AutoPay Communications

Overview

The Tuition Management features of VC Pay include numerous opportunities and abilities to communicate with your staff and the parents regarding their AutoPay Batch.

AutoPay System Email Templates

The AutoPay system email templates are located on the AutoPay Homepage, the Invoice Defaults query.   System Email Templates can be customized by adding a customized school message via the school message tab.

Parent Reminder

Notify payers of upcoming AutoPay processing automatically or manually.

• Automatically: Scheduled Reminder dates in the batch header are generated based on the "days before batch" configuration on the invoice defaults screen. An email will get sent on that date at 3pm EST to all payers associated with the batch.  Click the date on the individual batch to override the date. 
  • Schedule reminder dates must be between 1-10 days prior to processing date
  • Schedule reminder dates cannot be modified after scheduled reminder has been sent
  • Schedule reminder dates cannot be set to "today"
  • Schedule reminder dates cannot be set to a date in the past.
  • Schedule reminder dates cannot be set to a date after the batch processing date
  • Schedule reminder dates can only be edited by AutoPay_admin.
  • Scheduled reminder emails can be set (and will be sent) for any day of the week, including weekends. 
• Disable Automatic reminders by setting the Scheduled Reminder status on Invoice Defaults  to “Disabled”.
• Manually: Check “Resend Reminder Email” on the far right of the individual payment record, then run the Resend Reminder Notifications. The main recommended use case is to send a reminder to people whose invoices have an override amount, perhaps after the initial reminder went out and you later applied the override.

Both emails use a system email template accessible via the System Email Templates link on the AutoPay Homepage under Invoice Defaults.

Parent Notifications

Automatic notifications are sent to parents upon AutoPay processing:

• Credit Card Success: Notifies parents that credit card payments were successful.
• ACH Pending: Notifies parents that ACH payments are pending
• ACH Success: Notifies parents that ACH payments were successful.
• Failure: Notifies parents that payments failed.

Business Office Notifications

There are three notification emails that get sent to your business office. Set the recipients in the “To Address” field of the system email templates.

• Batch Approval Reminder: Goes out three (3) days prior to the processing date if the batch has not been approved. Resends daily until the batch is approved.
• AutoPay Batch Process Complete: This email sends once to confirm that a batch has been processed, including basic statistics such as batch details (type, date, name), number of successful and failed credit cards, and number of pending ACH payments. Review any failed transactions for follow-up with payers.
• ACH Payment Summary: This email sends daily once for prior day ACH processing activity, typically several days after a batch processes since ACH payments take longer to clear than credit card transactions. Shows successful and failed ACH payments. Review any failed ACH payments.

AutoPay Parent Reminder Notification

Reminder Email 

If the AutoPay Amount = 0 when the AutoPay Reminder is sent,  a reminder email will not be sent.

Please note, it is possible for the AutoPay Amount be paid after the email is sent out, in this case, you will see an AutoPay Amount as zero and the Scheduled Reminder Status as Sent.  At the time the email was sent, the amount was not zero.

Resend Reminder Email

A feature of VC Pay Tuition Management is to resend Parent Reminder emails.  This can be a helpful tool if the AutoPay Batch is adjusted and the school wants to send the Parent an updated amount of the upcoming AutoPay Batch amount.