Receive Payments
- Robert Lenk
- Chris Barrett
- Sarah Marciniak
- Nate Parsell
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 or ACH payments, configure a third-party payment processor (Authorize.net, PayPal, or Stripe).
If accepting credit card or ACH payments, configure related transaction codes.
Configure application fees and related permissions.
Configure enrollment deposits and related permissions.
Configure payment plans.
Configure payment receipts.
Required permissions
Module | Number | Description |
|---|---|---|
Admissions | 3 | Apply an application fee to an applicant |
Student Financials | 48 | Apply a payment to a single student using the student ledger |
Student | 478, 496 | Apply a charge to a single student using the payments screen |
Student Financials | 52, 57 | Apply a payment to one or more students using fast cash |
Student Financials | 995 | Apply payments by uploading a spreadsheet |
Student | 237 | Student can make payment |
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.
Go to the applicant’s profile.
Go to Person Selected > Applicant.
In App Amount Paid enter the application fee amount paid.
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.
The transaction code options displayed on this screen will depend on whether you’ve configured Campus Cafe to show all transaction codes or just those categorized as payment codes.
Go to the student’s profile.
Go to Person Selected > Payments.
Locate the Manual Cash Payments box.
In Amount enter the monetary amount collected. Don’t enter a dollar sign or comma.
In Semester select the term to apply the payment.
In Bill Code select the transaction code associated with the payment. For example, a code to indicate the payment is for tuition.
Optionally in Description enter a note about the payment.
Campus Cafe automatically puts the student’s email in Confirmation Email where a receipt will be sent. You can change this email.
Optionally select an Pay Plan to apply the payment toward the student’s payment plan.
Click Process Payment.
To print a receipt click printable version. Printable version includes the date the receipt was printed.
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.
Go to the student’s profile.
Go to Person Selected > A/R-Ledger Card.
Click Add Cash Batch.
In Transaction Code select the transaction code associated with the payment. For example, a code to indicate the payment is for tuition.
Optionally in Description enter a note about the payment.
In Semester select the term to apply the payment.
Optionally select an Pay Plan to apply the payment toward the student’s payment plan.
In Cash Received enter the amount collected as a positive number.
In A/R Credit enter the amount collected as a negative number.
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.
Optionally enter a PET or Project Expense Tracking Number. This helps if the charge is associated with a specific project.
Optionally enter a Check Number/CC (credit card type).
Optionally enter Additional Desc to further describe the payment.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Credit card payments
To collect payments by credit card, the institution must have a third-party contract with Authorize.net, PayPal or Stripe. You also must associate these payments with transaction codes. Once configured, students may log in to Campus Cafe to pay their balances.
Go to Payments.
Enter an amount of at least $1.00 in the box (Do not enter a $ or comma)
Click Pay.
Follow the prompts to complete the transaction.
The payment is transferred to cash batch for posting by an administrator.
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