About receiving payments

Students may pay an enrollment/admissions deposit to accept your offer of admissions, or submit a payment to cover tuition and fees, housing or meal plans. Generally, these payments are applied to a student’s ledger and show on their billing statement.

This article covers how to record payments received by the institution itself (e.g. cash or check) versus credit card payments made by an applicant through self service.

Prerequisites

• Configure transaction codes related to payments. For example, a transaction code associated with tuition payments.

• To accept credit card payments, configure a third-party payment processor (Authorize.net or PayPal).

• Configure application fees and related permissions.

• Configure enrollment deposits and related permissions.

• Configure payment plans.

• Configure payment receipts.

Required permissions

Application fee

Use this method if an applicant submitted their application fee by cash or check or other payment method not connected to Campus Cafe.

Application fees don’t apply on a student’s ledger/bill because an application fee is collected before an individual is a student and isn’t connected to a charge. Additionally, an application fee doesn’t cover a future charge like tuition.

1. Go to the applicant’s profile.

2. Go to Person Selected > Applicant.

3. In App Amount Paid enter the application fee amount paid.
   
   

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4. Click Save

Admissions enrollment deposit, tuition/fees & housing/meal payments

Payments for an enrollment deposit, tuition/fees or room and board are applied to a student’s ledger and appear on a student bill.

Campus Cafe supports multiple methods to add a payment.

• Manual payment good for a single payment triggers an email to the student with a receipt.

• Ledger payment good for adjustments or other payments that don’t need to trigger a receipt.

• Fast cash good for a batch of payments such as processing multiple checks received during the day.

• Spreadsheet good for uploading a large number of payments recorded on a spreadsheet.

Manual payment

This method leverages the same process utilized by a student. A payment recorded through this method will trigger an email receipt to the student.

1. Go to the student’s profile.

2. Go to Person Selected > Payments.

3. Locate the Manual Cash Payments box.

4. In Amount enter the monetary amount collected. Don’t enter a dollar sign or comma.

5. In Semester select the term to apply the payment.

6. In Bill Code select the transaction code associated with the payment. For example, a code to indicate the payment is for tuition.

7. Optionally in Description enter a note about the payment.

8. Campus Cafe automatically puts the student’s email in Confirmation Email where a receipt will be sent. You can change this email.

9. Optionally select an Pay Plan to apply the payment toward the student’s payment plan.

10. Click Process Payment.

11. To print a receipt click printable version.

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12. The payment will appear in cash batch for posting.

Ledger payment

This method initiates records a payment from the student ledger. A payment recorded through this method won’t trigger an email receipt to the student.

1. Go to the student’s profile.

2. Go to Person Selected > A/R-Ledger Card.

3. Click Add Cash Batch.

4. In Transaction Code select the transaction code associated with the payment. For example, a code to indicate the payment is for tuition.

5. Optionally in Description enter a note about the payment.

6. In Semester select the term to apply the payment.

7. Optionally select an Pay Plan to apply the payment toward the student’s payment plan.

8. In Cash Received enter the amount collected as a positive number.

9. In A/R Credit enter the amount collected as a negative number.

10. Campus Cafe automatically fills the Batch Member with your username. This payment will be placed in this batch for posting. To place the payment in an alternative batch, enter the batch name. This is uncommon but you may decide to do this if you post different types of payments by batch.

11. Optionally enter a PET or Project Expense Tracking Number. This helps if the charge is associated with a specific project.

12. Optionally enter a Check Number/CC (credit card type).

13. Optionally enter Additional Desc to further describe the payment.

14. Optionally tell Campus Cafe to apply the payment to a specific general ledger account by selecting a Cash CC-GL-Fund. If you don’t select a fund, Campus Cafe applies the payment to the account associated with the transaction code.

15. Optionally enter a Sponsored By ID#. Click Lookup Sponsor to locate the ID number if needed. Sponsors can be organizations or other entities and the receivable is at the sponsor level and not on the student, even though the billing transactions is on the individual student. Sponsor billing shouldn’t be confused with third-party billing. In the third-party billing, the receivable is on the student and simply billed to a third party.

16. Usually a single payment is booked to one general ledger account. However, you may wish to split the payment among multiple ledger accounts. To do so under Distributions under CC-GL-Fund select a general ledger account and enter the amount of the payment to attribute to that fund. Click Save Distribution then New Distribution to attribute the next portion of the payment.

17. The payment will appear in cash batch for posting.

Fast cash

This lets you record multiple payments in one batch. For example, recording all checks and cash received during a workday at the Bursar's Office.

Refer to Cash Batch documentation.

Spreadsheet

This lets you upload multiple payments using a spreadsheet. 

Refer to Upload Cash Payments Using Spreadsheet.

Student Self-Service Credit Card Payment

To collect payments by credit card, the institution must have a third-party contract with PayPal or Authorize.net. Once configured, students may log in to Campus Cafe to pay their balances.

Setting up credit card payments for Tuition and Fees

When setting up credit card payments for tuition and fees, use the following Custom Controls to determine the transaction code used for the credit card payment and any convenience fee. The set up of the transaction code for credit card payments and convenience fees have default behavior that is different than manual payments.

1. Go to Payments.

2. Enter an amount of at least $1.00 in the  box (Do not enter a $ or comma)

3. Click Pay.

4. Follow the prompts to complete the transaction.

5. The payment is transferred to cash batch for posting by an administrator.

From the student's perspective

1. Go to Payments.

2. Enter an amount of at least $1.00 in the  box (Do not enter a $ or comma)

3. Click Pay.

4. Follow the prompts to complete the transaction.

5. The payment is transferred to cash batch for posting by an administrator.

Email Receipt Payment Type Labels

Campus Cafe will apply a label type to different types of payments for the Web Payment confirmation screen, and the Authorize.net email payment receipt. The labels are controlled by the Custom Control ProgramId WEBPAYMENT, sequence 3, Parameters 5-9: