IMPORTANT! In the coming months, we will be phasing out this version of the Tuition Management module. If you are looking for how to work with Contracts in the next generation of the Tuition Management module (which is where all 2023-2024 Contracts were built and sent from), go to the Tuition Management section of our Help Center.
We’ve released a major upgrade for our Tuition Management schools!
We've introduced the ability to have any contract line item be scheduled on its own date or even to have its own invoice. We have also added the ability to offset your prepaid tuition on a separate invoice so you can have it invoiced and paid today, but be subtracted from your full tuition invoice which can be post-dated to the start of your fiscal year!
Watch our 4 minute overview video and read about each setting below!
Read about the various options below:
Lead Enrollment Configuration:
- Minimum Invoice Date For Tuition:
- If you set a date, then all tuition contract invoices will use this minimum (future) date, as long as the contract is submitted before this date. This is mostly useful for accounting purposes, as the main invoice will have a date that can fall in the fiscal year that the tuition will be paid in
- If Not Set/Old Way: The default version, if this is not set, is that it will use today’s date as the date for the tuition contract invoice
- Pro Tip! Please speak with your bookkeeper or accountant if you have any questions about whether you should be using this feature
- Separate Deposit Invoice If Before:
- This features allows you to have a separate invoice created, dated the day that contract is signed, that has one line item on it for the amount of the deposit. The line item will use the Accounting Item and Accounting Class set in the Contract and will be specified as the Deposit Invoice for the student. The exact same line item will appear on the full Tuition Contract Invoice, but in reverse, thereby offsetting the amount
- This will generally be set up as something like “Prepaid Tuition” as the line item with a positive invoice synched to QuickBooks (or other accounting system) and then the same amount debited back out when the main invoice is entered (generally this would be set as the start of the next fiscal year (see above))
- If Not Set/Old Way: Deposits are not generally line items, but just a scheduling of the payments. Meaning the full invoice would have a partial payment with signing. This is generally fine, unless you are trying to offset your prepaid tuition received in winter of 2021 against tuition that will be paid in the 2021-2022 school year. Most bookkeepers/accountants work around this with journal entries, but this is a bit more proper / explicit and also likely easier to track and report
- Separate Deposit Invoice If On Or After:
- This checkmark allows you to continue to separate out your deposit invoices even if the new fiscal year has already begun. For most schools this will not be necessary, and this feature is more useful for contracts signed at the end of one fiscal year but that are for the next one
- If Not Set: The deposit will just be a payment schedule in the main invoice, and mostly used to collect some up-front payment with signing, more than something that will affect the bookkeeping side of things
- No Deposit On or After:
- This date field allows you to specify a date in your school year where you automatically want contracts to no longer charge the deposit, even if there is one specified. This allows you to set a date after which parents signing contracts will not have to pay the deposit. The total amount of the contract will still be charged, they just won’t have to pay a percentage / flat fee up-front when signing the contract
- As a school, we would expect you to use this in conjunction with with the “Ignore Schedules” field to figure out how much a parent signing a contract as school approaches (or even after it has begun) will pay at signing, versus what is spread out over the remaining payments
- If Not Set: The full deposit, plus any makeup payments (if the next option below is not set) will be charged
- Ignore Schedules Older Than:
- This allows you to put a cutoff on your Lead Contract Payments Schedules, so that when a schedule is a certain number of days old, it is no longer applicable. As with the option above (No Deposit On or After), it will not affect the total amount paid, only how much has to be paid when signing, versus being spread over the remaining payments.
- A recommended number might be around 5-20 days, but would depend on if you stop charging the deposit along with the contract. When used together, you should be able to easily automate how much a parent signing mid-year will pay when they enroll and how much will be paid over time
- How it used to work: You had to manually go in and delete dates from your payment schedules, so that people signing a contract in October wouldn’t have to pay 40% of their total contract when signing, because they were paying the July - September schedules as well. This way they only have to pay a deposit and future dates or maybe just schedules that fell in the last x number of days
Lead Contract Line Items:
- Separate Invoice:
- This is a slick new feature that allows you to create a separate invoice for almost any line item in a contract. This can be helpful if you want an item to be billed all on one date or you just want invoices to be separated out. It can be used in conjunction with with the Schedule Date (below), but doesn’t have to be
- It does not work with certain ones, such as:
- Tuition Insurance (always separate)
- Any Discounts
- Deposits (handled separately (see above))
- How it used to work: Other than Tuition Insurance, all line items would fall in a single Tuition Contract invoice
- Schedule Date:
- This allows you to schedule almost any line item. These line items can be part of the bigger Tuition Contract invoice, but scheduled all one one date, or they can be separated into a new invoice (when combined with the above option), and still be on a single date
- This can be a nice way around dealing with delayed deposits (some schools charge a deposit, but not till May or June) or to have something like a class trip fee come due next April as a lump payment, instead of being spread over the year. The options are fairly flexible when combined with the other options already mentioned
- It does not work with certain ones, such as:
- Tuition Insurance (schedule in the Lead Enrollment Configuration)
- Any Discounts
- How it used to work: Only Tuition Insurance could be scheduled, and Deposits were assumed to be due with signing
If you have any questions, concerns or comments, or would just like to discuss these options with us, please feel free to reach out via email (support@bigsis.com) or phone (844-424-4747 x12)
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