As school administration teams busily begin preparing fee notices for the coming term, it can be a reality check to realise how many families’ fees for Semester 1 are still outstanding.
This is often the case for schools offering a range of payment options, including up-front, monthly direct debit, term-by-term or semester-by-semester. These schools may find themselves chasing late payments throughout the year, never quite catching up. Payments can be late for a wide variety of reasons, including the most commonly occurring one—the paperwork goes astray, lost in a pile of newsletters, bills and notices!
PaySmart has extensive experience working with schools and we know that when schools limit the payment options to either ‘up-front paid in full’ or payment by direct debit billing, their dishonoured payment rate decreases dramatically.
Describing this as ‘limiting the payment options’, is actually a little deceiving, because when you offer direct debit billing, you’re offering a really flexible and fair payment option. Direct debit billing allows families to break the larger up-front amount into more manageable amounts over the term, semester or year. And once the billing system is in place, it rolls out automatically, so families have one less bill to physically remember to pay.
This is also a great benefit to schools in terms of planning and cash flow budgeting. When you can count on the fees coming in on time, every time, you know where you stand with your budget.
Not to mention the fact that when PaySmart is following up any dishonoured or late payments, you don’t have to dedicate staff to the task. Instead, they can focus on the business of helping run the school more efficiently.
If you’d like to find out more about PaySmart’s expertise in the Schools sector and how we can help you lower the dishonour rate on your fee payments, talk to one of PaySmart’s Business Development Managers today.
