Composer for Household Based Invoicing

Overview

If your school is billing on the household level, there are different options for you to send emails through Veracross's Composer Module.  Below,  we will show you how to build queries for Composer, how to launch Composer, and the different merge options with Composer.

Getting Started

Composer is a module that can be utilized across many different modules and departments.  It can be used by Staff, Admissions, Development, Registrar and the Business Office.  In order to successfully use the Composer module, please contact your school's communication department to set you up with the following:

1. Channel specific to the Business Office or Billing
2. Business Office Theme (if needed)
3. Business Office Template (if needed) 

Additionally, they will need to give you access to the Channel in order to send emails via Composer.

Building a Query 

The Composer Module needs to target a Person ID so it can target a specific email address to send to.  This means, in any query that is built to launch composer, the Person ID field must be included. 

Since your school is billing on the Household Level, it will not be possible to build a Composer query from the AR Invoice Header Listing level as the Person ID is not associated to the AR Invoice Header, it is associated at the item level. You can start building queries from the AR Invoice Item listing, an AR Aging Report (which is based on the AR Item level), or a Find Person query. 

The goal is to target the Student/Child that is being billed, and in the Composer module you will can then target the Parents/Guardians to actually receive the email. 

An option for household billing schools is to use the 'copy' function to capture the Person ID from an AR Invoice Item listing and into a Find Person Query.  

Query Examples:

Query Templates can be found in the System Workspace->Communications.  Here you can find queries that you can use as a basis for your potential communications with parents. 

Launching Composer

To launch Composer, you will navigate to the Action Menu from a Query and choose Send an Email. 

Recipient Person ID 

To utilize Composer successfully, the recipient ID field should be the Person ID. 

Default Merge Option

Composer has a set of default merge options that can allow you to take your email to the next level.  Please review this documentation article to see all the available merge fields that can be entered into the text component of the email. 

Query Results Merge Option

There is another option for merge fields in Composer and that is to merge in fields directly from the Query Results.  Please review the set up in this documentation article.  You will want to make sure any fields you want to display in the email will be displayed in the query.

Please note, this function does not work from an AR Invoice Item listing level.  This will result in duplicate emails being sent.  In order to avoid this only use this option from the Find Person query.  You will then be limited to fields available on the Person table.

Launching Composer

Please review these resources on how to send an email once in Composer.