AutoPay Schedule Best Practices

Payment plan installments vs. AutoPay Schedule vs. AutoPay Batches  

It’s important to remember that the number of installments in a payment plan does not always match the number of AutoPay scheduled installments.  4 installment payment plans with comprehensive invoices may need 10 or 12 AutoPay batches to collect incidental charges added throughout the year or 8 installment payment plans with tuition type invoice might need 10 or 12 AutoPay batches to capture late enrollees or payers excluded from a scheduled batch due to financial needs. 

Invoice type on the Payment Plan  

AutoPay batches are invoice type specific, in order to create AutoPay batches, you must select an invoice type on each payment plan. For those with tuition and incidental type invoices, a new payment plan might be required to generate AutoPay batches for your incidental AutoPay batces that will be separate from your tuition AutoPay batches.  

Comprehensive invoice

Tuition and miscellaneous charges are added throughout the year to comprehensive invoices resulting in inconsistent amounts that may be charged to payers throughout the year. You can decide how and when you would like to collect tuition and miscellaneous charges.  

How do I know how many AutoPay Schedule Batches to Create for my Comprehensive invoice payment plans?  

At a minimum, AutoPay scheduled batches should be created for all primary tuition installments. Depending on how and when you wish to collect additional charges, additional schedule batches can be created. 

Example Payment Plan Scenario:  Four Installment comprehensive payment plan 

• Tuition installments are collected in Aug, Nov, Feb and May. 

• Miscellaneous/incidental charges are added throughout the year beginning at the start of school. 

Example AutoPay Batch Schedule:  

• Create 12 AutoPay batches from Aug through July to collect all tuition and collect miscellaneous/incidental charges on a monthly basis as they are added to the invoice 

• Make sure that begin and end due dates ranges for each batch are inclusive of the item due dates that should be included

Tuition invoice

Tuition only invoices often contain consist amounts with an expected number of installments. 

How do I know how many AutoPay Schedule Batches to Create for my Tuition Invoice payment plans?  

At a minimum, AutoPay scheduled batches should be created for all tuition installments. Depending on how you address late enrollees or special financial situations you may wish to create additional AutoPay batches.  Please reach out to your Implementation/Account Manager in order to have new Payment Plans created.

 Example Payment Plan Scenario:  Ten Installment tuition payment plan 

• Tuition installments are collected monthly May through February . 

• Miscellaneous/incidental charges are on a separate invoice. 

 Example AutoPay Batch Schedule:  

• Create 12 AutoPay batches from May through May to collect tuition for all students even those that may have started the year late but still made ten AutoPay installments. 

Incidental/Miscellaneous invoice

Miscellaneous charges are added throughout the year to incidental/miscellaneous invoices resulting in amounts that may be charged to payers throughout the year. If you have a non-Tuition type invoice, you can have a payment plan created to house those non-Tuition charges and collect them via an AutoPay schedule.

Note: Payment plans for non-Tuition type invoices will not behave similarly to Tuition payment plans with regards to splitting charges. 

How do I know how many AutoPay Schedule Batches to Create for my Incidental/Miscellaneous invoice payment plans?  

AutoPay scheduled batches should be created to reflect the frequency that charges are due.  Please reach out to your Implementation/Account Manager in order to have new Payment Plans created.

 Example Payment Plan Scenario:  Incidental/Miscellaneous invoice payment plan 

• We offered payer the ability to enroll in AutoPay for incidental/miscellaneous invoices during online enrollment or in July via the parent portal.  

• At our school incidental/miscellaneous charges are due monthly beginning in September. 

• We communicate the monthly schedule to our payers via composer.   

 Example AutoPay Batch Schedule:  

• Create 11 AutoPay batches from September through August to collect incidental/miscellaneous charges on a monthly basis as they are added to the invoice.  

Begin & End Batch Dates

You can think of a batch's begin and end dates as book ends for the batch. Invoice items with due dates between (and including) the batch's begin and end dates will be processed, from invoices of the corresponding invoice type. (See above for information on invoice types)

Batch Schedule Dates & Weekends/Holidays

We strongly recommend setting the Scheduled dates to their actual scheduled dates. The AutoPay Schedule Builder will automatically correct batches to be scheduled for Veracross's business days. As such, we don't recommend trying to predict or self-correct the scheduled dates when setting up your batches. 

Verifying Your Batch Dates

Once you have set up your AutoPay schedule and created the batches, we recommend verifying that your invoice item due dates will fall into the batches as you are expecting. In the System workspace, you will find a saved query called "VC Pay - Due Date Updates" https://accounting.veracross.com/{schoolname}/#/results/48338 which breaks down all of your AR Invoice Items by payment plan. You can use that report to make sure that your invoice items will fall within the batch's "bookend" dates so that they will be processed within those AutoPay batches. 

Can you have more (or less) installments than the contract dictates? Will that affect AutoPay?

If a Parent chooses a 10-Pay payment during the contract, and it is decided that they will actually be paying in 12 installments, the installments on the Invoice can be adjusted and altered.   If the charges are not split yet, you can manually update the number of installments to be 12 and add them to the invoice.  If they have been split yet and posted,  you will need to update the Invoice Items on that Invoice. 

It is helpful if these are created and verified for special cases before the invoice is posted and payments are applied. 

After the invoice is set up correctly, additional AutoPay Batches will need to be created to accommodate the additional installments, which you can do from the AutoPay Schedule Builder.