The Book Bag

Faculty Access for the Web 7.77 Shiny New Features!

2008-10-09T14:30:00Z

A picture is worth 1,000 words (or a few new features):

By your request, rows in the Gradebook and Attendance grids have alternating colors. You also might have noticed another new feature in the screenshot; teachers can select the name format for their students. The available formats are First Name Last Name, Nickname Last Name, First Name Last Name, Grade Level, and Nickname Last Name, Grade Level.

If you have other suggestions on how to make Faculty Access for the Web even better, be sure to add them on the Faculty Access for the Web Idea Bank.

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

2008-10-08T16:57:00Z

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

September

Why are there duplicates in the query results and how to remove them: BB61118
How to reconcile subsidiary ledgers to the General Ledger: BB3358
How to void a posted payment: BB113811
Report runs slowly: BB105261
How to generate transactions automatically: BB203516
How to make a field required (or not required), hidden (or not hidden), or a lookup (or not a lookup): BB1548
How to add transactions to a group: BB203392

August

How to reconcile subsidiary ledgers to the General Ledger: BB3358
How to void a posted payment: BB113811
Report runs slowly: BB105261
How to add an addressees/salutation: BBB26317
How to modify a fee schedule: BB269006
How to generate transactions automatically: BB203516
Phone numbers export and print in the wrong format from Export and Reports: BB142851

Talk to you soon!

Student Billing IdeaBank: It's Your Student Billing!

2008-10-08T13:00:00Z

Have you ever thought of something that could make Student Billing better? Maybe it's a suggestion for a new feature or a comment about new functionality we've just added. Either way, good or bad, we want to know. To make it easier for you, we've created the Student Billing IdeaBank. This online community lets you submit, review, and vote on suggestions, share your SB thoughts or concerns, and allow us to respond.

The Student Billing IdeaBank is your chance to be heard and help improve SB. You have to be in it to win it and make your voice heard! Sign up today to start sharing your feedback, suggestions, and experiences.

Talk to you soon!

Help Develop Your Student Billing eLearning Library

2008-09-29T11:10:00Z

We are creating an eLearning Library for Student Billing and want your help. eLearning Library is an online collection of software lessons available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week; training on your time at your pace.

Please take our Student Billing Customer Feedback Survey to tell us what lessons would benefit you most. Thanks for your feedback.

Student Billing State-of-Mind: Tally Your Charges

2008-09-23T15:00:00Z

If you have ever wondered how much revenue you receive based on product, this is the post for you. You can filter the Transaction List to subtotal and summarize for each product and billing item. Here's how:

Create a new Transaction List.
On the General tab, select the appropriate dates.
In the Include these transaction types box, unmark all checkboxes except Charges and Invoices.
Select the Format tab and highlight Detail.
Mark the Print summary for products and billing items checkbox.
Highlight Sort/Break and select Billing item under Sort by.
Click Preview.

Talk to you soon!

Student Billing State-of-Mind Time Saver: Manage Billing Groups

2008-09-23T12:12:00Z

Here is a great time saver for those of you that need to manage families with multiple children. You can create billing groups to quickly add or update student, individual, and organization records. Manage Billing Groups, the official name of the feature, lets you add records for an entire family at one time, link the records, and copy address and billing information from one record to all the others. Linking records saves you even more time, because if you update one linked address, all linked records will automatically update; no more manually opening each record.

Without further adieu let's get started:

In Administration, click Manage Billing Groups.
- To add a record using billing groups:
  1. In the drop-down list, click Add New Student, Add New Individual, or Add New Organization. The record type you select appears in the Records box.
  2. Enter biographical information in the fields on the right.
- To update an existing record using billing groups:
  1. In the Record Name field, enter the individual name or click the binoculars to locate the individual record to update.
  2. Click the down arrow next to Load all associated records and select Load only selected record. The individual's biographical information appears.
  3. Add to or edit the biographical information.
Select the Defaults tab and:
1. Click Payers to define payer information for the individual.
2. Click Statements to define statement recipient information.
3. Click Billing Defaults to add billing defaults.
4. Click Relationships to add relationships.
Select the Addresses tab to add address and contact information.
Click Finish and New to save and close the individual record and open a new billing group automatically, or click Finish and Close to save and close the individual record.

Happy group managing. Talk to you soon!

Student Billing State-of-Mind: Unapply and Restore Distributions

2008-09-22T17:10:00Z

If you track Payment or Credit applications I have some great news for you. Currently, if you apply a payment to a charge, the GL distribution of the payment is updated based on the charge. If you then unapply the payment, the GL distribution of the payment does not revert back to the default.

