Setting up Enrollment Agreements

Enrollment agreements let you collect agreements from your students regarding payment of tuition, fees, and any other education-related expenses they incur at your school. Here's the storyline covered in this article:

1. If you want Populi to generate enrollment agreements for your school, you start by working with Populi Support to develop an enrollment agreement layout.
   • The layout can include basic information about course registration information and financial charges, plus any other text you wish to include.
   • The separate signature overlay layout lets you collect digital signatures from students. It is designed to fit together with your main enrollment agreement layout.
2. In Financial > Settings, you enable enrollment agreements by selecting the method by which you wish to require them from your students.
3. You test the enrollment agreement and get familiar with the Populi workflow.
4. During the course registration period, students will sign and submit enrollment agreements according to the method you've chosen.
5. As agreements are signed, you can see which students have (or haven't) signed in the Data Slicer or Billing > Reportinh > Enrollment Agreements.

Thus the story with all the built-in features. You can also use Populi simply to store enrollment agreements generated outside of Populi. Have a look at that workflow.

Setting up the layout

In Communications > Print Layouts, you'll find a built-in layout called Enrollment Agreement - Generic. The layout will not serve your needs as-is, so your first step will be to contact Populi customer support requesting that we help you set up an enrollment agreement. We'll work with you on the layout until you're satisfied with it. Here are the options and questions Populi Support will cover with you:

• If you have an existing enrollment agreement you'd like us to copy, send it to us in a modern word-processing format (if not, we can just start from scratch).
• What information would you like included in it?
  • Basic school and student info (name, contact info, student ID, etc.)
  • Big picture academic info like student programs and degrees
  • Course information
  • Charges—overall amounts and specific charges
• If you wish to let your students sign agreements digitally, we can create a separate signature overlay layout.

As we work on the layout, you'll be able to view a proof version. During the testing phase (see below), you may want to request additional changes.

Financial > Settings

In Financial > Settings > General, select how you wish to administer enrollment agreements to your students under the Enrollment Agreements setting. Your options are:

• Per student, not required: This setting gives you the most manual control. It enables the generation and storage of enrollment agreements, but none of the automation features. Agreements will be handled on Profile > Financial > Dashboard.
• Per term, not required: Identical to the previous option, except that agreements are handled on Profile > Financial > By Term.
• Per student, required once: Every time the student registers for courses, Populi will check to see if she has a signed agreement on Profile > Financial > Dashboard. If she does, she can complete her registration. If she does not, then she must sign an agreement in order to finish.
• Per term, required once per term: The student must sign an agreement in every term for which she registers.
• Per term, required when enrollment/amount changes: This generates a new agreement for the student to sign every time her enrollment or the amount she owes for that term's enrollment changes. The amount owed option is triggered only by changes to tuition and enrollment-related fees (as opposed to, say, a parking ticket issued halfway through the term).

Taking this step enables the enrollment agreement features! Given that you'll still want to get familiar with them before rolling them out to all your students, here is our recommendation:

1. Initially, enable enrollment agreements using one of the not required options. These options give you the most manual control over the agreements; if you make a mistake during testing, it won't affect anyone besides your test student.
2. Run through the testing process (see below).
3. When you're ready to implement the feature for all your students, just come back to this setting and choose the option you want to use long-term.

Academics > Settings

In Academics > Settings > General, you can edit the messages that display for students when Populi is generating their enrollment agreements during course registration. These messages only come into play for the required options.

Test the layout

With the layout created and the setting enabled, you can now begin testing the enrollment agreement. Here is our recommendation:

1. Enable one of the not required options.
2. Enroll a test student in some courses, making sure that the enrollments trigger some tuition and fees (which means you'll have to assign the student a tuition schedule).
3. Go to the test student's Profile > Financial view. If you've enabled Per student, not required, you'll see the Enrollment Agreements panel on Dashboard. If you've enabled By term, not required, you'll see that panel on the By Term view.
4. Add an enrollment agreement to the student:
   1. Click add next to Enrollment Agreements.
   2. Select the action:
      • Generate... lets you test the signature overlay. It sends an email to the test student with a link to sign the agreement digitally.
      • Print... generates a PDF of an unsigned agreement. This option is the simplest way to see what the agreement will look like.
      • Upload... lets you upload a file of the agreement. This option lets you indicate whether it was signed and, optionally, what amount was agreed to. If you're using your own enrollment agreement or the Print... action, this is what you'd use to bring the signed agreement back into Populi.
5. Click Done to finish.
6. The Generate... action lets you see what the student sees if you make use of the digital signature feature. Check the test student's email for a link to sign the agreement.
7. The Print... feature lets you have a straightforward look at the agreement.
8. If you need to make any further changes to the layout, just update the ticket you opened with Populi Support.

Once you're comfortable with how the enrollment agreement looks and works, you can start implementing their use for all your students.