Once student accounts are set up, invite payers to brightwheel billing to start collecting online payments! Parent contacts can be invited to Billing and/or Autopay individually or in bulk, while other Student Contacts (Family and Approved Pickups) can be invited individually.

This resource tells you how to add and invite parents. If you are looking to add and invite other student contacts as payers (Family and Approved Pickups), view our Invite Other Payers resource.

Keep in mind that while the invitations are a helpful prompt or reminder, parents can view student billing accounts, add payment methods, and view any invoices as soon as they're added as student contact. Parents will not be able to actually submit payments until a deposit account has been added and the provider information has been verified. Providers can disable the 'Accept online payments' settings if they wish to prevent contacts from paying them while setting up billing plans.

Each student contact submitting online payments towards student balances must be added as a student contact first. Also, if admins wish to record offline payments made via cash payments, check, Zelle, etc. a payer must be listed as a student contact. Once a parent is added to a student's account, they will automatically be added as a payer on the student's billing profile. Payers can then be adjusted as needed on the student's billing profile. Parents will have access to view billing information, add payment methods, and submit online payments.

You can remove a parent as a payer by navigating to the student's billing profile and clicking on the account details tab. In the "Payers" box, click "Actions" and "Remove Payer" on the parent that you do not want to be listed as a payer on the student's account.

💡[Optional] We've also curated a Billing Overview for Parents & Payers PDF you can share with your families anytime to get them excited about using brightwheel Billing!

That's it! Once the Invite or Invite All button is clicked, parents will receive invitations prompting them to add a payment method to their brightwheel account so that they can pay online. Invitations will be delivered via email to all parents with an email address associated with their account. For accounts that are set up with a mobile number only and no email address, the invitation will be sent via SMS/text message.

Sometimes families need to be reminded to sign up for billing and autopay. Administrator can send reminders to families at any time to make sure that all families are signed up and ready to use brightwheel.

This will email a reminder to any parents who haven’t signed up yet. Parents who have completed signup and have added a payment method will not receive a notification.

Parent contacts can be invited to use brightwheel billing by following the guidance above. When invited, they will receive an email prompting them to get set up further. But if needed, the steps below can be used to remind them to add a payment method if they haven't yet!

Once sent, the button under the Payment method column will display 'Invite sent', as seen above. The payer will receive an email that looks similar to the example below, and by clicking the blue button within the email, they will be prompted to log in to their brightwheel account and add a payment method.

By default, for existing schools, the current auto-payer will become the primary payer. If there is no auto-payer, then it will default to the payer with a payment method on file. If multiple payers have a payment method on file, it will default to the first parent that signed up to use brightwheel for that student. For newer schools just starting to use Billing, the first parent contact to sign up will become the primary payer by default.

Programs have the ability to assign invoices, but we don’t want to require that all invoices be manually assigned, as that could be a tedious task. Because of this, it’s highly possible that invoices will be Unassigned. All payers can see and submit payments towards these invoices by paying them directly, but the primary payer will become responsible for them (if unpaid). This means that the invoices will be visible in the primary payer's account balance and also paid for using autopay if enabled. If not using autopay, the balance will simply be displayed in the account under My Account Balance to pay.

At this time, only a program Administrator, or staff with the Billing Only permissions can change the primary payer on a student’s billing account. This is easily done from the student’s billing profile on the Account Details page. Under the ‘Payers’ table, admins can click the Actions menu and select Make Primary payer on a different payer to assign this to them. The primary payer can end up being any payer associated with the student’s billing account.