We understand that many programs have families with siblings enrolled! Continue reading to learn more about what we suggest for bundled sibling/family payments, what the payment experience is like, and what reporting is available for these scenarios.
Managing Sibling/Family Billing
To bill families, we strongly recommend billing siblings separately on individual billing plans. This method is easiest for administrators to manage and will result in clearer reporting and accounting.
Bundled Sibling Payments also have other significant benefits for your program and families, such as:
Allowing parents to view the balances of all their children together and make a single payment, paying for multiple children at once
Lowers processing fees for many schools and parents
Enables more accurate and consistent reporting and invoicing for programs
Makes the setup of billing plans more straightforward
Improves day-to-day billing management on all sides
This experience for families is live now and will be visible in their accounts on the web and app.
It's also important to note that if autopay is turned on for multiple students (either by choice or because it's mandatory for the school) and there are invoices with the same due date that are being charged to the same payment method - these payments will be bundled together as a single combined payment to save on fees as well.
Making a Bundled Payment Experience
Your families' experiences making bundled sibling payments will now be straightforward and seamless! They will still receive individual invoices emailed to them for each child they are responsible for, but when they access their account to make a payment, they can select as many children as they have enrolled at a school and pay a single time. If autopay is enabled for multiple students on the same payment method with the same due date, these payments will automatically be bundled together as well. The payer will only receive one emailed payment receipt, and they will only pay a single processing fee.
The visuals below show what a payer will see from their account on the web and the app if they make a manual bundled payment.
And it's important to note that while the payment experience is “bundled”, the payment itself will still be broken down and allocated to each respective student’s balance.
Review the payer-specific resource on Making a Payment for additional information!
Reporting
It's important to understand that bundled payments will always be “fully decomposed,” meaning that the total payment amount will be properly allocated to individual students at the time of the payment. There will never be a “hanging balance” on the payer’s account that was not applied to an individual student.
However, if you do want to see that two payments were “linked” or made at the same time, we recommend viewing the Payments & Credits report or the Deposits report, which will show a row for each individual payment and will include a list of all students included within that payment.