An ACH (Automated Clearing House) is also referred to as an EFT (Electronic Funds Transfer). Today, ACH is the leading (and fastest growing) payment method for bill-paying in the United States. Smart Tuition also allows payments via credit card transfer. As we rapidly move towards a cashless society, schools must look to offer parents the same options for payments as they are presented with for their cable, internet, telephone, electric, mortgage, and other bills.

The entire U.S. social security system relies on the ACH network (a network that all U.S. banks belong to that is managed by the Federal Reserve Bank) to provide payments to its recipients. Smart Tuition debits a parent's bank account on a date set by the parent (parents select from a group of dates that the school makes available). An email reminder is sent to the family’s email account to remind them to have the available funds ready.

The correct amount (confirmed by the school through the family’s payment screen online) is removed from their account and then made available to the school on the next remittance date. The family has avoided writing a check, postage costs, and the time associated with the payment of the bill. This option will undoubtedly improve cashflow at your school – as this means parents have one less thing to remember as payments flow automatically from their bank account to your school’s account. A receipt of each transfer is archived for seven years for both the parent and the school.

Many parents prefer to send in a paper payment via the mail, and Smart Tuition has handled over 10 million paper payments through our mail centers (one on the east coast and one on the west coast).

Parents are provided a monthly invoice and then insert the bottom of the invoice into an envelope with a payment. Smart Tuition will open the envelope, record the amount, the intended school, the parent’s identification number, and then credit the family’s account with a note of payment so that the school knows a payment has been made.

For a sample of what our invoices and coupon booklets look like, click one of the below thumbnail images.

While parents may not be completely comfortable with the automatic debit option (sometimes parents feel unsure of having the correct balance in their account on the right day or sometimes they prefer to initiate the transactions), they can always choose the mail option and then make payments through our secure website or our customer service center.

These two options put Smart Tuition in the enviable position as being the most flexible payment solution for tuition payments available today. To initiate payments via our website, parents refer to the username and password we mail to them at the beginning of the school year. Once they use the security information, they can review their account balance and make the necessary payment for that month or even pay for future months.

On the telephone, parents will identify themselves and their child’s school, and then proceed to receive information about the balance due. The parent can choose to use a checking account number or a credit card number and then make a payment over the phone. Smart Tuition will verify the account details given, and then provide the parent with an email or oral confirmation of the transaction.

School users of the Smart Tuition site have access to a variety of tools, only briefly outlined here. For a full walk-through of the school site, contact a school account specialist at 1-800-Smart-08 to set up a personalized demonstration over the Internet or in-person.

• Enroll a new student
• Withdraw a student
• Edit a balance / personal information
• Add a fee / discount / scholarship
• Review all payments made in a time period
• View / Create your own report
• Manage settings for families and the schools
• Update balances with payments received in school
• Change a family’s personal information (phone, email, address, responsible parent, etc.)

Schools frequently tell us about challenges they have when it comes to reporting. First, those handling tuition without a company have trouble getting a complete snapshot of their financial status of the school through traditional accounting software. There are questions a school board may ask, for example, like “how much tuition is 30+ days past due,” or “how much tuition should we collect in September?”

We can always provide up-to-the-second, real-time reports giving you all of those answers at your fingertips. And all reports are exportable into Microsoft Excel, Adobe Acrobat, Quickbooks, Blackbaud, and other school financial software. For those who have used a tuition company before, there were other disappointments.

An inability to track fees and discounts - the same system as tuition is tracked, an absence of real-time data – causing parents to be questioned about payments they had made previously. With Smart Tuition, you can create your own reports from all of your school’s information online. Examples are listed below:

• Show all families who owe more than $200 but less than $500 and are 30+ days past due.
• Show all families who have 3 or more kids with one of them graduating.
• Show all payments made that have failed during the month of October.
• Show how much tuition is left to collect and from whom from 60+ days ago.
• Show all families whose name starts with T - Z and how much tuition they owe for the year.

Parents get enrolled in Smart Tuition one of three ways: For a first year school (or a first year incoming student), most parents complete a paper enrollment form (that we provide to the school) and return a completed copy to a school administrator. Smart Tuition then receives the form via Fedex or US Mail, and enters in the form.

Another option is our new online enrollment, set to unveil in June of 2009. This allows families to directly input their new account information directly online, and have the school digitally review and approve the enrollment. Lastly, any returning student family does not need to fill out any additional paperwork, they are automatically renewed in the program. The only changes should be provided by the school – updating the amounts due.

Today’s modern parent may work more than one job and may prefer to pay bills and/or ask questions about their account beyond work hours. That’s why Smart Tuition offers 24 hour customer support for its parents, including weekends.

Frequently, parents have called our company to make tuition payments between 9 pm and 8 am and on the weekends – hours that no other tuition company stays open. That means more payments, more solutions to parent requests, and more work done for your school. Each school is assigned their own Smart Tuition account manager, who will be a point person from the initial training of how to use our online account management tools to general inquiries.

When surveyed in 2002, principals that used a tuition service listed “follow up” as the biggest dilemma facing principals beyond the work that their tuition company provided.

Fortunately, Smart Tuition listened and delivered a new service – one aimed at cutting down the need to make awkward and sometimes embarrassing phone calls to parents who miss one or more payments. We do the follow up for you.

An ideal scenario is one where all parents pay tuition on time, but that is increasingly difficult with parents who prioritize poorly or those that are habitually late paying bills. Many just need a simple reminder or perhaps an opportunity to make a payment on the phone. Most large companies have given up on the “warning letter” or mailed “late notice” approach, finding that these paper communications were getting thrown away or dismissed and never truly were actionable.

While Smart Tuition is by no means a collection agency, we do mimic the industry standard of phone call and email follow up for our clients. This follow up has proven extremely effective in improving cashflow for our clients. When we reach a parent, they are offered an option of making a payment or explaining when they are planning to bring their account out of arrears.