About cash batch

When you collect payments from students, they don’t immediately apply to a student’s bill or your general ledger. Instead, they go to cash batch. From there you can review the individual payments, make adjustments if necessary, and choose which date to record the payments. Besides allowing you an opportunity to review the payments before you update your financials, this process allows separation of duties wherein one person collects payments while another verifies and posts them to your institution’s general ledger.

Payments enter cash batch through online payments made by students, fast cash entries, manual cash entries, payment uploads, automatic donations from the alumni/development module, miscellaneous cash (non-student account) and other sources.

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 payment plans.

• For miscellaneous payments, for Campus Cafe to automatically offset the payment, the transaction code must have Activate Cash Preset Distribution AutoFill selected and Preset Distributions selected.

Required permissions

Navigate cash batch

Find a batch

Because payments enter Campus Cafe from various sources, Campus Cafe creates batches to track them.

• Payments you enter in Campus Cafe appear in a batch named your username unless you overrode this when posting the payment.

• Student payments received through online payments appear in a batch named WB followed by the date of the payment. For example, WB20240210 would include payments received on February 10, 2024.

• Gift (donation) payments received appear in a batch named AL followed by the date of the gift. For example, WB20241009 would include payments received on October 9, 2024.

1. Go to Financials > Cash Batch.

2. In Filter on Member select a batch or select ALL to see all transactions for all batches.

3. Click Refresh/Filter View.

Rename batch

You may wish to rename a batch to match your institution’s naming convention or record-keeping requirements. Don’t do this if you want to move the transactions in one batch to another existing batch. Instead, use Merge Member.

1. Go to Financials > Cash Batch.

2. In Rename Member enter the batch name you want to change.

3. In To Member enter the batch’s new name.

   Open

   

   In this example, we rename the batch CBARRETT to BTRIECH.

4. Click Rename Cash Batch.

Merge batches

You may wish to post transactions spread across multiple batches in one go. For example, you may have online payments from the weekend that you wish to consolidate and post as one batch on Monday.

The batch you’re merging into must exist as a batch. This process won’t create a new batch.

1. Go to Financials > Cash Batch.

2. In Merge Member enter the batch name you wish to consolidate into another batch.

3. In To Member enter the batch name that will receive the batch.

   Open

   

   In this example, we merge the batch WB20240623 into the batch WB20240624. In this case, the first batch represents online payments we received on Sunday, June 23 and we’re merging them with online payments we received Monday, June 24.

    

4. Click Merge Cash Batch.

View or edit payment before posting

You may wish to review details of payments before posting them to your financials. Or perhaps you need to make an adjustment because the payment was recorded wrong or is missing information.

1. Go to Financials > Cash Batch.

2. In Filter on Member select a batch or choose ALL to see all transactions and click Refresh/Filter View.

3. Individual payment transactions appear at the bottom of the screen in a table. To drill into a transaction click the pencil.

4. Details about the payment appear.

   • Transaction code designates the type of transaction and how it appears on your general ledger.

   • Description auto populates with the transaction code description but you may override.

   • Semester is optional here, but must ultimately exist for all cash transaction records. It isn’t necessary to enter a semester on each individual transaction on this page especially if all the transactions are for the same semester. The semester can be specified at the cash batch posting stage for the entire batch. Campus Cafe looks for a semester in the following order:

     • Individual payment record entry. If not found then…

     • Semester selected during cash batch posting. If not found then…

     • Billing semester on AR Control.

   • PayPlan Award Code is the student payment plan the payment applies to.

   • Cash Received Amount is the monetary value of the payment entered as a positive number.

   • A/R Credit Amount must offset the cash received amount. For example, if you received a $100 tuition payment, you’d enter 100 in Cash Received Amount and -100 in this box.

   • Batch Member is the name of the batch this transaction belongs to.

   • PET# is optionally the project expense tracking number associated with the payment. This is generally used for tracking fundraising campaigns. For example, a payment that’s a donation to your new Center for Advising.

