Finalsite Enrollment Billing is a tightly integrated extension of the enrollment process. Setup covers payment plans and schedules, billing categories (set in the order you want payments applied), the Payments configuration, parent portal templates (especially Autopay Terms and Conditions), billing email templates, and financial responsibility per parent or guardian. By default, every parent starts at 0% financial responsibility; whoever pays the deposit is auto-assigned 100% unless you set custom splits beforehand.
💡Quick Answers
- What setup items do I need to complete to get Billing running? Payment Plans with schedules (every plan needs a payment date and percentage adding up to 100), Billing Categories in the correct order for payment allocation, Payments (Stripe) onboarding, the Autopay Terms and Conditions Parent Portal template, billing email templates, and Financial Responsibility per parent or guardian.
- Why does Billing Category order matter? Payments are applied top-down. If Parent A owes $800 tuition and $200 fees and pays $500, all $500 hits Tuition because it's listed first. A second $500 finishes Tuition ($300) then starts on Fees ($200). Parents cannot allocate themselves which categories their payment hits.
- How does default Financial Responsibility work? All parents start at 0% by default. If you don't define a split before the contract is signed, whoever pays the deposit is automatically set to 100%. Splits can be adjusted manually anytime, but only future contract charges move when you change the split (not past charges or manually added charges).
- What payment plan setup must be in place? Every plan needs a schedule with at least one payment due date and a percentage. Schedules must total 100%. Plans without schedules show a red triangle on the Payment Plans page. See Billing: Payment Plans & Schedules for details.
- How do I customize parent-facing billing messages? Settings > Portal > Parent Portal Content has the Autopay Terms and Conditions template that you must customize before enabling autopay. Billing emails (Upcoming Statement, Account Overdue, Payment Received, etc.) are in Settings > Communication > Email Templates > Billing Emails, see Billing Communications.
- What about Payments setup? Required to use Billing, Stripe onboarding for your school's bank account. See Payments: Overview & FAQ and Payments: Setup and Onboarding.
Pop some Popcorn!
Be sure to check out our collection of Billing videos here: Finalsite Enrollment Video Library
To get started with Finalsite Enrollment Billing, review the items below to set up and customize your process.
- Click here to review important Billing terminology
Payment Plans and Schedules
You can view all payment plans and their details within Settings--Financial--Payment Plans. You'll need the following items set up for each payment plan:
- Make sure all payment plans have a schedule.
- All payment plans need a payment due date and a percentage amount due.
- Payment plans and schedules must be displayed within the contract.
- Within this page, you’ll see a red triangle if a schedule hasn't been set up for the payment plan.
Resources
- Click here for general information about payment plans and schedules.
- Click here to learn how to set up payment plans and schedules.
Billing Categories
Overview
Within Settings--Financial--Billing Categories, you'll need to review existing billing categories and set up any additional billing categories as needed such as late fees or activity fees. Most billing categories will be applied to the student, except in cases where the parent is solely responsible for the amount, such as late fees.
Billing Category Order
IMPORTANT: The billing categories must be organized in the order that you want payments to be applied, based on the balance due. When an automatic payment is processed, that payment is applied to the balance due in the order of the categories on this page. Let's look at an example:
- Each parent has a ledger with a total amount due. This amount is comprised of tuition, general fees, etc.
Say Parent A has a balance of $1,000, where $800 of that is for tuition and $200 is for additional fees. If the parent makes a payment of $500 and Tuition is the first billing category listed, then that $500 will all go towards the Tuition since it's the first one in the list.
This also means that if they make another payment of $500, then $300 of that will go towards the tuition to finish paying that amount off, and the last $200 will go towards additional fees.
Fee Allocation
Parents can overpay or underpay the amount due, however, they can not allocate what fees their money is applied to. This is dictated by the billing category order and where there's a remaining balance. You can read more about overpayment behavior in this article.
Resources
- Click here to learn how to set up Billing Categories
Payments
To use Finalsite Enrollment Billing, your school must have Payments set up. Please refer to the help articles below on how to get set up with your Deployment Specialist or a member of our Support team.
Resources
Parent Portal Templates: Terms of Service
Within Settings--Portal--Parent Portal Content, there's an 'Autopay Terms And Conditions' template that needs to be customized. Each school is responsible for defining their terms of service, which is a requirement for participation in Autopay/auto-withdrawals.
Email Templates and Automated Communication Plans
Within Settings--Communication--Email Templates, you'll need to customize the automated templates for payments and statements found in the billing tab.
Resources
- Click here to learn about Billing Email Templates.
- Click here to see what emails get sent at various key points in the billing process.
Financial Responsibility
Schools can decide if they want to set up parent/guardian financial responsibility prior to contract generation or later on after contract generation. It only needs to be set up once and these settings will save year over year but can be manually adjusted on a yearly bases.
How are split payments/percentages handled?
The default split is set to 0% until contract submission. The parent that submits the contract and pays the deposit is automatically set as 100% financially responsible. However, if split payments or percentages were defined prior to contract generation or submission, then, financial responsibility will be dictated by these values.
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