Setting Up Tuition and Billing

Everything below is configured once and revisited rarely. The amounts you charge are set separately, each year.

Required Access

Cashier — Admin

Two steps need a different permission: the chart of accounts needs Accounting Admin, and the payment contract text needs Form Letters.

Go to Cashier, then Menu ▸ Settings. The six tabs there are the whole of this page, in the order they should be worked through — each one depends on the ones before it.

Order matters

Fees must exist before you can set a rate for them, scales must exist before a discount can be made available on one, and plans must exist before a contract can be generated. Working out of order is the most common reason a contract will not generate later.

Before you start: the chart of accounts

Every fee has to point at an income account, and Tuition and Billing will not let you create one without it. Your school also needs a small number of system accounts — accounts tagged with the role they play, rather than just a name and a number:

System account	What it holds
Accounts Receivable — Families	What families have been billed and have not yet paid.
Unearned Tuition Revenue	Money billed for a part of the year the school has not yet delivered.
Advance Payments Received	Money received before there is a charge to apply it to.
Student Card Balances	Money loaded onto POS cards, which the school is holding rather than earning.

These are set on the account itself, under Accounting ▸ Settings. A new district is provisioned with a default chart that already has them, so in most cases there is nothing to do here — but the payment contract wizard refuses to run if the first two are missing, and it is much easier to notice that now than in September.

Step 1: Fees

Settings ▸ Fees is your school’s catalog of everything it can charge for. A fee is the kind of charge — tuition, registration, books, a lost library book. The amounts live elsewhere.

Four fields identify a fee:

• Applies to — Student or Employee.
• Code — a short abbreviation, used in exports and reports.
• Name — what families see on their statement.
• Account — the income account this fee’s money books to. Required.

Then one question decides everything else:

Fee type is the hinge

• Part of the annual contract — tuition, registration, books. You set an amount for it each year in Rates, and it is billed on the payment plan when an account’s contract is generated.
• Charged during the year — a lost book, a field trip, an AP exam. It is billed when it happens.

For a contract fee you also answer three scheduling questions:

Setting	What it decides
Billing	Installments spreads it across the plan’s due dates · Up front puts the whole amount on the first installment · Fixed date gives it its own due date.
Earned	When the school has earned the money, which is not the same as when the family is billed. When charged earns it immediately — the right answer when the account it points at is money the school is holding, such as a card balance. The others spread it across the year.
Proratable	Whether a student starting mid-year is charged less. Turn it off for fees always charged in full, such as registration.

A fee charged during the year is not asked any of these. It is always billed up front, earned when charged, and never prorated — those settings only mean something on a payment plan, so rather than record an answer that nothing acts on, the fee dialog hides them and says so.

Moving an established fee off the contract

Switching a fee from Part of the annual contract to Charged during the year stops it being billed on the payment plan and clears its billing schedule, proration and revenue timing. Rates already set for it are left alone. Tuition and Billing warns you before it does this.

Two more settings sit behind More options: Show always keeps the fee’s column visible on reports even when nothing has been charged to it, and Required marks it as expected for every student.

Billing by scale

Occasionally one group of students pays a fee on a different schedule from everyone else — spreading registration across the payment plan for children of employees, for example, while every other family pays it up front. The Billing by scale action on a fee’s row sets that exception per tuition scale. The amount does not change, only when it is due. Leave every scale on the fee default unless you have a specific reason.

Raising a budget

If your school uses the Budget module, a fee can also raise a budget account’s spending cap by the amount charged. Use it where a program is funded partly from the budget and partly from a fee — a woodworking materials fee, an athletics participation fee.

This is a spending limit, not an accounting entry: the income still books to the fee’s own account in full, and the expenses still book to theirs. The cap rises when the family is billed, not when they pay.

Step 2: Tuition scales

Settings ▸ Tuition Scales defines the groups of students who pay the same rates — Standard, Missionary, Child of Employee, and so on. Each scale needs a code, a name, and an optional description.

Scales are reorderable, and the order carries through to Rates, Discounts and every contract, so put them in the order you want to read them.

Tuition scale is set on the student, not on the financial account, so an account with two children can have one on each.

Step 3: Discounts and scholarships

Settings ▸ Discounts holds every kind of reduction your school grants. Each one reduces a single named fee, and answers four questions.

