The Book Bag : 7.78

Tips from a Troubleshooter: Aiding (But Not Financially) with Financial Aid

Sean Long — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 20:36:00 GMT

I'm calling an emergency posting of Tips from a Troubleshooter, because I know a lot of you are awarding financial aid to students right now. I'll return to my series on Student Billing 6 vs. Student Billing 7 soon, I promise.

The Financial Aid Billing Item describes the accounts the financial aid affects in the General Ledger, the schedule of financial aid credits, and a date range for the item. Also, if the Financial Aid type has an awarded default amount, you define it on the Billing Item itself.

If you want to generate your financial aid credits alongside your Tuition charges, you can create separate financial aid items that mirror your tuition charge schedules. For example, this screenshot shows a 10-pay Tuition item. Of course, with an amount of $0.00, the student wouldn't be very grateful.

So how do we give each student the financial aid they deserve? There's a few different ways of doing this, so pick the best for your organization's structure.

Financial Aid Applications tab - Use this tab if the Registrar's Office or Admissions Office determines the financial aid amount and recipient. This tab is visible from both Registrar's Office and Student Billing, so the Registrar's Office can determine the amount students receive for each financial aid type.
Tip: Make sure to use a different financial aid type for each billing item.
Add transactions to a group of records - If the financial aid amount is determined outside the software, use the Add Transactions to a Group of Records utility to add Financial Aid schedules to all of your students at the same time. Knowledgebase solution BB203392 guides you through the steps and you can use it for Financial Aid schedules as well!
Import - Good with spreadsheets? Use Import to put all of the schedules on the students' records.

Have more questions or additional clarification about financial aid? Leave a comment!

Processing Re-enrollment Deposits and Early Tuition Payments

Katie Infinger — Wed, 27 May 2009 19:39:00 GMT

This is a guest post by Chuck Hays. Chuck is a Senior Educational Consultant for Blackbaud.

Did you know we have an even easier way to correctly accrue payments for the next school year? First, let's touch on the accounting requirements. If you take money now that will be applied to next year's charges, you must accrue the money received rather than recognize the funds as revenue. Then, after adding next year's charges, you relieve (debit) the accrual and credit the student record.

In Student Billing, you accomplish everything you need using two records. First, you create the payment, and then, you apply the payment to an advance deposit charge. The payment uses the credit distribution on the advance deposit charge (an accrual liability account) rather than crediting the normal receivables summary account. Later, you generate the advance deposit credits, which reverse the accrual and also credit the student account.

In The Financial Edge 7.78, we made it easier to create the advance deposit charge while creating the payment by adding a new grid option at the bottom of the payment record. The appropriate student(s) will be listed in the grid and you can specify which advance deposits need to be created. The new grid is especially helpful when using payers who are responsible for multiple students!

For those of you using an outside service to handle electronic transfers of such payments, like 10-payment plans that start in the spring, you can also follow a simple process. You will use two additional setup requirements. First, create a query to find the students using such a payment plan, either because of a bill code or an attribute. Secondly, create an application restriction set that is limited to advance deposit items.

Then, create one advance deposit charge on one of the 10-payment plan student records. After saving the item, but before closing, use the Transaction menu option to "Add this Advance Deposit to a group of records" using the query. Then, use the option in Administration to "Import from tuition management service," which also allows you to specify the application restriction set. When you import the payments, they will only apply against the existing advance deposit charge. Very useful if other charges are still on the account.

Integration Insight: New Features Part 3

Allison Davis — Mon, 18 May 2009 13:12:00 GMT

You are working in the linking grid and see a record that does not belong, such as a withdrawn student. You right-click on the student’s row and open his Education Edge record, change his status to Withdrawn, and save and close the record. This ineligible record no longer meets the criteria based on your Integration setup, but he remains in the linking grid.

In version 7.78, you can click the Remove Ineligible Records button on the linking grid toolbar to remove these records. The Remove Ineligible Records option only refreshes the grid to remove previously eligible but no longer eligible records that are not matched. Clicking this button will not refresh the data displayed in each column and will not add rows to the grid.

If data changes on matched records to make the matches no longer valid based on the matching criteria, the user will need to manually remove the matches or click Match All Records to recalculate the matches.

Integration Insight: New Features Part 2

Allison Davis — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 19:37:00 GMT

Linking records through Integration can be a time-consuming task. It can be difficult to determine if matches are correct in the linking grid because sometimes students and parents happen to have the same names (i.e., Jr. and Sr.). Without opening their respective records, it is difficult to know which record is which. You may even see Multiple EE matches or Multiple RE matches in the Matching Records field because records have similar names.

In version 7.78, you can open and even edit records from the linking grid. In the linking grid in The Raiser's Edge, right-click on a match and open The Education Edge or The Raiser's Edge record.

