Executive Summary

This proposal requests the addition of a new feature to our tuition management software that will allow the business office to permanently delete fees that were created in error. Recently, an incident occurred where a fee was mistakenly added to the upcoming school year instead of the current one. Despite removing the fee from families' accounts, the system's current limitations prevented us from deleting it, leading to unnecessary complications in our accounting and reconciliation processes. By enabling the permanent deletion of fees, we aim to enhance operational efficiency and ensure the accuracy of our financial records.

Background

Our institution relies on Blackbaud's tuition management software for handling billing and fee management. While the software generally meets our needs, its inability to allow the permanent deletion of erroneously created fees has resulted in administrative challenges. Specifically, a situation arose where a fee was incorrectly added to a future school year, which was not identified and corrected until it was too late to delete it using the system's existing functionalities. This incident has highlighted the need for greater flexibility in fee management to avoid similar issues in the future.

Problem Statement

The current system's limitation on not allowing the permanent deletion of fees that were mistakenly created poses significant challenges, including:

- Difficulty in maintaining accurate and clean financial records.

- Increased administrative burden on the business office to manually track and rectify such errors.

- Potential confusion among staff and families when historical records show fees that were never intended to be billed or collected.

Proposed Solution

We propose the development and integration of a feature that allows authorized personnel (e.g., business office staff) to permanently delete fees that were erroneously created. This feature should include:

- An authentication process to ensure that only designated users have the ability to delete fees.

- A confirmation step to prevent accidental deletions, with a detailed log of all deletions for audit purposes.

- Flexibility to delete fees regardless of the school year they were attached to, provided they have been removed from all accounts and have no financial transactions associated with them.

Benefits

Implementing this feature will provide numerous benefits, including:

- Enhanced accuracy of financial records by eliminating erroneous fees.

- Streamlined accounting and reconciliation processes, saving time and reducing the likelihood of errors.

- Increased control over fee management, allowing for swift correction of mistakes without leaving behind unwanted records.

- Improved confidence among business office staff in managing the tuition software, leading to more efficient operations.

Request for Implementation

We respectfully request that Blackbaud considers the development of this feature as part of the next software update cycle. We believe that the ability to permanently delete fees will significantly improve the utility and user satisfaction of your tuition management system. Our team is available to discuss this proposal in further detail and to provide any additional information required.

Thank you for considering our request. We look forward to your positive response and to continuing our successful partnership with Blackbaud.