There may be times when an Administrator or Billing Only staff member needs to transfer a payment from one student's billing account to another. Typically this happens when a parent accidentally pays the full balance owed across siblings on one student's billing account.
While there is currently not a feature for transferring payments, the brightwheel team has a workaround to help.
Transfer a Payment
To transfer a payment from one student's billing profile to another, you will record an offline refund for the profile that contains the payment, and then record an offline payment on the profile where the payment should be transferred.
This means that while no funds will change hands or be removed from your account or a parent's account, you can still apply the payment to the correct student's billing profile.
🚩 Refunds can only be recorded when a payment has been fully processed. If the payment status is pending, you must wait for the transaction to be fully processed by the payer's bank.
Navigate to the applicable student's billing profile
💡 Open the Billing page from the sidebar, jump to the Students tab, and select the student's name!
Open the All transactions tab and then the Credits & payments tab
Click the Actions drop-down menu next to the payment that needs to be refunded, and select Refund
Input the Refund amount
Select the Refund method
🚩It's important that you select an offline refund method such as cash or check. If you select the parent's original payment method, the funds will be returned to the parent's payment method.
Select the Reason
💡If you would like to add a new reason such as Transfer a Payment, simply type out the full reason text and hit Enter.
Input any optional Notes
💡Consider adding a note that indicates which account the funds are being transferred to.
Uncheck or leave the box checked for Notify payer about this change depending on what's preferred
Click Refund payment
Review the popup that may display stating that issuing the refund will remove the payment from the most recent invoice first. If the invoice is marked as paid, it may be re-opened.
Click Yes, refund to continue
Once the offline refund is recorded, navigate to the billing profile of the student who should have received the payment.
Click the Select an Action drop-down menu
Choose Log a Payment
Enter the Payment Method, Amount, Date Paid, Payer, and an optional Note
💡Consider adding a note that indicates which account the funds were transferred from.
Add details into the Apply payment to open invoices section, if needed
NOTE: To apply the offline payment to an open invoice, just locate the specific invoice and under the Amount applied column, type the amount of the payment that you’d like to apply to the open invoiceClick Save & apply