Managing finances for a school is an increasingly challenging job. Not only are you managing the ongoing admin issues of billing, such as chasing late payments, but there are the added complexities of different fee structures for particular students, customised payment plans to meet diverse family structures, ongoing school excursions, discounts and levies, and more.
Our new Student Information Platform, Zunia, is here to help.
With our next-generation cloud-based student information platform, we want every school to say goodbye to complex billing, time-consuming admin and unreliable data, and hello to increased productivity, flexibility and clarity.
Available to schools in Australia, South East Asia and now the Middle East, Zunia offers a suite of features and tools that are specially designed to lighten the load of every part of finance in schools and save time in the day-to-day management of school fees and charges.
The end result?
An increase in on-time tuition fee payments, a clearer view of the school’s finances for better budgeting, and more time freed up for value-adding tasks.
Let’s take a look at the top Zunia finance features:
Manage complex school tuition fees and billing with ease
A key challenge for schools is collecting fees and charges when dealing with the sometimes complex nature of family relationships.
We know that when it comes to school tuition fees and billing, there is no one-size-fits-all. Managing billing for a whole range of family circumstances can take hours of admin time.
Zunia is designed to simplify this.
When a student is first enrolled in the school, a profile is created in Zunia. By clicking on their profile, you can easily set up and view billing arrangements for that particular student. For example, if the parents are divorced, or grandparents are helping with the fees, Zunia lets you split the bill between multiple debtor accounts according to the percentage they pay.
Another highlight is family grouping for discounts and levies. Rather than allocating discounts and levies to individual siblings, you can save time by applying them at a family level.
Flexible payment methods to speed up time to payment
Zunia is designed to introduce flexibility into the way you take and allocate any payment from parents, which reduces fee arrears and saves time spent chasing payments.
By offering easy and flexible payment options for parents, schools can speed up time to payment and give parents a seamless billing experience. With Zunia’s Stripe and Fat Zebra online payment gateways, schools can get paid up to 13 times faster.
Simply add the payment method to the parent’s (debtor’s) payment plan. The system securely stores card and bank details in compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) regulatory requirements. The fully encrypted solution means the raw cardholder data is never visible or accessible.
By automating direct debits and card payments, and receiving receipts directly into Zunia, finance administrators will spend less time on manual processes while improving data accuracy.
Zunia also keeps records of all automated and in-person payments, and you receive notifications for failed payments, so you don’t have to rely on manual checks to stay on top of fee debt.
General ledger integrations with Xero, MYOB and Quickbooks
Improving the integration between existing systems is a top priority for technology staff, according to our 2022 School Research Report.
Integration is particularly important when it comes to finance in schools. By seamlessly connecting your school information management system and school accounting platform, you can be confident data is always clean, accurate and up-to-date.
Zunia currently lets you export general ledger transaction data to a CSV file for use with Xero, MYOB and Quickbooks.
Speed up billing with bulk billing runs and exceptions
Billing is an important but time-consuming part of finance for schools. There’s a lot of work involved in manually calculating bills and sending them out.
Zunia helps lift this load with bulk student billing. Bulk student billing automates the calculation of student fees and discounts so that you can bill students in bulk.
When you create a bulk student billing run, Zunia takes information from each student profile (year level, family size, scholarships, discounts) and combines it with the school’s fee schedule to create a batch of school fees. You can also create a billing run for specific campuses or year groups.
You can also do a billing run for students with custom fee arrangements, called a “special billing group”. For example, you may have a special billing group for students who have started mid-term and were not included in the main billing run.
Zunia also allows you to apply exceptions to bulk billing rules if there are variables for particular students.
Automate workflows for receipts
When a payment is made to your school, you can issue a receipt to the person or business that made the payment.
In Zunia, receipts are created in batches. To save time, the receipt amount is auto-filled for all automated payments that follow a payment plan.
New features coming soon
In the months ahead, you’ll start seeing even more value packed into new Zunia finance features. We’ll keep you updated as these new features roll out.
Zunia is available to schools in Australia, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Indonesia. Talk to us to find out how Zunia can simplify your school’s finance complexities and save valuable time.
