The Book Bag : Billing Items

Student Billing State-of-Mind: Where's My Billing Item?

Jennifer Maroney — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 14:11:00 GMT

Here's the scenario: You have a list of charges or financial aid to enter. You're a pro at this process so you jump right in, but the Item/Description drop-down is blank or does not show the billing item. What do you do now? Well, there are many reasons why a billing item or fee may not be available including:

The billing item or fee is not valid for the transaction date. Only billing items set to be used during the transaction date are included in the drop-down list.
The billing item is marked as inactive.
The billing item type is different than the transaction type.

Ok, so now you know why the items can go missing, what do you? Follow these steps which take you through fixing the most common causes of missing items.

In Configuration, click Products and Billing Items.
Open the billing item that was not included in the drop-down list.
Verify the transaction date is within the Item can only be used from date range fields. If the date does not fall within the date range, create a new fee for the appropriate date range.
Verify the billing item's status is Active.
If adding a Fee Schedule and the fee was created as a manual fee, re-enter the fee in Configuration as an Automatic Item.

Talk to you soon!

Student Billing State-of-Mind: Need to Add Billing Items?

Jennifer Maroney — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 15:10:00 GMT

Here is a quickie but goodie for new users and a reminder for you seasoned users. Throughout the school year new fees or charges are continually popping up. Whether it is for a field trip, class party, or new textbooks the process to create the billing item is the same. Here's how:

In Configuration or Records, select Products and Billing Items.
Select File, New, and select the appropriate billing item from the menu bar.
On the New [item type] screen, enter the item ID and description.
Select a Date option from the drop-down list, if applicable. The Date options vary depending on the item type selected.
Enter the remaining appropriate information. The available fields change depending on the billing item you are creating.
Save and close the record.

Now you are ready to add the billing item to records. You can either add them manually or add the transactions to a group.

Remember these blogs are for you. Is there a question you would like answered or a topic you would like to know more about? Let me know by leaving a comment. Talk to you soon!

Student Billing State-of-Mind: Tally Your Charges

Jennifer Maroney — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 15:00:00 GMT

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: What's a Bill Code?

Jennifer Maroney — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 17:22:00 GMT

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 groups charges together so you need to add the code only to the student record instead of each individual billing item. 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!