Student Billing State-of-Mind: Control Generated Credit Applications

How would you like to ensure credits generated from Financial Aid schedules can only apply to tuition or specific charges? Beginning in version 7.75, you can set application restrictions to control the application of advance deposit credits and financial aid credits.

1. In Configuration, click Products and Billing Items.
2. Open the Financial Aid or Advance Deposit item.
3. Select the Restrictions tab.
4. In the Use the restrictions from field, select Specific settings below and define the appropriate filters or Configuration and select the appropriate application restriction.
5. Click Save and Close.

Student Billing State-of-Mind Time Saver: Enter Charges and Payments Fast!er

I wanted to share with you a little known, and extremely under utilized, feature in Student Billing that can save you hours of charge and payment data entry time.  It's called Fast!. Using Fast! allows you to quickly enter a large number of charges or payments at one time using a customized datasheet, instead of opening each record individually. When you process the datasheet, Fast! automatically creates the group of new records.

The first thing you need to do is create the Fast! datasheet. Once the datasheet is created, it can be used over and over again to enter charges or payments. Follow these steps:

1. In Fast!, click New SB Charge or New SB Payment.
2. Enter a name and description.
3. In the Default set field, click the binoculars to select a saved or create a new default set (BB106328).
4. In the list of available fields, highlight the fields to include in the datasheet and click Select.
   Notes:
   • Fields appear in the datasheet columns in the order in which you select them.  I recommend prioritizing the field order to speed data entry. For example, put rarely used fields near the end of the datasheet.
   • If you add a field that causes other fields to become required, the program automatically adds the additional required fields.
5. Once all fields are selected, click:
   • Save and Close to save the datasheet and return to the Fast! page.
   • Save and New to save and close the datasheet and open a new one.
   • Datasheet View to save the datasheet and begin entering charges or payments.

1. In Fast!, open the datasheet, and click Datasheet View.
   Notes:
   • If you entered a default set, the values appear in the default row (D). If you did not assign a default set, click the binoculars to select a saved or create a new default set.
   • Values selected to display in the default row will default based on the default auto-fill setting (BB351843).
2. Click Add Records By Query in the dark gray bar to automatically load a group of records into the datasheet, if appropriate.
3. Enter the appropriate data and press Tab to move through fields.
4. Click Save and then Commit Records to create the group of records.

For more information about Fast!, check out the Fast! Guide.

Enjoy your new found time . Talk to you soon!

Student Billing State-of-Mind: Incorrect Charges or Credits?

Here's a possible scenario: You just finished running statements and realized that there are charges on the wrong records. Now what? Well, I am glad to let you know that there is an easy fix for whatever your incorrect charge or credit scenario. All you need to do is delete the charge from the incorrect record and add it to the correct record if appropriate; this process also works for credits. To delete the incorrect charges or credits:

1. Open the Student record and select the Activity tab.
2. Select Activity from the View drop-down menu.
3. Highlight the charge and click Delete on the action bar.

If the charge or credit has been posted, you will be prompted to enter the date for reversing entries to post to General Ledger. 

Happy to Help – Top 5 Places to Use F1 in Student Billing

I had such a fun time writing my first top 5 for my (borderline freakish) love of the F1 key, I decided to create a special edition focused only on Student Billing. We all know billing students can become complicated and stressful with deadlines, complicated fee setups, and (most importantly) trying to get your bills paid on time. To help you use Student Billing more effectively, here are my top 5 places to use F1.

5. Student Billing Processing page. What's even better than a page that graphically lays out the processing order for you? Press F1 and see documentation that outlines the different steps and how to complete each successfully.

4. Config > Determination Tables. If you bill students based on information from The Registrar's Office, setting up your determination tables correctly might be the most important thing you ever do. You can make your determination tables as simple or as complicated as you want.

3. Admin > Set up Student Billing > Define Schedules. When you spend time on your schedules in the first place, you create a gift for yourself that gives back year after year. When you define schedules you establish templates that you can reuse on billing item records. And, yes, I did use the word reuse. I love that word because to me it's the joy of doing something right once and not having to fuss with it later.

