Procare Blog

Use Check-In Messages as Payment Reminders

Parents, and your staff, can get very busy at drop-off and pick-up times.  With all the activity it’s easy to overlook tuition payments.  If left unchecked, a family’s balance due can build up over time, making collection of larger balances difficult and time consuming.  Using the Attendance Tracker messaging feature of Procare Software®, you can remind parents they need to make a payment if their balance exceeds a certain amount.

Of course, another option, to make sure you are paid on time – every time, is to use Tuition Express™ to collect payments electronically, but we’ll save that for another article.

How Does it Work?

You’ll simply create a recurring message to appear at the Computer Check-In Station for any  parents whose balance is greater than a certain dollar amount, say $50.  This message will only be displayed when their balance exceeds that amount.

To create the message begin at the main screen Procare Family Data:

1. Go to Functions –> Attendance Tracking –> Messages.  Click New at the bottom.
2. On the Message screen under Type of Message select the option Current Balance and set the ‘greater than or equal to’ amount to whatever you’d like, say $50.
3. Choose an End Date far into the future, and mark Show Always – that way the message will appear any time the balance amount is exceeded, until the future date is reached.
4. In the box below, type the message that you’d like your payers to read, for example:

“Attention! Your payment is past due. Please speak with the office manager to make payment arrangements as soon as possible.”

Many thanks to Procare Support representative Erick Watson for the idea.

Until next time, enjoy a reduced AR balance and less work doing collections!

-Doug

If you have questions or comments about this article (or suggestions for another article) I’d be happy to hear from you. Drop a note to doug@procaresoftware.com

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