Payments Part 4: Summary

To wrap up our mini series, this final session serves as a comprehensive overview and open Q&A, allowing attendees to revisit key features and ask follow-up questions.

We reviewed some new features for the myPayment module during the session, and attendees discussed how their school is making the most of the platform. 

For a complete list of features, as well as ways myPayment can earn your school revenue, see our myPayment Spec Sheet!

1- Apply to become a merchant

Before your school can begin accepting payments through myPayment, you must apply to become a merchant so that your school can accept and process payments. 

It takes time to fill out the application. Once submitted, it takes 3-5 days for approval. Please account for this lead time as you plan when to go live with myPayment.

While your application is pending, please follow these setup tasks you can complete while you are waiting!

2- Set up your Accounting Codes

Start by setting up your required accounting structure:

• Revenue Codes (required)

• Program Codes (required)

• Project Codes (optional - helpful for tracking specific initiatives)

These codes ensure your fee collection and reporting align with your school’s accounting requirements and support reconciliation with school internal accounting systems, such as QuickBooks^®.

3. Create and assign fees

Once your accounting codes are set up, you can create the following:

• Student Groups
  Define the student populations that will have fees automatically assessed, such as Art Class or Boys Soccer, using the following criteria: campus, grade level, course, tag, or manual assignment.

• Student Fees
  Create the specific fees that you want automatically assessed based on Student Group, such as Art Class Supplies, Boys Soccer Uniform, etc.

• Ad Hoc Fees
  These are one-time fees, typically fines, such as Chromebook damage, lost books, etc.

Be sure to assign all applicable fees to the correct student accounts or groups before continuing to the next step.

4- Set up your Shops

If your school will be using myPayment to sell products, such as tickets, donations, yearbooks, rent the school building, concessions, spirit wear, etc, you will need to set up the relevant shops:

• Your Primary shop functions as the main school store; it acts as your public store on the school website and is visible to families on their parent portal.

• You can set up additional non-public shops that are only accessible via the administration or direct link. This is useful for sales like "renting the school building" and "concessions stands".

5- Begin tracking school fees and products

Once school fees are created and assessed, and once shops are active, you can begin using these tools to track assessments and sales:

• myPayment Dashboard – monitor assessed, paid, and outstanding fees

• Orders tab – track purchases, payment methods, and transaction history

These tools help staff stay informed and ready to assist families with questions or payments.

During the training, we discussed the following new features and highlighted features that schools have enjoyed having.

Apply administrative payments to fees, such as for scholarships

You may wish to apply payments to fees manually, such as if a scholarship was awarded or the parent arranged for payment outside of myPayment.

To manually apply a payment to a student fee, in myPayment, go to the Fees tab, locate the student fee, then click the $ icon. Apply a full or partial payment to the fee, along with a description of the reason. You can modify or delete this payment at any time. This payment will show to the parent when they log in to their parent portal, and if any balance is due, the parent can pay it.

Transfer payment from a deleted fee to the new version of the fee

In cases where a fee is created, assessed to students, paid for by one or more of those students, then deleted, then re-created and assessed again, students who have already paid this fee will not want to pay it a second time. 

In this case, on the myPayment dashboard, scroll down to the Deleted Fees section. Locate the student who paid a deleted fee, select the newly-assessed fee where you wish to transfer the payment, and transfer the payment. The payment will be removed from the deleted fee and applied to the new version of the fee.

Refund payments

Schools can refund payments entirely in myPayment, making for a simple, easy process where school personnel can easily track and manage refunds. Only the product amount will be refunded; any convenience fees or transaction fees are non-refundable.

Regarding credit balances, while Frogtummy is open to allowing credits, no plans are in place at this time to accounting complexities and state reporting requirements.

Roll over negative balances from previous years

For schools new to myPayment, you may have students with negative balances from Aspire that you wish to roll over, to continue tracking and collection of them. In this scenario, simply create an "ad hoc" fee with a descriptive name, such as "Fee Rollover from Previous Year(s)", and enter the negative rollover balance. 

The ad hoc fee is a one-time need, as all fees will remain in myPayment thereafter and be tracked year-over-year.

Rent your building using myPayment

Many schools use myPayment to collect payment for renting their facility. To do so, create a non-primary shop, add a donation widget in the myPayment section, and configure the widget according to what can be rented. This widget allows open-entry of any amount from the customer, so whatever amount you invoice them, they can enter that amount into the widget for payment.

Then, share the shop link with the customer, they can enter their agreed invoice amount, and complete payment!

Show students on the parent portal

When a parent creates an account in Frogtummy and uses their Aspire custodial parent email, their enrolled student(s) will automatically show in their portal. If the parent does not see their enrolled student(s), this is likely due to their Aspire email not matching their Frogtummy email. To remedy this:

1. Verify that the email on the parent's custodial record in Aspire matches their Frogtummy account email exactly. Verify using the email associated with their Aspire custodial parent record, not the email they use to log in to Aspire (they may be different).
2. If the emails do not match, ask the parent which email they wish to keep.
3. Have the parent update either Aspire or Frogtummy with the email they wish to use on both. To update the email in Frogtummy, log in to the parent portal, go to My Account, update the email.

Once the two emails match exactly, any enrolled students will immediately show on their parent portal.

Notify someone by email when a product is ordered

You may wish to email one or more parties when a product is ordered. For example, if you are selling spirit wear, you may wish to email the vendor when a product is ordered so they can fulfill the order. Or, you may wish to know when a classroom birthday treat is ordered so you can plan accordingly.

To email one or more parties when a product is ordered, simply enter the email address(es) on the product when you create it in the shop.

Awww - thanks for these kudos (from our users)!

UCAS shared that they love the ability to track payments by product, from the orders menu, and download a spreadsheet with details. They also love to see fees & payments from the dashboard, see how many students have been assigned the fee, how many have paid, etc. 

Additionally, they love that they can message groups of parents based on who has been assigned the fee or who hasn't paid yet.