In fact, there are many such places in Student Billing where, if you spend the time to set up properly, you can save yourself time in future financial years. If you spend, or have spent, a majority of your time in Admin & Config you're doing something right.

2. Fast! How can anything be fast when you need to press F1? Well, by spending the time to learn how to use Fast!, you can speed through the process of designing datasheets in no time. Soon, you'll be faster than Tyson Gay when it comes to data entry. And we all know less time spent on data entry makes the world (well mostly your life) better.

1. Records > Students > Payers tab. No, this feature isn't the hardest area of Student Billing but when you press F1 on this tab and see "Adding Payers and Billing Item Exceptions", you are in a place where you want to get the information correct. Right?! After you've done all the setup, defined your billing items, and generated transactions automatically, what's vitally important that needs to come next? Well if you guessed getting your bill into the right hands so that it gets paid (and might I add on time), you're right. To make sure bills are paid, you need to make sure every student has the correct payer information on record.

In past decades you might have rolled your eyes at me because adding payer information was easy - Mom and Dad needed to send in the big check. However, after I attended a Student Billing class this past year, I know differently. I know it's become increasingly difficult to handle extended and complex family situations. You need to define the payers and scenarios in which the proper person pays the correct amount for the correct billing item. Mom pays for housing and books but Dad pays tuition. Or, Grandma and Grandpa pay half the tuition and Mom pays the rest. And so on. Of late, the expanded definition of the American family is causing those forehead stress lines for those working in student billing offices.

These are my top 5 places to use F1. Where do you find yourself itching to press the button?

Student Billing State-of-Mind: What's a Bill Code?

If you've recently started using SB 7, you may be asking yourself, "Self, should I use bill codes?"  Well the answer depends on how you bill students. 

Let's start with what a bill code is and how it's used. Bill codes allow you to only add the bill code to student records instead of multiple individual billing items.  When transactions are automatically generated, the system matches the bill code on the billing item to the student record to determine the appropriate fee schedule to add. 

If your students receive different fees based on grade for example, bill codes would be a good option.  Using bill codes allows you to only add the bill code to student records instead of each individual billing item.  

If all students receive the same billing items, you do not need to use bill codes. Generating transactions automatically provides the option to generate fee schedules for all records at the same time; no need to manually add the billing item or bill code to the student record.   

Talk to you soon!

Scheduling Teachers, Meeting Times, and Rooms

There's a lot of scheduling going on out there, so it's a good thing you can do lots of scheduling in The Education Edge. After you create classes for next year, you can automatically or manually assign meeting times, teachers, and rooms. Let's take a look:

Generate Master Schedule (BB129710)
Use Generate Master Schedule for the majority of your scheduling. You can schedule teachers, rooms, and meeting times at once, and then manually tweak the classes if you need to.

1. On the Scheduling page, click Generate Master Schedule, and then click on the Action bar.
2. You can run Generate Master Schedule for all, selected, or one course. You can exclude periods using student schedule conflicts, include teachers and rooms in the process, and select the start terms to schedule.
3. On the General 2 tab, you can schedule teachers, rooms, and meeting times. You can select to schedule class meetings only if one of the following conditions applies:
   • Room and teacher can be scheduled
   • Room can be scheduled
   • Teacher can be scheduled
   • Room or teacher can be scheduled
4. On the Advanced tab, you can override restrictions and course rules and determine the Generate Master Schedule algorithm. For example, you can override the maximum number of consecutive meetings a teacher can teach, or you can instruct the program to give the highest priority to classes with a single teacher or room resource and the lowest priority to estimated class size.

If you receive an exception such as Teacher conflicts with course rule, review How to troubleshoot Generate Master Schedule exceptions (BB189272).

