Billing

Overview

Billing Management allows you to set up and manage parent payments of school contributions, donations, and other items, as well as respond to agreements and questions as part of the payment process. 

You can also export summary Reports for school council reporting, and Reconciliation information to assist with managing your school finances. 

Each school sets up their own Billing Runs, Schedules, and Items, to manage how school contributions are raised to parents, so the options available within your portal may differ from our examples.

Click here to access our latest training webinar recording for Billing Management. You can also access the Billing Basics course in Compass Academy for further learning (go to the 'Tools' menu, cog icon, and select 'Compass Academy').

Billing allows you to receive payments for school contributions through the Action Centre, which is the same place that parents process payments for Events.
     

Permissions

Staff who require access to use features of the Billing module will need to be assigned the applicable level of permission.

Billing.Admin	This permission allows the user to manage the Administration of the Billing module.
Billing.Base	Gives the user access to the Billing page and lets you view the dashboard & log tabs as well as viewing the billing schedule itself.
Billing.Configure	Allows users to access the Item Templates tab and perform all actions inside.
Billing.Create	Users with this permission have the ability to create ad-hoc transactions, receipting, creation of billing schedules, modification of billing schedules that you've created, duplicate billing schedules. It also gives the ability to Post Charges from Events in NSW Public.
Billing.ModifyAll	Provides the ability for the user to modify billing schedules they have not created.

For information on assigning permissions, please refer to the 'Permissions' article from our Knowledge Base.

Initial Set-up

Before you can commence using the Billing module, you will need to work through the initial set-up process.  Please click here to access the 'Billing Initial Set-up' article from our Knowledge Base.

Glossary

Billing Management Plan	A Recurring Contribution for fees raised in Billing Management.
Billing Run	These are date-based, we advise having one run per year, holding all your Billing Schedules.
Billing Schedule	Billing schedules allow you to add payment items for groups of students. You may have one Billing schedule for each year level which includes each item a student in that cohort pays for each year.
Credit Note	A document which allows the school to remove or zero out outstanding charges on invoices which are no longer required to be paid by the debtor.  This can be done to invoices which are completely unpaid, or partially paid.
Debtors	Debtors are created from Parent Accounts, but can also be created manually.  These are individuals/families who pay a portion of, or all of, the school fees/contributions.
Fees in Advance	Fees in Advance record the allocation of Unallocated Funds.
Items	These are the individual payment items that parents will pay with a Billing Schedule.  Items can be reused each year i.e. curriculum contributions etc.
Recurring Contribution	A Payment Plan, where a parent can opt-in to have payments debited from their card on specific dates set by the school.

The Billing Management Page

To access Billing Management, go to the Organisation menu (grid icon) and select 'Billing Management'.

On the page are a series of tabs.

Please Note: The content/functionality you see and have access to will be determined by the level of Billing permission you have been assigned.

     

Dashboard - The Billing Dashboard shows all of the transactions recorded in Billing Management. You can Print Receipts, Generate Statements of Account, and Export CSV files with transaction information. This is where most of the ad-hoc, day-to-day billing management is handled.

Billing Schedules - This tab is where Billing Schedules for the year are viewed and managed. It is where school fees are set up at the start of the year and will be accessed when new students start, or for mid-year subject changes. 

Billing Runs - On this tab, the academic year for Billing is set-up, including what Recurring Contributions options will be available to parents when paying online.

Discounts - This is where existing Discounts are managed and new Discounts can be created.

Item Templates - This tab is where the set up and management of the categories of items you can take payments for through Billing Management is handled. These templates are then used to populate Billing Schedules at the start of the year. Each Item Template ties back to a GL number.

Third Party Funds - This is where you can record and keep track of external funding you receive to go towards paying off school fees.

Reports - This tab contains a range of reports like GL Codes reports and Payment reconciliation reports.  Reports can be viewed and/or exported. These can be used for reporting to school council.

Settings - This is where settings in relation to Billing are managed.

Reconciliation - This tab contains information that can be viewed or exported in relation to CompassPay transfers. The Rapid Receipting file (if your school uses Rapid Receipting) can be accessed from here GL Codes Breakdowns can be viewed as can the transactions contained in each transfer. The information here will match with information in your school's CompassPay account.

Advanced Filter

When using Billing Management, you will regularly need to narrow down the information so that you can look at particular students, debtors, or other information. You can use the Advanced Filter option in the Dashboard to find the information you need.

     

For example, to find out if a particular student has any fees still outstanding, you can type their name into the student field, and select "Unpaid Invoices". Then, click "Apply Filter".

Once you have used the filter to narrow down your search, you can use the "Export to CSV" button to export a list of these documents to Excel.

Advanced Filter Fields:

Reference ID	For example, REC_123456 or INV_123456
Active Documents	Active or Cancelled Documents.
Document Type	Receipt, Invoice, Credit Note or Outgoing Payment (Refund)
Debtor Name	Parent name on their Debtor Profile
Form Groups	The students' form groups.
Year Levels	The students' year levels.
Keyword search for descriptions	This will  search the "Summary", not the "Description" field which displays when you open the details of an invoice.
Student (search by name or SRN)	You can search by student name or by their student code (SRN).
Events	This is only used if your school uses Billing with the Events module. This is not currently used for Victorian schools.
Billing Schedules	The Billing Schedule that the fees were posted from. This will not include any documents from Recurring Contributions for a particular Billing Schedule.
Student Status	For example, whether the student is Active or Left.
Paid/Unpaid Fees	Only relevant to Invoices. If any amount has been paid, even if it isn't the total amount, the invoice will show as "Paid".
Payment Method	The payment method selected in the receipt, such as EFTPOS, Cash, or Other.
Payment Plan	Which Recurring Contribution the documents are associated with. This will not show the original invoices from the Billing Schedule. It will show the instalment invoices, Credit Note, and receipts for the specific Recurring Contribution.

Parent Process

When a Billing Schedule is posted, parents will receive a dashboard notification that there are contributions available.
     

They can click the notification and it will take them to the Action Centre page.  They will see a section for Contributions.  Clicking on a listed contribution will open it.
     

The first page they see will be the description of the Billing Run that the contribution is part of. They will then be able to sign agreements and answer questions.

Next they will see the items and can edit the amounts they want to contribute in this transaction.  If available, they will be able to choose to pay via instalments.  They can then add their card details in a process a payment.
     

If they made a part contribution, they will be able to click into the overall contribution again at a later date and make a further contribution against it if they would like.  It will show the updated outstanding amount.

All items raised within a Billing Run, including all Billing Schedules and any ad-hoc invoices raised throughout the year, will display on this Contributions page. Once any Agreements and Questions have been completed, clicking into a payment within this Billing Run will skip these steps, and just go straight to the Contributions page. 

Note: Schools have the option of passing on cpay surcharge to parents.  To have this enabled for your school, please contact support@compass.education.

When this is enabled it applies to both events and fees. 

When making an online payment, parents will see the surcharge as a line on each payment transaction being processed.

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