The following describes the various ways to create student charges and refunds, how to prepare for and run the automated Student Billing process, and process used to calculate and process charges and refunds.
There are several ways to create charges to subsidiary accounts:
· Manual Charges and Adjustments: These transactions are typically exceptions; they are transactions that are not easily automated. Manual charges and adjustments can be entered using the Miscellaneous Charges, A/R Charge Entry window.
· Automatic Student Charges: On the basis of the student's course registration and other data, you can set up the system to automatically generate charge transactions for tuition and fees. You can generate student charges in the following ways:
o Online Registration: When the Registrar enters the student's courses, the program automatically assesses tuition and fees charges for which the student meets the criteria. The Student Billing process is initiated online only if online billing was selected for the billing period(s).
o Individual Charges: You may calculate or recalculate charges for one student.
o Student Charges in Batch: You may assess charges for a group of students.
· Finance Charges: These charges are created as part of the A/R Generate Finance Charges process. They are penalties for late payment of subsidiary balances (such as finance charges and late fees).
· Preliminary Charges: The Preliminary Billing process allows you to create preliminary charges for tuition and fees for an upcoming term. During this process, you can automatically generate preliminary student charges. These charges appear on the memo statement but they are not posted to the student accounts.
There are six (6) charge types, and fee codes are associated with a charge type.
The automated Student Billing process is based on the billing periods, hours, charges, refunds, and discounts you set up using the Billing Periods, Hours Definition, Charges/Refunds Definition, and Student Billing Exemptions windows.
The following information is required in order to automatically calculate student charges, refunds, and discounts:
1. Use the Billing Periods window to define the preliminary and actual time periods under which charges should be generated.
2. Use the Hours Definition window to define the information to use as a basis for accumulating hours for the charges and the amounts or rates to charge.
3. Use the Charges/Refunds Definition window to set up the following:
· Descriptions of charges
· General ledger accounts to use for charges
· Refunds made if courses are dropped
· Available discounts, including exemptions and waivers
4. If applicable, use the Student Billing Exemptions window to assign exemptions/waivers to students.
5. Use the Student Billing window to automatically generate preliminary or actual charges and refunds for one student or a group of students.
When the system calculates charges and refunds, it proceeds through a series of steps for each student processed. These steps apply whether you run charges in a batch or for individuals. The Fees table is important to the charge calculation process because it contains the amount of each student's fees charged in a previous run and required refund information for when a student drops all courses.
The process has two main steps:
1. Calculating and creating charge and refund transactions for the selected student(s)
2. Updating the Fees table for students who have dropped all courses or who were not selected but previously charged
To calculate charges and refunds for a selected student or batch of students for the selected billing periods, the system follows these steps:
1. Calculate the charge amount and update the amount, accounts, and refund element columns on the Fees table.
2. Compare the calculated charge to the original amount on the Fees table.
· Create a charge adjustment (Debit) if the calculated amount is greater than the original amount on the Fees table.
· Create a credit (Credit) adjustment/refund if the calculated amount is less than the original amount on the Fees table.
To update the Fees table for the selected billing period(s), the system follows these steps:
3. Read only the records not updated by #1 above.
4. Use the Refund Element columns on the Fees table to look up the corresponding Refund table row for the refund calculation.