- August 2024 Issue - 

IMPORTANT UPDATES

 

The TADS Development team has been diligently working on new features, and we're thrilled to partner with you for the upcoming school year!

Highlighted Recent Releases

  • Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) – This is a new, optional security feature being added for school administrators and parents to set up on their own user accounts. It allows the user to link their TADS login to an authenticator app on their phone, which will then require verification each time before being able to log in to the TADS site. 
  • Grade Summary Enhancements – These are new updates to the Enrollment Grade Summary page to enhance the school administrator’s roll-up of their enrollment counts. Users will now have an improved experience viewing and filtering the page by enrollment status and substatus. 
  • QBO Mapping Rollover – This new functionality will ensure that a school’s unique mappings to QuickBooks Online are carried forward when a new school year is configured in our system. Doing so will mean that school administrators do not need to re-input the mappings each year (but may still edit them as needed). 

 

School Year 2025-2026 is now available in TADS 

Schools wishing to open Admissions, Enrollment, or Tuition Management for the next academic year are now able to do so. Reach out to the TADS Implementation Team if you’d like to get an early start. 

  • As part of our annual process, we will be copying forward each school’s configuration settings in the coming months. We’ll reach out to each school approximately 3 months in advance of when you opened last year, giving you plenty of time to prepare and share any requested changes with us before we open a module to your families.  
  • Start thinking about when your school might want to open each module for the next year! Read more about our rollover process here. 

 

For Educate, feel free to check out our recent release notes for a complete list of recent updates for the month!

PORTAL POINTERS

 

Changing a Due Date or Other Settings on an Individual Invoice 

At the start of each year, families choose an installment plan that fits their current financial situation. However, circumstances can change, and a family may later request a payment extension if they feel they cannot pay an invoice on time. If this happens, your school can Change Invoice Due Dates on a Billing Account or Stop an Invoice From Automatic Payment. 

It is important to make account changes at least two business days before an invoice’s due date to prevent an automatic payment from initiating when it shouldn’t. Keep in mind that there’s no guarantee an invoice will be paid if you disable autopay from it. The better practice is to move the invoice out to a new date when the family can/has agreed to make a payment. If moving multiple invoices, try to avoid placing more than one on the same date as this could cause duplicate late fees, or for banks to reject a duplicate payment from the same day. Alternatively, you can email TADS School Support to request that we combine multiple invoices into one lump sum payment. 

 

Unapplied Payments and Credits

As you close out billing accounts from last year, you may find excess payments and discounts that have been left on accounts as “unapplied”. As payments and credits are added to billing accounts, various circumstances can result in them being listed as unapplied. For example, a family may have overpaid, or a charge may have been removed that previously had payments/credits applied to it. When this occurs, the family’s balance due might not be reflected accurately. Additionally, TADS cannot remit payments to the school until they are applied to school charges. For these reasons, schools must monitor their accounts and resolve unapplied payments and credits as soon as possible. 

Two billing reports, the Unapplied Payments Report, and the Unapplied Credits Report, will help you monitor these situations. We recommend regularly reviewing both reports for every academic year your school has used TADS, as families will occasionally submit a payment to an old billing account by mistake. There are several ways to reconcile any overpayments and credits listed on these reports. The most common way is to apply the payment/credit to an open balance or transfer it to another school year. If no balance is due, a refund can be issued by TADS or by your school directly. Here are helpful support articles to assist you with these processes: 

 

End of Year Payment Transfers and Refunds

It’s important to note that there may be complexities when you transfer payments between school years or if a family needs a refund at the end of the year. When a payment is applied toward school charges, we remit those funds to your school. If a payment is later unapplied for any reason (i.e. to be refunded, transferred to another account, disputed by a family, etc.) we must deduct it from your next remittance. However, if it’s the end of the school year and your families are done making payments, there will be no remittance to deduct it from. If this happens, TADS will need to send an invoice to the school to be reimbursed for those amounts. There are a few ways you can reduce the need for a TADS Reimbursement invoice. 

  • Whenever possible, proactively issue refunds or transfer payments before your other families are done making payments for the year. 
  • After that point, issue refunds directly at the school by cutting a check for the family instead of having TADS process the refunds. 

Visit the School Remittance Report guide for more information about negative values in your remittances

 

Failed Emails Report 

This is the time of year when many schools in TADS are doing a final push for families to enroll or sign their tuition agreement before the new school year begins. The Failed Emails Report can help!  This report is accessible under the Enrollment/Agreements/Billing tabs and displays emails that failed to send to families. This indicates that our emails may have been blocked by a parent or their email provider. Our Support team can help clear these blocks and attempt to resend the email. To make sure your families are receiving notifications and reminders, see our support article Failed Emails Report for more details. 

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
  • Educate - How to Set Up Schedules - Watch this short how-to video on how to do just that ➡️ Watch Now
  • NCEA Reveals Data Results for 2023-2024 Catholic School Enrollment (Blog) - Stability amongst the chaos, changing composition of staff and faculty, and more ➡️ View Now
  • New Educate Household View - Check out this short video walking you through the household portal ➡️ Watch Now
  • Educate Teacher Training - Review the teacher module within the Educate platform ➡️ Watch Now
  • Protecting Student Privacy: Why Student Data Security Matters (Blog) - Look at why school data can carry an increased risk of hacking ➡️ Read Now

 

REMINDER

 

Office Closure

We will be closed on Monday, September 2, 2024 in observance of Labor Day.

 

How can we help you?

TADS and Educate Administrators may contact School Support via the following email and phone numbers:

  • Educate Admin Phone Support
    • 888-730-3256

  • TADS Admin Phone Support:

    • 612-548-3369 (or toll-free 888-210-4857)

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