We want to help parents easily understand and pay their invoices online. This resource provides information on what payers see in their brightwheel web or mobile app and outlines the steps needed to make payments to their child’s account.
Table of Contents
Set up Payment Methods
All parent contacts and additional payers added (Family or Approved Pickups) can set up their payment methods directly in their brightwheel account on the web or on the app. They can add a payment method before the program enables the Accept online payments setting to ensure they can be prepared to make payments as soon as the program is ready to use brightwheel for billing!
Navigate Between Students
If payers are attached to more than one child at a brightwheel school, they will see multiple children at the top of their application. Toggling between their children will show them account balances, invoices, and payment information for each child.
Current Balance
The Current Account Balance for a child reflects any open invoices — those that have not been fully paid — less any credits or pre/over-payment funds that are available to apply towards invoices. This summary should give parents a very clear picture of what is owed. When they make a payment, they will pay towards this balance.
Invoices
The Invoices tab shows all historical invoices, both open (unpaid) and closed (fully paid). Parents can view these invoices at any time and print or pay the invoice if it has not already been paid.
Payments & Credits
The Payments & Credits tab shows all historical payments and credits, both those that have been applied to an invoice in full and those that have not. Parents can view the status of these payments and export them with all the relevant information needed for reimbursements.
Statements
The Statements tab shows monthly statements for a given student — statements include all transactions, invoices, charges, and adjustments that have been made against the student’s account in a given month. Brightwheel auto-generates these statements monthly and emails them to parents, and posts them here for records. Parents can also create their statements by selecting a start and end date (for example, if they want a full-year statement).
Make a Payment
Paying is easy to do right from your account on the web or in the app. Depending on where you are making the payment (web or app) and if you are making payments for a single student or multiple students, the steps can differ slightly.
If you have students at multiple schools, use the Change school option to switch schools. And if you have multiple students at a single school, you can easily make a bundled sibling payment by navigating to the All children tab/dropdown option on the Payments page in your account. This tab will display the total balance due for all children at that location and allow you to make a single payment toward each of their balances in one quick step, with only one associated processing fee (if applicable). If you’re paying for multiple students, this is a great feature to leverage!
Open the Payments page in your account
Navigate the appropriate student's billing profile, or if you have more than one student, open the 'All children' tab to make a bundled sibling payment
Click the Make a Payment button
💡 If this button is visible but unclickable, the program has not enabled the Accept online payments setting yet!Select All open invoices, Individual invoice(s), or Other amount
All open invoices: this will pay all open invoices
Individual invoice(s): parents can choose which invoice or invoices they want to pay and can indicate how much they want to pay towards it. If they want to see what is inside that invoice, they will need to find it in the Invoice list in the table below the account balance.
Other amount: parents can also pay any $ amount towards the account without paying a specific invoice — this payment will be logged as a credit on their account and will be auto-applied to future invoices
Please Note: This option is not available when making a bundled sibling payment
Click Next
If paying all open invoices:
Review the payment summary and click Pay now
If paying individual invoice(s):
Use the checkboxes to select which invoice(s) to pay
Use the additional text field to change the amount paid towards any specifics invoice(s)
Click Review and then Pay now
If paying another amount:
Input the amount you would like to pay on your total current balance
Click Review and then Pay now
Tax & Reimbursement Information
Payers can access financial reports for tax or reimbursement from within their brightwheel account.
They can either print individual invoices or statements, which include the important information needed (EIN, charge details, dates of service). Or, they can export their payment history. This export will include the following information: payment method, amount, date, and status; payer name; amount applied to invoice(s); invoice number(s); charges; and any dates of service that the provider added.
To export the payment history, view our Student Transaction Summary resource for a video overview and the applicable steps.