Now for the good news...beginning in version 7.77, due out later this year, when the payment or credit is unapplied, the default GL distribution will be restored.

For example, a parent sends you a $1000 payment and you apply $200 to a tuition charge and $300 to bookstore charges. The payment’s GL distribution would be:

Tuition	Accounts Receivable – Main Student Billing	$200
Bookstore	Accounts Receivable – Bookstore	$300
	Unapplied Payment Account	$500

If the charge for Tuition is un-applied, the system will add the un-applied tuition amount to the Unapplied GL distribution. The payment’s GL distribution is now:

Bookstore	Accounts Receivable – Bookstore	$300
	Unapplied Payment Account	$700

If the entire payment was applied, the system will look at the default Unapplied Payment Account in Configuration and add a distribution row for the Unapplied Payment Account.

Talk to you soon!

7.77 Sneak Peek Part 2

2008-09-22T13:40:00Z

There are a few new posts on The Ledger blog highlighting some cool new features with the release of version 7.77 due out in Quarter 4. Check them out:

Looking for more Student Billing crossover stuff? Click the Student Billing tag in The Ledger blog.

Talk to you soon!

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

2008-09-16T19:20:00Z

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

August

How to reconcile subsidiary ledgers to the General Ledger: BB3358
How to void a posted payment: BB113811
Report runs slowly: BB105261
How to add an addressees/salutation: BBB26317
How to modify a fee schedule: BB269006
How to generate transactions automatically: BB203516
Phone numbers export and print in the wrong format from Export and Reports: BB142851

July

How to reconcile subsidiary ledgers to the General Ledger: BB3358
How to generate transactions automatically: BB203516
How to void a posted payment: BB113811
How to add new table entries: BB5313
How to identify and merge duplicate students: BB198656
What is the Address Import ID (AddrImpID) and how to find it: BB91758
How to import: BB73785

Talk to you soon!

Are Teachers Timing Out of Faculty Access for the Web 7?

2008-09-11T15:38:00Z

A few days ago, I was shopping at an online bead store when my phone rang. By the time I got back to my computer, my shopping cart was empty and I was stuck remembering my various bead selections .

Timing out can be frustrating because you can lose your work. Just like my online shopping cart, teachers be timed out of their Faculty Access for the Web gradebooks if they don’t save their work or are inactive. Make sure your timeout settings are adjusted to prevent loss of data entry.

The default Faculty Access for the Web time out setting is 20 minutes. To change this, you must edit the WEB.CONFIG file, the machine.config file, and the IIS timeout setting. You can review Knowledgebase solution BB135486 for steps on editing these files. But before you update these files, here are a few pointers:

Make changes to the session timeout setting at a time when FAWEB users are not logged in. If you make changes while users are logged in, each user’s session is ended and all work since the last save will be lost.

Have each user set the Display Warning Message Before Session Timeout preference so a warning message appears one minute before the session is scheduled to time out. Clicking OK on the message activates a new session to continue working.

Most importantly, make sure your users save often!

Exporting Parents' NetClassroom Logins

2008-09-03T16:40:00Z

At the beginning of each year, you probably send out a letter to your students’ parents with their NetClassroom login credentials. You can easily export and merge this letter within The Education Edge (BB151820). Here’s how:

Create a new Student export using the Blackbaud Simple Word Merge format.
On the Output tab, select the appropriate fields:
- Expand the Student category and select fields such as Student name and Student ID.
- Expand the Relationships category and then the Person Relation subcategory and select Online password, Online user ID, Primary addressee, and Primary salutation.
  Note: When you select the first field in the Person Relation subcategory, a screen appears so you can define the relationships to include. For example, you can include only emergency contacts with the relationship types of Father, Mother, Stepfather, Stepmother, and Legal Guardian.
- Expand the Addresses subcategory and select Full address.
Select Edit Word Merge File on the Action bar to create the merge template (BB199112) with your selected fields.

Don’t forget about creating labels to go with the letters! Hope everyone’s year is off to a great start!

Student Billing State-of-Mind: Refunding Records

2008-08-27T11:10:00Z

Has a student decided not to attend your school this fall or have a credit from last school year that needs to be returned? Whatever the reason, you can add the refund to the record and even print the check if you have Accounts Payable.

If you have AP, the first thing you need to do is ensure your AP bank is configured for Student Billing refunds. Now that you have configured your bank, or if you do not use AP, it is time to add the refund.

