Convenience Fees with Stripe Legacy – Finalsite Enrollment

This article applies only to schools using the legacy version of Stripe. If your school uses Payments, see Payments: Passing on Convenience Fees to Parents instead. Stripe Legacy convenience fees can be passed to parents as a flat amount, a percentage, or a combination, configured under Settings > Financial > Payment Setup.

💡Quick Answers

Who can configure Stripe Legacy convenience fees? Only System Admins and Admins have access to Settings > Financial > Payment Setup.
What fee structures are supported? A flat dollar amount, a percentage, or a combination of both, configurable separately for credit cards and electronic checks.
Which payment types can have convenience fees applied? Deposit, application, ad-hoc (custom form), and Billing module payments.
How does the Stripe Legacy fee calculation work? The parent pays the Finalsite Enrollment amount plus the school's convenience fee; Stripe then deducts its own merchant fee (2.9% + 30¢ for credit cards) from the total received, resulting in a net payout to the school.

⚠️ Important Note

The information in this article is only relevant to schools still using the Legacy version of Stripe.

If your school is using Payments, please reference this article instead for the most up-to-date information.
If your school would like to set up your complimentary migration to Payments, please contact the Support Team.

Passing Fees on to Parents

Schools may choose to pass their convenience fees for credit card or electronic check payments to the parent. Convenience fees can be applied to the deposit, application, ad-hoc forms, or billing.

They can be in the form of:

a flat dollar amount
a percentage
or a combination of both

A fee description, as well as a fee notification message, can also be configured to show on payment screens. Convenience fee types (percentage, flat fee, or combination) and descriptions/notifications can be configured separately for credit cards and electronic checks.

Fees passed on to parents can be adjusted under Settings > Financial > Payment Setup. Please note that only those designated as System Admin or Admin have access to this page.

Resources

Read more about passing on Convenience Fees to parents here: Payments: Passing on Convenience Fees to Parents
Read more about the Convenience Fee Merge tokens that make it easy to cleary communicate these fees to parents: Convenience Fee Merge Tokens

Stripe Legacy Fees at a Glance:
Not applicable for schools using Payments. See the note below*

Stripe's merchant fees are 2.9% + 30¢ per transaction for credit cards and 75¢ per transaction for ACH.

There is an additional 1% charge applied to international credit cards.
If your school is using our Billing Module with Stripe Legacy, all ACH fees are refunded at True-Up.

*IMPORTANT: If your school is using Payments, this article will not apply to you. Click here for info about Payments.

See below for specifics on how convenience fees are applied on both the Finalsite Enrollment and the Stripe side.

How-To: Understanding Convenience Fees in Stripe

Important

This is only relevant to schools using Stripe Legacy. If your school is using our Payment service, this information does not apply to you.

The convenience fee paid by the parent in Finalsite Enrollment is not applied directly to the convenience fee for the payment processor (i.e. Stripe).

To help demonstrate how the amounts apply and end up in the final payout to the school, we have created an example where the deposit/fee amount paid by the parent is $1,000 with a convenience fee of 2.9%:

convenience fee workflow flowchart

Breakdown of this example:

The deposit amount charged to the parent in Finalsite Enrollment is $1000.
As the parent is paying with a credit card, a $29 convenience fee (2.9% of $1000) is added, making the final amount the parent pays in Finalsite Enrollment $1029.
When Stripe receives that $1029 payment, their 2.9% convenience fee plus the 30¢ transaction fee is applied to it, for a total of $30.14.
After subtracting this $30.14 in fees from the $1029 payment amount received from the parent, the school is left with a payout amount of $998.86.

Please note that your payouts will look different depending on the specific amounts parents are being charged in Finalsite Enrollment, but this same structure will apply.

Additional Resources