Here's the open record lowdown:

Once you open the record, you can also edit information on the records such as addresses, relationships, biographical information, applications, enrollments, and history of changes.
If a particular row has multiple matches, the Open option displays the Multiple Matches so you can select the record to open.
You can only open Education Edge records from the linking grid in The Education Edge. We're working on adding functionality to open both Education Edge and Raiser's Edge records from The Education Edge linking grid in a future version.

Personalize Your Statements

Anthony Tomaino — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 23:34:00 GMT

So I'm a parent and I open my bill, on the web in NetClassroom or through the mail and one thing is for sure: not much changes on it except the numbers. Maybe you see the next installment in your plan, but typically it's just your friendly monthly reminder to pay the school. What if you needed to highlight a line item in the statement. Now, there are the general statement messages that always print at the bottom of the statement. These usually have some tag line similar to, "Call the billing office at x number if you have questions on your bill". Though I wonder if people know we can get even more specific, and you can do it on a per record basis.

On the Notes tab of the student record, check out the box on the bottom of the tab shown in the image below.

You can make the comments specific to that student's situation. So, say you have a field trip that you're getting students registered for, or upcoming graduation fees that need to be collected. Maybe you're just doing a campaign to clean up old after-school care bills because you see parents are lagging. You can go into those student records, type a personalized message and then you can use our new functionality in 7.78.

In 7.78, on the Format tab of the statement "parameter" you can choose to print statement comments at the beginning or the end. You used to just be able to print it at the end. Now you can print it right underneath the student's name. You now have a front and center message that the parents can't miss. Try it, you may like it. Oh, and if you need to research what statement comments you have already out there on records, I'll help show you a way to do that without going in manually...but that's for next time.

Grade Based Statements for Grade Based Billing

Anthony Tomaino — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 21:18:00 GMT

From my experience, I've seen many schools send bills out for next year while the current school year is going on. It's always good to stay ahead right? I'm guessing the thinking being, the sooner you bill for next year, the faster you collect for next year. Well, at least in theory anyway. New to 7.78, you can print statements displaying the student's grade for next year. I really think this closes up our grade based billing process nicely. We always had the ability to pull the student's grade from next year through a progression entry and actually bill them for a future grade. I think that's a solid process in the software, but we just moved that common practice to the statement display. So you get a statement with next year's grade on it. It should make it a bit easier for parents to see the school is recognizing the student's progression to the next grade.

So how do you do it? When you're in a statement "parameter", select the Format tab, highlight Statement Format, and select the grade level from "Display grade level from:" at the bottom of the screen.

We have another personalization improvement to statements as well. New to 7.78, you can change the placement of comments. You can put them right on the top of the statement and place important facts about their bill or situation front and center. Stay tuned for another post about personalizing statements and the new feature.

If you're setting up your bills for next year and haven't even thought of tuition yet, check out the Billing next year's tuition during the current year forum conversation I started to have with a few clients (maybe you can add to it ). Or you can see Jennifer's blog about end of year setup.

Integration Insight: New Features Part 1

Allison Davis — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 20:19:00 GMT

Integration maps fields and relationships between two databases. The synchronization process looks at the database with the most recent update on these linked records. If the records in both programs were updated since the last synchronization, the most recently updated record wins and overwrites the other program's record.

To keep your data accurate, you should synchronize often. We recommend synchronizing, either manually or automatically, from a single workstation every 15 minutes. When your databases have not been synchronized in more than a day, you can experience issues such as overwritten data.

In version 7.78, you will notice some new prompts appearing when you manually synchronize data. This message informs you of the last time synchronization ran and our recommendations for synchronization. This will help to ensure data changes are accurately reflected in both databases.

The longer you wait to synchronize, the more likely you will lose record changes in one or both databases. Synchronization does not keep track of changes in the order in which they were made. The issue especially occurs with the sharing of address and phone data. For example:

Let's say you run synchronization twice a day, at 8:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. At 9:00 a.m. you change an address from 123 King St. to 123 King Street in The Raiser's Edge. At 2:00 p.m. the Registrar changes the Zip code from 29403 to 29402 on the King St. address in The Education Edge. At the 5:00 p.m. synchronization any changes will come from the database last updated; in this case, The Education Edge. This means the synchronized address will be 123 King St. with a Zip code of 29402.

Here are some important tips to keep synchronization running smoothly:

To manually synchronize data, click Synchronize Data on the Integration page.
To automatically synchronize data, you can establish settings in your Microsoft Scheduled Task Wizard application. For more information on setting up a scheduled task, see Knowledgebase solution BB211850.
We recommend that you automatically synchronize data every 15 minutes.
All of this is explained in Knowledgebase solution BB604658.

