Merlin the Wizard: Ready to Create Your Student Progression Entries

Nate Hall — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 19:34:00 GMT

Everyone knows the good wizard Merlin portrayed in the classic Disney movie The Sword in the Stone. He was a jovial little guy willing to help young Arthur claim his throne by protecting him from all manner of ills, from hawks to larger fish. Well, one ill that many of you may be experiencing this time of year is getting your students ready for scheduling next year, and probably the most important process is creating the student progression entries for each student. Sure, these can be entered in one at a time, or you could import them all at once. But those options take a lot of time and time is money.

Well, this is where Merlin comes in. Merlin has many different jobs in Blackbaud’s school software, but one of his more useful - even if it’s only used once or twice a year - is to create the student progression entries. To do this, Merlin takes the form of the Mark for Reenrollment Wizard and this particular spell, if you will, is located in a couple of different places: it’s on the Student page in Records, in the Tools menu from the Students page, and under Status Wizards on the Administration page in Registrar’s Office. Once you locate the wizard and open it up, you’ll quickly see that this is a pretty straight-forward process, but if you need instructions for harnessing Merlin’s vast powers I’d recommend checking out Knowledgebase solution BB184652. And just one other trick, you can save the instructions easily by clicking the link for the printer friendly version and then creating a bookmark in your web browser.

Hope you are all enjoying the new Book Bag blog so far! If you’ve got any suggestions for blog topics or question/comments about the posts then post back and tell me about it! In the meantime, it’s beautiful outside and Merlin wants to go hang out in the sun.

Tips from a Troubleshooter: Advance Deposits

Sean Long — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 19:29:00 GMT

Hi everyone! I know some of you might be familiar with me already; I'm Sean, a Customer Support Analyst who handles our Education Solutions products (Registrar's Office, Student Billing, Admissions Office, NetClassroom, and Faculty Access for the Web). I talk to a lot of you regularly, and I wanted to write a quick post about one of the most common subjects I talk about on a daily basis, especially this time of year

Advance Deposits.

Advance Deposits are a type of Billing Item used to record money received at one time but realized in a different time. For instance, a student pays $100 to hold a seat in your school next year. What do you do? You have to accept that money, but how do you track it in the system without it crediting your Accounts Receivable general ledger account? You may not want to record the money as actual revenue just yet, so you'll have to hold it until next year, because the new fiscal isn't starting until 07/01/09.

Although I've talked to customers who handle this in other ways, an elegant solution to that problem is the Advance Deposit!

Let's dissect the Advance Deposit. Like any Veterinarian will tell you, a creature is the sum of its parts. Our Advance Deposit is the sum of its tabs. The Advance Deposit has tabs that describe the amount, the generation date, and the GL Distribution (maybe eventually I'll post about those other tabs, like Notes).

Open up Configuration, and click Products and Billing Items. Now open up an Advance Deposit billing item. The Generate On date (at the bottom right of the tab) and GL Distribution tab are the only things I'll discuss here, as those are special when you talk about Advance Deposits.

The Generate On date is the date you need the money realized on your books (Crediting the Accounts Receivable account) and available to pay down a student's charges (their balance). For example, if the money is supposed to pay part of the first tuition payment of the year, and your school year starts on 07/01/09, you would set the Generate On date to 07/01/09.

The GL Distribution tells the system the account to credit when the advance deposit has a payment applied to it. This would generally be a Liability account of some sort, like a Deferred Revenue account. The money would debit out of this account and credit your Account Receivable account on the Generate On date.

Make sense? Here's how you use it in practice:

I send you a $100 check. You add this in as a Payment, and in 7.77, you select the Advance Deposit you want to create at the bottom of the screen. You will also enter the amount, and select whose account you want to credit during your Generate On date. When you then save and close out of that payment, two things are created on the student's Activity tab: An Advance Deposit line, and a Payment line.

These two lines will be $100, and the student's balance will show that there was no net gain or loss. That's because the Advance Deposit acts as a charge, so that it eats up (sorry to keep the Veterinarian reference going!) the payment and holds it in Liability until your Generate On date.

When you Generate the Transactions Automatically, you will then see a third line on that activity tab: A Credit of $100. This is going to be what you use to pay my tuition, or whatever other fees I sent you my $100 for.

Cool, right? I hope that clears up some questions about Advance Deposits! Do you use them a different way or use Advance Deposits to do something really creative? Let me know by commenting below!

The Book Bag : reenrollment

Merlin the Wizard: Ready to Create Your Student Progression Entries

Tips from a Troubleshooter: Advance Deposits