12 ways automated fee processing is key to college planning

The college office is probably filled with stacks of loose papers and manila folders. Avoid the costs of inefficiencies and errors caused when higher education institutions are overwhelmed with late payments, slow pace of assignments and approvals, and forgotten invoices. Minimize careless mistakes and maximize your profitability with workflow automation of the fee process.

Take your fee payment process and consider what it would be like if you could get rid of all your paper receipts and invoices forever. Here are the twelve ways to start automating your fee processes right away:

1.  Create accurate fee estimates, quotes & proposals

Using a manual calculator or pulling out a fee schedule sheet to prepare estimates can be frustrating and tiring for staff members. Create accurate fee estimates, quotes, or proposals and simplify tasks with the most efficient fee management system to save you a ton of time, and cost savings and give students the most accurate estimate possible so that they can prepare and budget properly.

2.  Auto-categorize fee structure

Create dynamic fee structures with flexible categories and components for grades, activities, etc. Easily customize fee structure and components with the ability to configure fee collection rules and set value terms as the need arise.

3.  Automate fee schedule & frequency for collection to improve transparency

Administrators can enforce and collect fees with an automated fee schedule so that students know when the fee payment is due with improved transparency in collection Set a flexible and personalized fee schedule for students for each quarter/month/year/term, you have an accurate picture of your actual revenue collection over a period of time.

4.  Create user accounts and user groups to start collecting fees

Create user groups based on program, course or a custom group of users to applicable fees. Select students individually or in bulk for a group of students to apply specific fee components or categories.

5.  Rely on email notifications to keep the constituents always informed

Streamline the communication process and keep the constituents always informed at every step by email notifications, SMS alerts and push notifications from mobile devices to save you time.

6.  Set up automatic fee payment plans

If you want students to pay their fees, make it easy and hassle-free. Allow students to pay the full amount all at once or let them pay in installments to ensure increased fee collection. Create flexible fee options to enable students to make payments by cash or payment through online and on mobile devices with credit or debit cards. Allowing more payment options will entice more students to use online fee payments.

7.  Customize fee collection

Devise custom fee policies for colleges and institutions. Apply late fees, fines, discounts, and balance adjustments to fee collection.    

8.  Auto-generate fee invoices for 100% recovery of fee due

Automatically generate invoices, set their due dates, add late fees and other fee waiver on due invoice, and notify students. Custom invoicing allows you to add any number of individual components or set up a special fee or apply discount tailored for certain category of students.

9.  Send automatic reminders to get paid on time

Automatic notifications by email and SMS will notify students of fee overdue, invoice unpaid or late fee reminders from students to get paid on time.

10.  Use data visualization to gain insights on revenue & spending

Fee automation allows you to generate a plethora of meaningful ready-built reports on aging, installment aging, refunds, receivables and dues, total dues, bad debts, estimate reports, etc. which can be viewed on a single click without any margin of error. With reporting tools and data visualization, you can quickly accumulate data that will give you the insights you need to improve your fee collection and reduce expenses.

11.  Easily reconcile both online and offline payments

The student fee payment system allows you to track students who have made through online and offline modes. Improve profitability with easy reconciliation of fees collected from students.

12.  Create a credit note to a fee invoice

A credit note is issued in the customer’s name in order to keep track of his/her debt until it’s paid off. The debt remains until it’s refunded or subtracted from the next invoice you send your customer.