In Records, Refunds, click Add a New Refund.
In the Record name field, click the binoculars and select the record to receive the Refund.
Select the refund billing fee from the Item/Description dropdown list and enter an amount.
Click Create Refund Check.
Note: If this option is grayed out, refer to Knowledgebase solution BB206696.
On the Create Refund Check screen, select the bank account and the record to print the check to and click OK.
Verify the information on the one-time check and click:
- Record and Close if you will manually write the check.
- Print Later and Close to print the check in the next Accounts Payable check run.
- Print Now to print the check.

Talk to you soon!

Connect with Students and Parents Through Email

2008-08-18T19:18:00Z

After enjoying the retirement life for two years, my dad decided to return to teaching this year. Today was his first day with students, and I know he's excited, but it can also be a bit overwhelming to get going with the school year again (especially after having a substantial break from teaching).

As teachers try to get their classes and lesson plans together, it can be challenging to find time to connect with their students, let alone their students' parents. Fortunately, the optional module NetMail helps facilitate communication by giving teachers the convenience of ...no snail mail here; we're talking about email!

If you have NetMail, you can grant teachers rights to email directly from FAWeb (BB254948):

On the Administration page, click Set up system security.
Open the appropriate security group, such as FAWeb Teachers or FAWeb Advisors.
On the Group screen, in the System Components box, mark the Shared Components checkbox.
In the Shared Components box, mark the NetSolutions checkbox and click Options.
On the Security Options screen, mark the NetMail checkbox and Undeliverable Mail checkbox (to allow users to view undeliverable mail).
Click OK and then click Save and Close.

Once teachers have rights to email, they can open the door to communication with their students and their students' relations (BB255752):

In FAWeb, click Email on the navigation bar and select Create New Email from the list on the left.
On the General tab, select the appropriate academic year and session. (If you teach in multiple schools, also select the appropriate school.)
In the Send email to field, select Students, Student Relationships, or Both. If you are a teacher and an advisor, the Create email for field appears. Mark Students in classes or Advisees.
If sending email to students or relations, select the Classes tab and mark the checkbox for each class to include. All classes are automatically included for advisees.
Select the Students tab and mark the checkbox for each student to include.
On the Compose tab, enter your email address and the email's subject line. In the Email type field, define the email address type to use (such as Email Business or Email Home). If you do not select a type, the program sends the email to the first email address on the primary address record.
In the email box, write and format the text. To include merge fields (e.g., student first name), select from the Available Fields list on the left. (Note: Select only fields you know are consistently populated in your database; otherwise, if a selected merge field is blank on a record, the email will include a blank space where the field should be inserted.)

Whether you use email for assigning homework or to simply provide periodic updates, you make yourself more accessible to your students and their parents by keeping your communication going beyond the classroom. Hope it helps you get the school year off to a great start!

Student Billing State-of-Mind: Reconciliation Recommendation

2008-08-15T12:58:00Z

I wanted to share a great reconciliation tip with you guys. In Student Billing 7, all credits and payments need to be applied to charges to ensure statements are correct. So the question is how can you tell if there's activity that needs to be applied? The first thing you need to do is create a record query for records with a balance greater than zero. Here's how:

Create a new record query.
On the Criteria tab, select Activity, Summary, Record Balance, Operator greater than, enter a value of 0 and click OK.
Save the query.

We can now use the query to filter the Unapplied Credit report to show the records with a balance and unapplied payments or credits.

In Reports, Transaction Reports, highlight Unapplied Credit Report, and click New.
On the General tab, mark the Create an output query of checkbox and select Records.
On the Filters tab, change the Assigned To filter from All to Selected, mark the Query option and select the query you created above.
Click Preview and save the output query.

The output query created will give you quick access to each record with activity to apply. With that said, let's move to the last step in this process:

In Query, open the query created from the Unapplied Credit Report.
On the Output tab, select Record, Full/organization name and any other appropriate fields.
Select the Results tab.
Double click the first record in the query.
On the Record, select the Activity tab and apply the payment or credit.
Click the single right arrow to move to the next record in the query.
Follow steps 5 and 6 until all credits or payments are applied.

Now you are ready to run your statements in confidence! I recommend performing this process each month before you process your statements.

Talk to you soon!

7.77 Sneak Peek

2008-08-14T14:30:00Z

There are a few posts on The Ledger blog highlighting some cool new features with the release of version 7.77 due out in Quarter 4. Check them out:

Looking for other Student Billing stuff? Click the Student Billing tag in The Ledger blog.

Talk to you soon!