Managing Bill Payers

In Discover, the Contact responsible for being the Billpayer is also the Contact that has Enrolled the Children at the service.

There are three options when managing the billpayer at the service.

Option 1.  Changing the Bill Payer from a certain date

Option 2. Change the Billpayer from the beginning of the Enrolment 

Option 3. Shared Billpayers

1. Changing the Billing Payer from a certain date

Use this option when you want:

• Previous invoices to remain with the existing bill payer.
• Future invoices to be issued to a new bill payer from a nominated date.

To change the bill payer

1.  Open the Child's Enrolments tab. 
2.  Select Change Enrolled Times. 
3.  In the Effective From field, enter the date the new bill payer will take over. 
4.  Select the new contact from the Bill Payer dropdown. 
5.  Select Save. 

Example

Wendy Monroe is currently the bill payer.

From 13 July, Marty Monroe will become responsible for the child's fees.

To do this:

•  Set the Effective From date to 13 July. 
•  Select Marty Monroe as the new bill payer. 
•  Save the enrolment. 

From this date onwards:

•  All new invoices will be issued to Marty. 
•  Previous invoices and financial transactions will remain with Wendy. 

The enrolment history will now show two enrolment records, allowing you to view invoices and transactions for each bill payer separately under the Account tab.

The Enrolments, now look like this:

and you will be able to select the transactions and invoices under each contact on the Account Tab

Important Considerations

• Remove saved payment patterns

After changing the bill payer, check whether the previous bill payer has any saved payment patterns.

To do this:

1. Open the previous bill payer's Contact Details.
2. Under Bill Payer Details, locate Previously Matched Payment Patterns.
3. Remove any existing payment patterns.

If these payment patterns remain, future payments may continue to be allocated to the previous bill payer. This can result in:

• Credit accumulating on the old bill payer's account.
• Outstanding balances appearing on the new bill payer's account.

If this occurs:

1. Remove the payment patterns from the previous bill payer.
2. Open their Transactions tab
3. Use Change Billpayer to move the transactions if appropriate.

When this method cannot be used

In some situations, the Change Billpayer function is unavailable because the scenario is too complex.

This usually occurs when:

•  The current bill payer is also responsible for another child. 
•  The new bill payer has no relationship with that other child. 

• Because the Change Billpayer function transfers all invoices from the existing bill payer to the new bill payer, Discover prevents the change to avoid transferring invoices for unrelated children.

   

  In these cases, the bill payer must be updated through the Enrolments screen using the effective date method
  
  

2. Changing the Bill Payer from the beginning of the Enrolment 

Use this option when the incorrect contact was originally assigned as the bill payer and you want the change to apply from the start of the enrolment.

This is commonly used when siblings are enrolled under separate parent or guardian accounts and you would like all children to appear on a single statement under one account.

To change the bill payer

1. Go to Children.
2. Select the child.
3. Open the Account tab.
4. Select Change Billpayer.
5. Choose the contact who will become responsible for the child's account.
6. Select Change.

This updates the child's:

• Enrolment
• Invoices
• Payments

so they are all linked to the selected bill payer.

The Enrolments will transfer from Contact 1 to Contact 2 as well as all payments and invoices.

Option 3. Shared Billpayers

This now shows that Joshua is paying 50% for each Invoice and Nellie is paying 50% for each invoice.

The Enrolment Screen also displays this on the enrolment

You can switch between billpayers to see each contacts invoices and payments.