If you noticed an unexpected deduction from your deposit account, there are two common explanations:

Although rare, sometimes payments fail after brightwheel has already fronted the funds and deposited them into the program’s account. When this happens, brightwheel will need to deduct those fronted funds from the deposit account to reconcile the failed or refunded payment.

This is what's known as a negative deposit.

A negative deposit occurs when a family's payment fails or an Administrator issues an online refund. Brightwheel fronts family payments to your program before they've fully settled, which means funds are often deposited before a payment has fully processed. If a payment fails, brightwheel needs to recoup those funds since they were never actually received from the family.

Because brightwheel deposited the funds first and then recovered them, the end result is a net zero change to your deposit account. No money is lost.

Go to your Deposits Report and click the drop-down arrow next to the negative deposit to see which family payments were included. Earlier deposits will show when the payment was originally fronted.

🎥 Watch our helpful video to see how to view and filter the Deposits Report.

When a family's payment fails, the amount is added back to the child's outstanding balance and they'll need to submit a new payment. Once received, verify the payment was applied to the outstanding invoice and marked as Paid. You may need to manually apply the payment to the invoice.

You can view the failed payment in the child's billing account under the All Transactions tab by selecting Credits & payments.

If you believe a deduction was made in error, contact brightwheel Support.