxsky
    Jess Moxsky
    Kudos 5 Fourth Anniversary Name Dropper Participant

    IIRC, TM implements a one-time administrative fee (not a processing fee, my bad) for all users. In the past, I've had parents who want to pay in full by check and do not want to pay that administrative fee. We've allowed them to pay offline and use a non-integrated contract, but you could absolutely opt to make all parents pay through TM regardless.

  • Jamie Cross
    Jamie Cross
    Ninth Anniversary Kudos 2 Name Dropper Participant

    We use Tuition Management to also charge their student accounts with any incidentals throughout the year (bookstore charges, field trips, etc.) so even the parents paying the whole bill at once are required to do so through Tuition Management.

  • Derek Nichols
    Derek Nichols Blackbaud Employee
    Ninth Anniversary Kudos 5 Name Dropper Participant

    Pretty sure you saw it, but just in case, we have a bunch of resources around the Parent experience with Tuition management including a video that goes over the recent rebrand/other updates. Check it out here:

  • Derek Nichols
    Derek Nichols Blackbaud Employee
    Ninth Anniversary Kudos 5 Name Dropper Participant

    While I'm here, we also have this FAQ style page specifically geared towards parents/payers.

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