The Book Bag : Payments

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.

Student Billing State-of-Mind: Invoices or Charges Missing When Entering Payments?

Jennifer Maroney — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 14:09:00 GMT

Let me set the stage. You've entered 665 payments and your last payment will not automatically apply. You've been reading Student Billing Statement , so you know how to manually apply it; however, the Student Billing Detail tab is blank. Now what? First off, dismiss any superstitions about the payment, most likely the payment owner is just not responsible for the charge. It's an easy fix, just follow these steps:

Open the Payment and select the Student Billing Detail tab.
Click Add/Edit Applications.
Click Select Additional Charges or Invoices.
Search for charge and click Open.
Mark the Apply? checkbox.
Click Save Applications and then Save and Close.

If the invoice or charge still does not appear in Select Additional Charges or Invoices, try running the SB Correct Balances utility.

Talk to you soon!

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

Jennifer Maroney — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 17:10:00 GMT

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!