The number one goal for brightwheel’s billing platform is to help ensure admins get paid on time. Brightwheel helps admins encourage on-time payments by enabling them to easily locate students with past due balances, and when desired, to charge them a late fee.
This article outlines how to set up a late payment fee policy, and then how to process late payment charges.
Table of Contents
Late Payment Fee Settings
Brightwheel makes it easy for administrators to configure their late payment fee policy
Navigate to the Billing section in brightwheel
Go to the Settings tab
Scroll down to the Late Payment Fees section and enter in the dollar amount to be charged for late payments, the grace period (how many days past due is acceptable), and how soon the fees should be due.
Click Save to save changes
Setting this policy does NOT automatically charge parents — see below on how to actually process the charge.
Processing Late Payment Fees
Once a late payment fee policy is set, admins can start processing charges against their policy.
From the At a Glance dashboard or Plans tab, choose Late Payment Fee from the Create New drop-down
The table displayed will include all instances of past due payments that have not yet been waived or already had a late fee applied
Use the checkboxes on the left to select the charges for which to charge a late payment fee
Click Review and charge
Review the charges and make changes as needed, click Create Charge
This will create an invoice that posts to the student's account — parents will be notified immediately.
Waiving Late Payment Fees
In instances where the payment is or was past due, but a late fee will not be applied, administrators are able to waive or dismiss late payment fees. It will then no longer appear when processing a late payment fee.
From the At a Glance dashboard or Plans tab, choose Late Payment Fee from the Create New drop-down
The table displayed will include all instances of past due payments that have not yet been waived or had a late fee applied, regardless of student status
Use the checkboxes on the left to select the charges to be waived
Click Waive
If a late payment fee was charged and it needs to be voided, admins can always void that invoice from the student's account page.
Late Payment Communications
Communication with families is a vital function of brightwheel. As always, changes to a student account will result in an email or SMS text message to all parent contacts associated with the student. All parent contacts will be notified when a late payment fee is added, when the fee becomes due, and when the fee becomes past due.