Who it applies to:

Applies to	Meaning
One student	Applies once, to a single student you pick on the contract.
Each student	Applies on its own to every student on the contract.
Account (distribute)	One account-level amount, divided equally among the enrolled students.
Multi-child	Applies when a family enrolls siblings. You set a percentage per sibling position — second child, third child, and so on.

How much: an Amount is a fixed sum, a Percent is a share of the fee. A preset discount uses the same figure for every account; an adjustable one is entered per family when it is granted, optionally up to a maximum you set here.

Where the money given up lands: an optional accounting account. The fee above is what the discount comes off; this is the account that carries what was given away. Leave it empty and the discount posts no accounting entry of its own.

When it applies — from each discount’s Actions menu. Per tuition scale, a discount is Automatic (applied without anyone asking), Manual (offered to the cashier, who decides), or Not available. You can additionally narrow the automatic ones to particular payment plans — a discount for paying the year in one payment, for instance.

Multi-child discounts need enough children to reach them

A multi-child discount only applies when the family has enough students enrolled to reach its lowest sibling position with a percentage above zero. A discount that gives nothing to a second child and 10% to a third does nothing for a two-child family, and Tuition and Billing will not apply it to one.

Step 4: Payment plans

Settings ▸ Payment Plans. A plan is nothing more than a set of installment due dates — Monthly, Quarterly, Two Semesters, Pay in Full. When a contract uses one, the account’s installment fees, minus discounts, are divided evenly across those dates.

Build one by choosing a cadence — how many payments, how often, the first payment month, and the day of the month they fall due — and then adjusting any individual date. The generated list is what gets saved, not the rule that produced it.

Plans carry forward on their own

Dates are stored relative to the school year, not as calendar dates, so a plan built once works every year afterwards without being touched. Rates are not like this — those you set annually.

A plan can optionally carry an adjustment: a financing fee or an early-payment discount applied automatically to any account put on it. A percentage adjustment is taken from one named base fee only, never from the whole contract.

Step 5: Cashiers

Settings ▸ Cashiers registers the people and stations that take money and issue receipts. Each one has a code, a name, the next receipt number to be issued, and a bank account per currency the school handles. One is marked the main cashier.

Cash and check deposits are recorded against the bank account named here, pending deposit.

Cashiers are not POS centers

A cashier receives payments against financial accounts. A POS center runs a register. They are configured separately and a person can hold either without the other.

Step 6: Billing options

Settings ▸ Billing Options carries three school-wide panels.

Late fees and reminders. How many days past due before a reminder email goes out, how many before a late fee is applied, the late fee as a percentage of the pending total, and whether it compounds monthly. Both jobs are automatic once switched on, and either can be turned off for an individual account later.

Income recognition. How tuition income is recognized to your general ledger: the first month, how many months to spread it across, and the day of the month each entry is dated. Income is spread evenly across that window regardless of when the family actually pays. Up-front fees like registration are recognized on their charge date instead.

Payment contract currency. Whether the printed contract shows your primary currency, both, or the secondary only. Amounts are converted at the exchange rate on the date the contract is generated, so a later correction to the rate table cannot restate a contract already given to a family. This needs a secondary currency configured for the district.

Step 7: The payment contract text

The contract families sign is a form letter, which means your school can rewrite it in its own words. It is edited under Form Letters in the user menu, in the category Payment Contract — a different permission from the rest of this page, and a different part of the app.

Keep the four data blocks

The contract body contains four «obj(...)» tokens that render the student list, the fee table, the payment schedule and the signature block. Edit the prose around them freely, in either language. Delete one and that section stops appearing on the contract — including the signature block.

Four sibling letters are worth reviewing at the same time, since they go to families automatically once the module is running:

• Cashier: Payment contract ready to sign — sent when staff release a contract to the family.
• Cashier: Payment past due reminder
• Cashier: Late fee applied to your account
• Cashier: New charge on your account

You are ready when

• Every fee your school charges exists, points at an income account, and is marked as either part of the annual contract or charged during the year.
• Every group of students who pay different rates has a tuition scale.
• Every discount you grant exists, names the fee it reduces, and is marked Automatic, Manual or Not available on each scale.
• At least one payment plan has installment dates on it.
• At least one cashier is registered, with a bank account and a starting receipt number.
• Someone has read the payment contract text through, in every language your school sends it in.

Next: set this year’s amounts for each scale, then generate contracts.