Who is the invoice payer?

MySchool finance is designed to allow your institute flexibility on who should see and be responsible for the payment of invoices. The module allows you to assign invoice payers to a student and split fees between them. You can also assign other guardians to be connected to the account, enabling them to pay on behalf of and apply discounts to the invoice.

Organisation settings

The finance module works with the guardian account association primarily, please make sure you have set this when creating your financial organisation. This will enable you to attach a maximum of two guardians to the student as payees. 

Assigning payees 

With the new finance module, the system will add a tab to the student and guardian profile - Finance.

The guardian finance tab will allow you to assign Invoice payers to their respective students. It is here that you can see split payment details, all transactions, the account number attributed to the invoice payer, and add access to other guardians to be able to pay and view transactions online.

It can be set per financial organisation created in the system.

Make sure you have your fees created if you wish to split specific items, as these can be adjusted per fee. You can have different ratios for school fees, books, or after-school clubs for example.

Each invoice payer will receive an invoice with the respective ratio applied. You can only split payments with guardians who are attached to the student with a valid relationship. However, you can grant access to any other user in your system.

The first invoice payer set is known as the primary invoice payer, the split with the guardian is the secondary. It is important to set this up correctly as discounts have different behaviour for primary and secondary.

You cannot add two primary invoice payers to the student. 

Share account with others

This will grant access to any other user to be able to view and pay the student's invoices. The user does not have to be attached to the student. Enter their name into the field to grant them access.

How does this work with staff discounts?

If you have a staff discount applied to your fee, then you need to check how your payees are assigned to make sure this is applied.

1. The first invoice payer slot is known as the primary payer. If they have an active employment status (is staff) then the discount will be applied. This discount will be shared with the split with the payee following the ratio entered.

2. The split with or secondary payee who is a staff member will not have a staff discount applied to their portion of the primary payer's portion.

3. If you add a user to have full access and this user is a staff member then their staff discount is applied to both primary and secondary payee.

Discounts are set when you create the fee. They can be a percentage or flat rate.

How does the sibling discount work?

The sibling discount is applied if the user is set as primary only. It will not be applied if the user is set as secondary and is only applied to the primary payer. It is not carried across to the secondary payer.

It will not be applied to users who have full account access.

Note that the sibling discount is configured on the fee page. Make sure to understand how to build a billing run and when this fee is to be included. There are options to only apply the discount if the siblings are included in the same billing run, or to apply even if only 1 dependant student is included.

Account number

Each invoice payer needs an account number in order to have invoices raised against them. Account numbers are unique and can be either manual or system-generated, set this in the configuration panel. If it has been system-generated, this field will populate on the first bill run or credit note published against the account. These are unique in MySchool.

Transaction list

You can view all transactions individually, the total balance is also shown on the finance tab of each invoice payer assigned to the student.

Please note this does not show on users who are assigned to have only the right to access.

Click on the blue type and a slide-over appears with further details of the transaction.

Open each section by clicking on the blue header for further details.

You can download a copy of the transaction pdf, which has been published to the guardian profile. 

Use the arrow next to the Download Invoice action button. You have a further three options;

• Edit invoice - Allows you to edit details and add ad hoc payments. You can also add ad hoc fees for different students if needed. This will automatically update the PDF on the parent portal with the new line items.
• New payment - You can manually assign a payment from the finance tab as well. These are only applicable to classic payment methods. Online payments are controlled directly from the Parent portal. Allocate to an invoice, and assign an amount. Use the quick fill button to assign the whole invoiced amount. This will be published and assigned to the Invoicee's financial parent portal dashlet and payment header.

• Refresh particulars - Will refresh the invoice with new details if they have changed in the user profile.

A few tips and FAQ

Can we delete an invoice that has been published?

No, once an invoice has been raised and published it cannot be deleted. The correct process would be to issue a credit note for auditing purposes.

Can we remove a student from the invoice payer?

Yes, find the user, and open the finance tab. In edit mode, you can remove the student from here. This not remove transactions, but will apply to all future transactions raised against the student. The user can still process payments for the invoices.

What permissions do users need to view and edit this tab?

There are four permissions that are designed specifically to view and edit this tab. They are located within the new finance section located in user group roles.

These can be set to ALL, restrict to security context, restrict to school levels the user is staff in. Please contact our support team for help with security user group settings before making any changes.