Are your registrars and administrative staff still manually collecting fees from students and parents during enrollment—on top of an already time-consuming process? If so, there’s a better way that’s more efficient, effective, and helps with staff productivity.
Guiding students and parents through the registration process can take a lot of time, energy, and organizational skills. For schools and districts using paper forms or an outdated, manual process, it can be both chaotic and time-consuming to capture the host of relevant details needed to get students fully entered into your school’s system.
Add to that the extra task of manual, in-person fee collection of any mandatory registration fees, and the process can become overwhelming for both staff and families. That’s why incorporating online payments can be a convenient way to ensure fees are collected on time, accurately, and securely. And if you want to take optional fees during the enrollment process, such as allowing families to purchase a parking pass, pre-pay for a yearbook, or donate to a school fund, an online payment processing system can be a great way to create a one-stop solution for families as well as boost purchasing and resulting dollars for your schools.>
Here are 5 fee collection tips that help ensure a smooth, successful process.
1. Implement a Modern, Online Registration and Enrollment Solution with Integrated School Fee Collection
It all starts with choosing the right registration and enrollment system for your specific school or district needs. An online solution should offer a set of services and tools to support school fee collection and reporting for each student at the time of registration or enrollment.
Schools and districts should be able to collect both mandatory fees and optional goods/services fees that families pay to the district or a particular school, department, or organization.
San Marino, CA
PowerSchool Enrollment’s customized solution captured the generosity of our parents. Moving from paper to online has exceeded our expectations for donations and funds by 100%.
Stephen Choi Chief Technology Officer
San Marino Unified School District
When choosing a student registration product that collects fees online, look for one that’s demonstrated longtime safety, security, and consistency. The product should automatically send money to the correct bank account, which schools traditionally do manually. With more accuracy, your staff will experience less hassle, follow-up calls, or tracking down missing payments.
2. Connect with a Quality Payment Vendor That Ensures Security and PCI Compliance
Online registration and enrollment systems typically use a third-party provider for payment integration. Make sure your edtech provider partners with a well-vetted payment vendor with experience in K-12 schools and districts. Also, it shouldn’t cost extra for integration with your enrollment vendor. Ideally, the only cost should be for payment processing, which can be passed on to families if desired. >
The payment vendor should show extensive experience securely processing transactions and compliance with PCI Level 1—the highest security standard in the payment industry. This should include a Certificate of Compliance from Trustwave. Additional security should be ensured through PCI-compliant integration, where payment transactions are communicated with the vendor through a series of secure API calls. In a system that’s truly secure, the parent’s payment information never touches the enrollment product’s servers.
3. Ensure Your Bank Account Can Receive the Online Fees from Your Payment Processing System
Ideally, funds should be collected directly into your school or district’s bank accounts and received as soon as each transaction settles, usually within 48 hours. Choose a system where funds are funneled from different fees to the appropriate bank accounts using account codes. Your system should be able to track all these transactions clearly through on-demand reporting designed to meet your specific needs.
Additionally, a solution should collect and account for any required taxes.
4. Choose a School Fee Collection System That Can Capture a Wide Variety Of K-12 Expenses
Providers should be able to accept all the different payment types a school needs to receive and properly distribute to accounts. These include both mandatory and optional fees.
Typical fee types include: application/registration fees, course and program fees, parking passes, class textbook, workbook, and materials, activities, yearbooks, PTO/PTA fees, instrument rental, school meals, t-shirts and school-branded apparel, gym clothes, locks for lockers, field trips, after school care, district foundations, donations and fundraisers, shop class fees, and technology dues.
5. Make Sure All Payment Types Are Supported
Online registration solutions should offer complete electronic processing, including credit card (American Express, Visa, Mastercard, Discover) and eCheck. As secondary measures, solutions should also be able to process direct payments from families, including hard copy, check, cash, or money order.
Deferred payments are another option for parents, allowing families to select any or all fees for which they choose to make electronic payment at the time of submission and make a partial payment toward their balance.
Collecting fees doesn’t have to be an extra, time-consuming task for registrars and administrative staff. With the right online products and partners, it really can be an easy process that ensures payments are accurate, timely, and secure.
