The Populi development team is hard at work on improvements to student billing. Here's a quick look at what's coming...
Tuition Schedules
We've re-written tuition schedules from the ground up.
- Tuition brackets will let you combine per-unit and flat-rate charges. For example, you'll be able to set up a bracket that charges a flat amount from 12-16 credits and an additional per-credit charge for everything above 16 credits. This isn't possible with our current tuition schedules, which rigidly enforce a distinction between flat-rate and per-credit brackets.
- Tuition schedules will no longer be tied directly to academic programs. Rather, they'll be connected to individual catalog courses. When selecting courses, you'll have options to match the schedule to specific courses, a particular department, or a particular program.
Refund policies
We're separating refund policies from tuition schedules. That will let you:
- Attach them directly to student accounts, or as a default to individual tuition schedules.
- Set up one, single policy for your school and be done with it—unlike the current system, which requires you to duplicate the refund policy with every tuition schedule you set up.
- Better understand how the refund policy affects non-tuition charges like fees.
Most important, refunds will make a lot more sense.
- Currently, if a student gets an 80% refund on a $1000 tuition bill, Populi 1) credits the student $1000 and 2) then adds a new $200 tuition charge.
- After the update, it will simply credit the student $800.
A few other things
We're adding new fee rule types for clinical hours and term name (which lets you charge a particular fee every Fall term, for instance).
The new recalculate function will let you instantly update a student's pending charges.
Getting ready for the release
We're planning to get this out there to our customers by August 1st. If you have any questions about it, please contact Populi Support.