The Book Bag : Statements

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.

Student Billing State-of-Mind: Address Statements to Parents in a Student-Centric System

Jennifer Maroney — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 12:28:00 GMT

If you use a payer centric configuration, you may wonder why a statement would print addressed to the student. Is a five year old responsible for his own tuition? Probably not, so why print a statement addressed to the child? Instead print it to the parent or guardian. Now your school may have a policy to print statements addressed to students. If this describes you, you're happy with the process and do not need to read any further. For those of you who want to address statements to parents, let's get started.

There are two ways to address statements to parents: adjust the options on the student's Statements tab or use filters on the statement parameters. First we'll go over how to adjust the student record.

In Records, Students, open the student's record.
Select the Statements tab.
In the Show field at the top of the tab, select who receives statements for.
In the Send statements to field, use the drop-down list to select the parent's name.
Mark the Print separate statement checkbox.
Add the parent to the grid and in the Activity to Show field, select the charges you would like to show on the parent's statement. Select either:
- All transactions
- Only the recipient's transactions
- Only the student's transactions
- The recipient's transactions and the student's transactions
Save and close the record.

If you don't want to update all of your student records, you can adjust the filters on the statement parameters. Remember, if you select this option, you'll need to adjust the filters each time you create a new statement unless everyone uses the same saved parameter.

In Mail, Forms, highlight Statements and click New or open a saved statement parameter.
Select the Filters tab.
Change Include from All to Selected for Statement Recipient Record Types.
Double-click Individual or Organization and then click OK.
Click Preview or Print.

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: Reconciliation Recommendation

Jennifer Maroney — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 12:58:00 GMT

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!