An overview of arrears billing (billing students AFTER they've taken a lesson).
To bill in arrears, it is recommended to set up all plans with a 100% discount on the first payment. This means that the first actual payment will be made after the lessons have been taken. This billing method can be applied to monthly, package, and semester billing, using the lesson count between specific dates.- In the plan builder set the "promotion percentage off (first payment)" to 100%:
- To set up the billing for the plan, you can simply assign the plan from the schedule as you normally would (or through online registration) and choose the start billing date for the following month (or the date of their next lesson) when you want to collect payment.
- For example, if a student starts their lessons on November 15th and you would like to bill them on the 25th of every month, you should set the billing start date to November 25th. The first actual billing will then occur on December 25th for the lessons taken in December (because of the 100% discount for the "first" payment). To account for the lessons between November 15th and November 25th, you can choose to either prorate the amount owed or do a quick charge on November 25th. This will ensure that the student is billed correctly and that the payment report reflects the accurate amount owed.
- The payment report will display a balance of $0 for the initial lesson, and the subsequent recurring billing cycle will be the first payment due for the lessons taken:
- You can use the future payment report to verify the payment schedule for the first billing cycle:
Note: this also applies to packages of 1 in which you want the student to pay after they've taken a lesson. Learn more about packages of one here.