Stay tuned for the next post on new Integration features!

Giving You the Business (Button and Rule)

Katie Infinger — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 16:30:00 GMT

In version 7.78, we've added a Business button on the Bio 1 tab of Individual records so you can easily view the individual's primary business information without selecting the record's Relationships tab. When you click the Business button, you can view everyone who shares the business address and enter non-shared phone numbers specific to the individual, such as direct office extensions.

Another new feature is the organization business rule that allows you to copy and share (or not share) organization address information with any new relationships. This business rule may come in handy if you have individuals who work at office branches or at home and do not have the same address as the organization.

This set of new features was brought to you by The Education Edge 7.78 Update Guide.

New in 7.78: Opening Records from a Person Query

Katie Infinger — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 13:39:00 GMT

Hey ladies and gentlemen, I've got another new 7.78 feature to share! You can open records in a Person query by double-clicking on a row in the results. Now Person queries function the same as other query types. Brilliant!

All the new features are listed in The Education Edge 7.78 Update Guide.

New In 7.78: The Duplicate Phone Type Exception Report

Katie Infinger — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 13:59:00 GMT

Scenario: You're in version 7.77, cleaning up phone type table entries in preparation for integrating with The Raiser's Edge. After meeting with the Development Office folks, you decide to keep Cell as the phone type to describe mobile numbers. While you're scoping out the Phone Types table, you notice three entries, Cell #, Cell, and Cell phone. No worries, you can just use the Table Cleanup to combine the Cell # and Cell phone entries. Suddenly you receive the error, "Cell # could not be replaced because it would result in duplicate rows."

Oh, snap! Your day just got interesting. You're up for the investigation to find those pesky records preventing your school from proceeding with integration plans. Go, go, gadget query! Because phone numbers are linked to addresses, you must create queries for every address, and on top of that, there are multiple table entries to clean up, so you find yourself running variations of the same query. You can use the Ask operator to prevent query build-up but eventually, you wind up with a pile of queries, no results, and no mystery resolution.

Those days are over! In version 7.78, an exception report is automatically created when a phone type table entry cannot be deleted or replaced. The exception report lists the records causing the exception so you can easily fix the phone numbers and get those duplicate phone types out of your database! Wowsers! Want to learn about all the new features in version 7.78? Check out The Education Edge 7.78 Update Guide.

'Tis the season for advance deposits and simpler data entry

Anthony Tomaino — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 19:26:00 GMT

We are making advance deposit data entry simpler. Yes, I said it. In our next release, version 7.78 which is due out this quarter, we have made some relatively simple, but very effective changes that will ease confusion around this cyclical process.

In my 3 years of experience with Student Billing 7, I have seen clients experience difficulty in the area of advance deposits. The first problem is that it is fairly little known that you can create advance deposits as placeholder transactions. This allows you the ability to send the unfulfilled advance deposit to show parents on their statements. It's always good practice to communicate to parents their upcoming fiscal responsibility to prevent lagged payments as best as you can.

It actually works quite well as it stands today. You can add all the advance deposits using the “Add Transactions to a Group” functionality. Then when you get the payment, you can just add it as a regular payment then apply it to that advance deposit. Nice right? Well what if you don't bill for them and just want to enter the advance deposit payments? Do I have to enter them in two separate steps? The answer is no and we helped make that easier too.

In 7.78, there will be a new and improved advance deposit records page as previewed below. It will guide you to determine how your organization handles this process and teach you about the generating credits process along with our Application Restriction functionality.

Oh, by the way, it also gives you a simplified data entry grid when you’re in the payment. If you click the Record an advance deposit payment button, it will pull up a new payment screen with the following improvements:

1. The Create advance deposits for this payment checkbox will automatically be marked meaning there is no longer a Create advance deposit button that you have to click.

2. It will default in all records that the payer is responsible for and split up the amount on the top evenly in the grid (don’t worry you can edit the amounts).

3. If you only have 1 advance deposit billing item, it will default that in as well. So you only have to save and close. If you have multiple, you just have to choose the one you want.

a. If you add from the records, payments screen, the only thing you have to do is mark the Create Advance Deposits for this payment checkbox and it will do all three of the above steps.

4. If you ever void the payment, we will tell you that it will leave an unfulfilled advance deposit on the student record so you know to go back and delete the advance deposit if the student is not coming back to school or to mark that student down as still needing an advance deposit payment.

Remember, it’s good practice to try it with one family first to make sure the schedule for credits is what you want, it’s on the right records and you are happy with those results. The schedule should always pull from next year, if not it means the payment date you entered is pulling from last year’s schedule. You just need to update the billing item to include the payment dates!

There’s lots of information in here, so feel free to post back. It’s always better to be prepared. Take care!