Flexible billing software makes it easier for childcare centers to provide multiple program options that are attractive to parents. But with all that flexibility comes administrative headaches and time-consuming billing if you don’t have the right tools.
Robindell Private School is a center serving 1,400 students that offers flexible programs and uses rule-based, flexible billing software to save time and make these programs possible. The school offers care just outside downtown Houston for infants through grade 2 and after-school care for older children.
Because of its location, the school also provides 24/7 care for children whose parents work as hospital staff. To add even more billing complications, the school also serves subsidized children and offers drop-in care.
Learn how this center can offer so many care options while automating tuition payment collection thanks to rule-based billing.
The Challenge
Robindell Private School offers so many programs, it would take a full-time billing employee to create and manage tuition billing to handle manually preparing tuition and tracking down payments for drop-in care. Here are some of the key factors that made billing so challenging at the school.
- Enormous student body of 1,400 students
- Bills based on a combination of schedules and attendance
- Children could be scheduled for 4, 5 or 6 days and additional attendance over their schedule is charged differently
- A day could be 8, 10 or 12 hours, which are all billed differently
- Children can be enrolled full or part-time
- Drop-in care is billed differently than regular enrollment
Attendance tracking is essential to show when a child was there to inform automated billing. But even then, with so many attendance options, few childcare billing software tools on the market are equipped to handle such complicated billing needs.
The Solution
To power automated billing with such flexible care options, Robindell Private School implemented iCare Software and uses its rate chart modeler. This flexible billing software allows the school to program factors that automate the complicated billing the school requires.
- Global, program-based or child-level billing setup. These rules automatically cascade down to the enrolled children in each program.
- The rate chart modeler is a 30-factor programmable rate chart with factors like age, number of children in the family, family income, subsidized, number of days and hours, membership discount, and minimum and maximum amounts, etc.
- The software allows for bills to be calculated based on schedule, attendance or a combination of (schedule + attendance)
- The school can choose its frequency of billing by day, week or month
- The billing period can be hourly, daily, weekly, bi-weekly, semi-monthly, monthly, quarterly, etc.
- The center can select its posting day, such as Friday before the billing week, Monday of the week, or on the 28th of every month to offer parents consistency
Flexible Childcare Billing Outcome
Today, iCare bills 5,000 charges and collects 2,500 payments each month for the school automatically. Robindell Private School can meet the unique childcare and educational needs of its local community while not having to worry about the administrative burden of billing for these flexible care options.
Whether your tuition billing is simple or complex like Robindell Private School, schedule a demo of iCare Software’s billing tools to learn more about how they can help you reduce your bad debt and save time by automating all tuition and payment collection.