Using Multiple Bank Accounts with Online Payments

Using Multiple Bank Accounts with Online Payments

1/6/2025

 

Today, our online payment solution makes deposits into a single bank account only.  This is problematic for districts that have separate bank accounts for general and activity funds. In these cases, district bookkeepers must write checks, or otherwise transfer money into the right bank accounts.  This can be time consuming, and involves calculation outside our system.

 

So we’re building software to disburse funds into the correct bank accounts.  This is a big project. Over the weekend we released an important part - namely the ability to calculate the amount that should be deposited into each bank account. This will greatly reduce the time bookkeepers spend managing online payments.  This is foundational, and will support later releases. The functionality we’ve added is:

  1. Add bank accounts to the SIS

  2. Associate bank accounts with Fee Categories

  3. For Payrix Fees and Convenience Fees, associate bank accounts and account codes

  4. Run reports that break down disbursements by bank account and account code

 

While the software has been released, it is not generally available yet.  We’d like to run a short beta program and work closely with some initial customers.  Our goal is to validate the reports’ accuracy and ensure we’re meeting customers’ needs.  Once we’re confident it’s working well, we’ll use the calculations to disburse funds into multiple bank accounts (instead of just one).  Please reach out to [email protected] if you’d like to participate.

 

Our first software change is to add “Financial Institution Accounts” to the SIS.  This will allow users to add bank accounts to receive disbursements from Payrix.  There’s a “Use for Payrix Disbursements” flag to set for each account.

District Main > Online Payments > Financial Institution Accounts

 

 

SI-Financials customers may recognize that we made an existing Financials page available in the SIS.  We intend SI-Financials to work well with SchoolInsight SIS.  So “Financial Institution Accounts” is flexible and capable for SIS-only customers (who do NOT use Financials), but has restrictions when school districts DO use SI-Financials.  Bookkeepers using SI-Financials don’t want SIS users making changes to the accounting system.

 

We added the ability to associate Financial Institution Accounts with Fee Categories, so online payments can be routed to the appropriate bank account.  We have long supported Account Codes on Fee Categories, and adding Financial Institution Accounts extends our reporting capability (more below).

 

 

For SI-Financials customers, we modified the Account Code field on Fee Categories.  It used to be a text field, and SIS customers could enter any text string.  If a district uses SI-Financials, we now offer a list where users select a revenue account from the Chart of Accounts.  In this way, SI-Financials users will always use valid account codes.

 

We added options to better manage Payrix Fees and Convenience Fees.  We added the ability to set a Financial Institution Account for both (we assumed that the Payrix and convenience fees would go into the same bank account).  Individual Account Codes can be set for each.

 

 

The last change was to improve the “Payrix Revenue Account Codes” report.  The existing report categorizes multiple disbursements by Account Code.  We improved the report to now use Financial Institution Account in addition to Account Code.  

 

With a few clicks, this report calculates the amounts for checks to move funds.  It also gives a breakdown by account code for receipt/deposit entry into the financial system.  For bookkeepers doing this manually today, the new reporting should save time.

 

 

As mentioned above, this new functionality is not available by default.  We’d like to work closely with early customers before releasing it widely.  Please reach out to [email protected] if you’re interested in participating in a short beta program.

 

Once we’re confident this reporting meets customer needs, we’ll continue with the larger bank account project.  First, we’ll use these totals to disburse funds into multiple bank accounts.  Second, for SI-Financials customers we’ll automatically push draft receipts to the financial system, so bookkeepers save time and avoid data entry for Payrix disbursements.

 

We hope that you like the new functionality, and that it proves useful.

 

 

The Common Goal Team