Schools paying Invoices Online

Hi, Heath,

There are many of us! Hopefully more will chime in . I know a lot of ballet companies use Tess for class registration; we do too and are an improv/sketch school and theatre. 

If you use TNew, then there is a payment plan option in V6 for events. We used to use invoices with a customization, but it was a mess for our financial records and we were glad to switch to the payment plan module last year. No matter how you do it, I would recommend switching your registration practices so that you do not have anyone being registered (online or in person) as a generic constituent anymore. 

Can you tell us more about the classes you are selling? How complicated is your registration process currently? What kind of payment plan structure are you hoping to use? Are you selling your classes through Tess currently? 

~Carrie 

Hi Carrie,

Thanks so much for your response.  This is for School Matinee payments specifically where we get a request to reserve a booking, invoice the school and then a member of the school comes back to pay. Getting schools to agree to specific payment days is a bit of a grind

Payment Plans are great but I need to get Hosted Payments set up as we are TNEW v7.  As we get more workshops and registrations in Tessitura (and out of Mindbody) we'll move over to payment plans and keep out finance team happy.  We also have an advanced training 1yr course which there are some regulations around. Currently we are taking payment over the phone to a schedule but in the future we can move that online.

Cheers,
H

Ahhh, this is a whole other ball game....I imagine you'll get some responses from theatres that do student matinees. I know a lot of them use resource scheduling to work with the schools, but not sure if that loops into billing. 

Thanks Carrie.

That'll be super helpful as we move more of our workshops onto tess.

For schools I'm thinking of hacking a on account contribution page in TNEW and then shifting the on account funds over to the school to pay for the invoice. 

Not idea but it should work. 

Cheers

H

Hi Heath Wilder! Wondering if you've found any solutions for this. I'm working on moving our Education dept to Tess, and will have a very similar structure for school shows. I saw in a TLCC presentation powerpoint that Minnesota Zoo has the teacher register as an individual, then affiliate themselves with the school. That sounds like a super cool idea, but I haven't gotten a response to my clarification email from them. Just wanna re-visit, in case anyone has more thoughts!

Yes indeedy I do - well at least I have a lot of opinions.

The biggest conundrum is indeed teachers logging in and paying for a school invoice (column 3 below).  At the moment it's early days but we are taking payments of the invoice via a contribution page to an On Account payment method with a CSI form field on that page for them to input the invoice # (order number). 

We are doing registrations, EOIs and now payments for Virtual and in Person workshops and Matinees. We use a combo of TNEW and Wordfly Pages for things 

I'll send you some links to what we have on TNEW.  I'm also still waiting for Julie's offer for my sabbatical over there when Covid blows over 

We process all our online contributions through the on account payment method, then code in Tess later, so this solution definitely has precedent! Are you still collecting registrations through ticketing in TNEW? And if so, are you able to use the contribution on account payment method to pay off those invoices? (And I'll let Julie know you're waiting on her ;) )

Yes we do collect registrations through TNEW.  The On account payments can be used to pay off the invoices (by hand) but I'm looking at Payment Plans going forward

Got it. Do most of your educators pay by card? We're definitely trying to avoid having to put in a card during the registration process, since many schools pay by check, and those that pay by card have to request that someone in administration completes the payment.

Hi Cassidy! Ragan Rhodes here with the Tessitura Network Support team. Just jumping in to add that it is currently required for all TNEW order to enter a credit card, even with a $0 down payment plan. We have a current enhancement request in for just this topic because we know that it is a hard pill for educators to have to enter their own credit card, no matter how much we reassure them they won't be charged and that an invoice will be sent to the school for normal processing. I am going to get a support ticket started for you so that I can loop you in on that enhancement request and get updates as we make progress on it, sound good?

Ragan Rhodes That would be wonderful! Thank you!

For EOI? Nope.  We have a TNEW form where they fill in the details and we send the invoice out to them if they want to do direct deposit etc.

Once we've sent an invoice if they want to pay with the school CC (and they don't want to call us direct) they can use the Contribution Page to pay it and leave the Invoice # as additional CSI info so we can match up the On account funds.

Of course if  they just want to pay the registration straight away they can do that.  For Virtual Workshops it's a bit easier as prices are fixed

We also have a bunch of Direct Deposit folks as well.  THey can do that from the invoice and we pay off in Tess using our Edu - Direct Deposit Payment Method

Heath, 

I'm interested in your success over the last 11 months.  Our education sales team spends far too much time playing phone tag to take payments over the phone.  Did the "contributions" and "CSI" hack work for you?  I would still have my education sales team build the sale, but simply looking for a way to pay an invoice online (which should be common place these days). 

Hi Everyone,

Seeing this old(er) conversation and the new inquiry by Bryan Kowert, I wanted to mention that Lily Pipkin from Ballet Austin found a great way to take payments (like invoice payments and such) online using TNEW One Page Giving.  See her demo/explanation here: https://www.tessituranetwork.com/Items/Videos/Community/TNEW-One-Page-Giving-Strategies. If you don't want to watch the full video, fast-forward to 27:30.

a