   • Check Number/CC is the check or credit card number of the payment.

   • Cash CC-GL-Fund represents the general ledger account the payment posts to. If you don’t select a fund, Campus Cafe applies the payment to the account associated with the transaction code.

   • Sponsored By is the organization that is making the payment for the student. A sponsor is an entity that you attribute the accounts receivable for even though the billing transaction 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.

     For example, the cash amount might be $1,000. The A/R credit is $700. This amount will display on the student account as a credit for $700. The remaining $300 is put in a housing deposit escrow account. This amount will not display on the student account, but be recorded with the student ID in the escrow account for later identification, retrieval, or reversal.  

5. Click Save & Back to return to cash batch.

Post a cash batch

When you’re ready to apply the payments to student ledgers and your general ledger, you must post the batch.

1. Go to Financials > Cash Batch.

2. In Batch Operation Member enter the batch name.

3. Click Post Cash Batch.

4. In Batch Number optionally enter a number associated with this posting. If you don’t Campus Cafe assigns a number.

5. In Batch Semester select a semester for which the payments will be associated if a payment doesn’t already have a semester associated with it. If a payment doesn’t have a semester associated with it and you don’t select a semester here, Campus Cafe uses the semester on AR Control.
   Put another way, Campus Cafe determines the semester by looking at the

   1. Individual payment record entry. If not found then…

   2. Semester selected during cash batch posting. If not found then…

   3. Billing semester on AR Control.

6. In Batch Date select the date that the payment will be recorded on the student’s ledger and in your general ledger. This date must be after your general ledger last post date. To see or set the date go to Accounting > GL Control.

7. Click Post Cash Batch. Campus Cafe generates PDF with details of the transactions posted. You may wish to save this PDF for your records.

Fast cash

You may collect many student payments throughout the day and students don’t need receipts generated by Campus Cafe. You can quickly enter these payments using fast cash. If you need to generate a receipt, use Manual Payment instead.

1. Go to Financials > Cash Batch.

2. Click To Fast Cash.

3. In Bios ID# to Add enter the Campus Cafe ID number of the student. Or you can click Bios lookup to search for and select a student.

4. In Cash Received enter the amount of the payment.

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

6. Optionally in Description enter a note about the payment. If you leave this blank, Campus Cafe uses the transaction code description.

7. In Cash Receipt# optionally enter the receipt number if you issued the student a receipt.

8. In Check Number optionally enter the check number.

9. In Semester select the semester associated with the payment. If you’re entering lots of payments all for the same semester, you can leave this blank. When you post the cash batch, you’ll have the option to select a semester to apply to all payments in the batch that don’t have a semester attached to them.

10. In PayPlan Award Code optionally select the payment plan the payment applies to.

11. Optionally enter a Student Sponsored 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.

12. Click Add Fast Cash.

13. Repeat the process for additional payments. When done recording payments, click Exit Fast Cash.

14. Transactions appear on student ledgers once you post the batch.

Miscellaneous cash

You may wish to record payments not associated with a student. For example, you may have a visitor pay $5 in cash for parking in your visitor lot. You want to record this payment on your general ledger.

1. Go to Financials > Cash Batch.

2. Click Add Misc Cash Batch.

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

4. In Cash Received Amount enter the amount of the payment.

5. 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.

6. PET# is optionally the project expense tracking number associated with the payment. This is generally used for tracking fundraising campaigns. For example, perhaps the payment for parking is related to your ongoing project to repave your parking lots.

7. 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.

8. You need to tell Campus Cafe where to offset this payment. If the transaction code has been configured with Activate Cash Preset Distribution AutoFill selected and Preset Distributions you can click Opt.Auto-Fill Unsaved. Otherwise, under Distributions under CC-GL-Fund select a general ledger account and enter as a negative number the amount of the payment to attribute to that fund. Click Save Distribution.

9. Click Save & Back to return to cash batch.

10. Transactions appear on your general ledger once you post the batch.