Consisting of three components—Billing, Accounting, and Financial Aid—Populi Financial gives you a simple, uncluttered way to manage your school's receivables. In Billing, you set up tuition and fees and use the real-time reporting tools to stay on top of charges and payments; Billing is supplemented by student profiles, where the most of the action happens.

As part of a complete accounts receivable package, Billing ties in with financial aid and accounting, which lets you connect your A/R to your overall accounting package.

First you set it up

You start in Settings, where you create Tuition Schedules, Fees, and Payment Plans. Tuition Schedules can have custom brackets, refund policies, and be attached to particular academic programs. Fees can cover almost any situation; set up Fee Rules to automate charges when students trigger them (auditing a course, for example). Room and Meal Plans handle—you guessed it!—special charges for dorm rooms and cafeteria grub. And Payment Plans give you structures to allow your students to pay their invoices over time, complete with custom payment schedules, additional plan costs, and late fees.

These settings don't just establish dollar amounts and schedules—they set up automated billing activities that will save you a ton of time. For example, you can set up a Lab Fee to trigger every time a student enrolls in a lab science course—sparing you the work of tracking all those students down and charging them manually.

Get your students set up and start charging and taking payments

The financial tab on student profiles is the center of a lot of the action in Billing. You can invoice charges, record and apply payments, and get students set up with tuition schedules and other plans. And, of course, you can find or easily link to anything you need to know about a student's account—whether you're double-checking a couple of outstanding invoices or hunting down a voided payment from two terms ago.

Then you charge your students

As students begin enrolling in courses, getting charged for tuition and fees, and making payments, you'll have two perspectives on what students owe and what they've paid: Current and By Term.

Current captures anything outstanding—pending charges, student balances, unpaid invoices, and unapplied payments and credits. These are the items that require you to take some kind of action—invoicing charges, applying credits, zeroing out balances, and so forth.

By Term presents you with summary reports of a particular Academic Term's charges and billing activity. Each tab lets you export the information or email the students in view with a single click.

See the totals

Reporting gives you an overall view of things invoiced (charges and credits) and things paid (paid to you or refunded by you) over any date range you need. A few clicks will show you how much you've invoiced and how much you've taken in over any time period.