Paying Student Fees/Admin

After creating or importing the student accounts and generating the Student Fees, the next step is to apply payments to those fees. (The public will need to be notified when the fees are in ePayTrak before they can pay them online! ePayTrak now has capacity to automatically generate an e-mail when a fee is created.)

Before those fees can be paid, there must be a User Account associated with the parent/guardian. And that student must be listed as a Participant/Student under that User Account.  

Tip: If you received a check or cash from a parent to pay a student fee, there is a very good chance there is no User Account for that parent and you will need to create one!

 To pay a student fee by check or cash, take the following steps:

  1. Go to Manage > Students. You will a screen similar to the one below.  

 

  1. Find the Student by entering the First Name, and/or the Last Name, or the Student ID.

For example, you just received a check for student fees for student Alister Stone. To find Alister, in this case I entered Stone in the Last Name field and clicked the 'Filter' button to find that student as shown below.

  1. Create a parent/guardian User Account that will be associated with the student record. Click the blue edit button next to the 'View History' link to open the student record as shown below for Alister Stone.

Note: If the parent and student have a different last name, take note of the Guardian Last Name. It will be helpful to associate the student record with the User Account.

 

  1. Click the 'Create Account' button at the bottom of the page to create a User Account and automatically the participant/student is added to the User account with the corresponding Student Id for Alister Stone. You will see a red message of 'Account Created' when that is completed. If there is already a user account, you will see a message 'User already exists' in red.

  1. After creating the User account, you will need to go back to Manage > Students and enter the Last Name or Student ID to find the student. Or click the back button of your browser two times to arrive at the screen below.

  1. Click View History to display the Student Fees and you'll see the screen below. In this case, there are two fees, one Elementary School Fee and some Book Fines for Alister Stone.

  1. Now you're ready to pay the fees, almost. If the student has the same last name as the parent, you should be able to make the payments right away because by default, ePayTrak will search for a user account with the same last name as the student. But if the parent and student names are different, you first need to associate the student with the User account. You only see a 'Search' button on the bottom right, so you can't yet proceed to pay the fees. In this case, the parent/guardian has a different last name. Enter the Last Name of the parent in the Last Name box and click Search. I entered Carpenter because that is the name of the Guardian. (You will not see the 'Create Order' button if a User account wasn't created for that student, either.)

ePayTrak has now found the associated User account for the student. That is why you see the e-mail address and the 'Create Order' button now appears.

  1. Select the fees you wish to pay by clicking in the appropriate 'Add to Cart' column boxes and click 'Create Order'.

You will see a window similar to this window. If you wish to add any other products like a Yearbook for example, enter the name of the product in the 'Add Products to Order' box shown at the bottom left, press Search & Save to add it to the cart.

  1. If it is a Cash Payment, click the 'Complete Order with Cash Payment' button. For a Check Payment, enter the Check number in the Check Number box and press the 'Complete Order with Check Payment' button. Note: the Check Number field is a required field if you are going use the 'Complete Order with Check Payment' button.

  1. You have now completed the fees payment and you will land in the Order Manager.

If there is more than one student for a family, and a User Account already exists, there are extra steps to take to make that first fee payment. In the example below, a User Account was created when paying the fees for Alan Stuart. On the Manage > Students page, I entered Stuart as the last name and found two students.  

I then clicked the View History link for Howie Stuart and I see the following:

In this case, I will then need to go to the User Account and add Howie Stuart as the student/participant with the student ID. I looked at the Student Record by clicking the Edit button on the top of the page shown above. I then copied the e-mail address and went to People > Users. Choose search by Email and I pasted elistuart@edutrak.com and then clicked 'Search'. (You can search by the parent's last name also.)

  • Click the edit button at the right. Notice Howie Stuart is indeed not yet added as a student. When I created the User account from Alan Stuart's student record, it added the Student/Participant for Alan automatically. But you can't take the same steps for a second student. As you see, Howie isn't part of the User's account and we need to add him manually.

  • Enter the Student First Name, Last Name and Participant ID (the other information is optional).

  • Click 'Add Student'. That will add Howie as a student/participant.

  • Go back to Manage > Students and find Howie Stuart. Click on the View History button and you'll notice that the e-mail address for the User account and the 'Create Order' button is now there as shown below. Make the payments as outlined above.

Considerable Workflow improvements have been made in Release 4.15. Single Sign-On integration will eliminate the hassle of locating a User account, creating a user account and adding other students to the user account!