Managing Outstanding Student Accounts

1. Managing Outstanding Student Accounts CNC Style

2. Student AR • We don’t start sending letters to students until we are sure their records are correct. • To get to that stage we: • Use Informer to run a “term matrix” report • Use Informer to run a “student credit” report

3. Analyze both reports to determine ‘true’ balance owed by student This usually requires corrections to student accounts and/or manual adjustments to the amount field in OSAR letter

4. Typical Issues Identified • Payments have been allocated to the wrong term or Non-Term AR and must be reallocated as there is really not a past due balance • There are credits on older terms that need to be applied against the outstanding current term balance

5. There are PERC’s on the account that have not been followed through with and/or end dated The term “past due” amount and “adjusted balance” amount are different (this is usually the result of invoice adjustments using MCRG)

6. Using the Credit report • We look at students who have debit balances, they will have a credit that could possibly be allocated to a past due balance. • Look at the students who have a zero balance – they are usually the ones with a payment applied to the wrong term. • Look at students with more than one term showing on the report.

7. We use APTT to move the credits to the proper term and/or apply old credits to current fees outstanding

8. Term Matrix Report • First of all we make sure that the total all terms equals the balance total – frequently we find payments sitting in non AR or items that have been entered in terms that we know do not have fees outstanding (data keying errors) • Next we determine what terms we are looking at – I don’t want to send letters out for terms that have lots of activity occurring in them

9. In this example I’d be looking at 2009S, 2008F, 2008I, 2008S and 2007F

10. Checking for PERC’s • We review all accounts in these terms to see if there are any PERC’s. In many cases we discover that a sponsorship billing has been missed or that an internal department was to have paid the fees. • This requires follow up with the initiator of the PERC to determine if an OSAR letter is required.

11. Choose the students who may get OSAR letters – we look at it on a term by term basis – in this example I’d be looking at 2009S, 2008F, 2008I, 2008S and 2007F

12. OSAR letters • After verifying PERC’s, moving credit balances of students on the term matrix we create a saved list to capture the students we wish to send OSAR letters to • Our next issue is that all the balances need to be reviewed before letters can be printed – this is usually because the past due and adjusted balance do not agree.

13. We usually do this on a spreadsheet so that the letters can be proofed and adjusted if required before we print the letters.

14. The Result? • A long process for little return. It is normally the 3rd letter or when a student is at collection that we have a response. • We need to find a better way!