Edit Master Schedule (BB139597)

1. On the Scheduling page, click Open a class, or click Edit master schedule and select the class.
2. Select the Meetings tab to assign meeting times, teachers, and rooms.
3. To speed your search for free resources, select Class, Find Free from the menu bar. You can also use the Display availability for field to identify times during which teachers and rooms are scheduled so you do not mistakenly create conflicts when moving a class.

• Review your course restrictions (BB358670): I know the heading says time saving tips, but trust me, Generate Master Schedule most likely won't schedule your Geology on Tuesdays unless you add those time or pattern restrictions.
• Schedule in layers: Take advantage of the Filters tab in Generate Master Schedule to schedule groups of classes instead of all classes at once. For example, schedule your science classes, and then schedule your musics, and then your social studies.
• Manually add the important classes first: If you need to make sure Honors Calculus is third period, manually schedule it before running Generate Master Schedule.
• Give the Business to the Business Rules: Set business rules to speed manual scheduling (BB146886). For example, instruct the program to automatically reflect changes to other meetings when you assign a teacher or room to a meeting.

Student Billing State-of-Mind: Top Questions for June

Each month we keep track of the top Student Billing questions you ask.  Here are the Student Billing questions you asked in June and May.

June

• How to generate transactions automatically: BB203516
• How to reconcile subsidiary ledgers to the General Ledger: BB3358
• How to reenroll students, globally create Student Progression Entries, and globally delete checklist items and tracks: BB184652
• How to void a posted payment: BB113811
• How to promote students: BB221822
• How to add transactions to a group: BB203392
• What are the Student Billing end-of-year procedures: BB221777

May

• No invoices show as available to apply to a payment: BB111867
• How to generate transactions automatically: BB203516
• How to use advance deposits: BB210506
• How to reconcile subsidiary ledgers to the General Ledger: BB3358
• Queries including Record Balance process slowly: BB460197
• How to troubleshoot Automatic Transaction Generation: BB257912
• How to void a payment: BB113811

Talk to you soon!

Changing the Start and End Times of Periods?

Scheduled times tend to change at the last minute. Some of the public high schools around here are starting later next year than this year. So I started thinking about how easy it is to update the start and end times of periods after scheduling classes in The Education Edge and thought I'd share it with you.

When you edit the times in a timetable, you are creating a copy of your existing timetable with the new period times. As always, be sure to create a backup (BB52243) before changing the timetable.

1. In Configuration, select Registrar Setup and then click Timetables.
2. Select the timetable to edit and click Open on the action bar.
3. On the Periods tab, edit the appropriate periods.

   • If you have already scheduled classes, edit the start and end times of periods only. Do not change the order of periods in the day.
   • To ensure you do not invalidate patterns or delete class meetings, edit each cycle day's periods manually. Do not use the synchronization feature.
4. Click Save on the action bar.
5. On the Update Setup Process screen, unmark the checkbox for any academic year to exclude from the changes.

After you save changes to the timetable, all the information for the academic year points to the copied versions (e.g., Monday-Friday1). So that's it!  By the way, these steps are also in Knowledgebase (BB201338).

School's Out for Summer - What Do You Do?

Want to get a head start on the 2008-2009 year? Take a moment to review these skills. We’ll cover many of these in more detail down the road.

1. Take a good look at your Academic Year in Configuration. Ensure the correct marking column set is associated with your session, check the starting and ending dates on the terms, and enter your scheduling calendar so your attendance cycle days are correct for the whole year.
   
2. Ensure the first cycle day is correct on the academic year terms. If the starting cycle day is wrong, the cycle days in attendance will be off for the entire term.
   
3. Refresh yourself on drop, withdraw, and transfer (BB134926). Be sure to enter a withdraw date on the term so you can withdraw students from classes instead of dropping them.
   
4. Activate (BB386252) the new Academic Year and marking columns in Faculty Access for the Web. Your faculty can get started entering assignments.
   
5. Learn the Walk-In Scheduler (BB146715). Even if your enrolled students are scheduled, a few new ones may trickle in.

Do you have some other helpful tips that will help prepare for the new year? Leave a comment!