Payments: Processing a Manual/Phone Payment – Finalsite Enrollment

Overview

Although parents/guardians can make online payments from their Parent Portal, there may still be times when you need to collect payment over the phone. Some examples include:

Making a payment on behalf of someone who is experiencing technical difficulties or otherwise has trouble accessing the Parent Portal.
Billing payers requesting one-time or additional payments over the phone with schools (e.g. families want a bi-monthly payment cadence or receive a lump sum such as a tax refund that they'd like to apply).
Grandparents who want to contribute to their grandchild's education.

To support these scenarios and more, learn how to process manual payments using Payments by reading on below.

IMPORTANT NOTES/LIMITATIONS:

At this time, you can only pay with a Credit Card when making a payment on behalf of a parent. You can not make Electronic Check or ACH payments when making payments for parents while impersonating.
For security purposes, the system doesn't allow Admins to enroll families in Autopay.
You can not make a payment with a saved payment profile on behalf of the parent/payer. All payments made by the Admin MUST be entered manually.

If your school has AutoPay set as required, a manual payment made by the Admin is only allowed if:

The family already has a saved payment profile set to AutoPay. The Admin can then enter and process a manual payment for the same payer or for a different payer, such as another parent or a grandparent.

How-To: Process a Manual Payment with Payments

Processing a payment on behalf of a parent/guardian or other payer requires use of the impersonate feature within Finalsite Enrollment. Please note: You must have the impersonate permission enabled from within 'Settings' - 'Portal' - 'Admin Portal Accounts' to do this.

1 - Access the contact record of the student who needs the payment

You can do this by selecting the student from a list page/search or by using the quick search action.

2 - Click into the 'Households' tab - 'Parent Portal Access'.

You can also access this page using the quick link on the contact record summary. This is the computer monitor icon to the right of the page (underneath parent/guardian contact information).

3 - Find the contact in the list, then click the 'Impersonate' button in the 'Linked Account' column to begin impersonating their account.

Please note: This step requires that the parent/guardian who you want to make a payment on behalf of has their Parent Portal Account authenticated.

Once you have clicked the Impersonate button, you will be redirected to the Parent Portal - My Students page and be logged in as the parent selected.

4 - Access Billing Management tab and make a payment

The Billing Management tab will be at the top of the page on the Parent Portal. Click on it to access the area where you can make a payment.

Once you are on the Billing Management tab, you will see the billing accounts, amounts due, and ledger. You will also see the green Make Payment button in the accounts section - click on this to make the payment on behalf of the payer.

On the Make a Payment page, you can choose the amount to pay (Current Balance or enter a custom amount), then enter the payment method information you received from the parent/guardian. Please note: For security purposes, you will not be able to make a payment with a saved payment profile.

After entering the payment information, click the Pay button at the bottom to complete the transaction. The parent/guardian will receive the automated payment received email (if payment is successful) or payment failed email (if there is an error).

Please note that the failed payment email is only something available to schools using the Billing module.

Additional Resources