How do I charge Bookstore items to student accounts?

Currently-registered (enrolled or auditing a current or future course) students can charge eligible bookstore items, sales tax, and shipping costs to their accounts. This lets them purchase items and pay for them alongside their tuition and fees.

• Purchased Bookstore items become Bookstore charges.
• Tax and shipping, if you let them get charged to account, are tied to Fees.
• Bookstore charges are automatically eligible for financial aid. Tax and shipping fees must be marked aid-eligible when you set them up.
• Both kinds of charges initially become pending charges; after a financial user invoices them, the student can pay them alongside tuition and fees.

Ensure students can charge bookstore items to their accounts

There are three types of bookstore charges: items, tax, and shipping. When charged to a student account, bookstore items become Bookstore charges, while tax and shipping hit student accounts as Fees. Each can be charged to a student's account, but you need to first make sure that you've set up Bookstore to allow that. Here are the items you'll need to set up:

1. Tax and shipping: To charge tax/shipping to account, you'll need to first set up associated fees in Billing > Settings > Fees (you may need to ask a Financial Admin user to set these up for you).
2. Bookstore settings: In Bookstore > Admin > Settings, you'll need to:
   • Select a shipping on account fee and a tax on account fee
   • Enter a student charge to account limit
3. Bookstore items:When adding or editing an item/segment, check whether it can be charged to account.

With these settings in place, students will be able to charge bookstore purchases to their accounts.

Charging items to account

When the order is placed^—whether by the student when shopping online, or by you when handling the order at Point of Sale—check off the items you wish to charge to account. Here's what you'll do in the Point of Sale:

1. Assemble the order as normal.
2. Look up the student by name or student ID.
3. Check the individual items to be charged (including, if you've set it up, sales tax); you can also just click Charge all to account to check all items and the tax.
4. Select the term in which these charges will be applied.
5. If there are any items which cannot be charged to the student's account—or if the order total exceeds the student's charge-to-account limit—you'll also need to take payment for the remainder.
6. Finally, click Complete Checkout.

As soon as you complete checkout, the items you charged to the student's account appear under Pending Charges on her Profile > Financial > By Term view. It is then up to a financial user to invoice those charges and collect payment for them.

Online orders

Students can also charge items to their accounts using the online shopping cart.

1. The student must log in with his Populi username and password in order to charge to his account.
2. When the student completes online checkout, he can charge the items to his account on the payment screen.
3. When you mark his pending order as ready to pick up/ship, the items appear under Pending Charges on her Profile > Financial > By Term view.

How does the charge to account limit work?

Once items are charged to an account, they become pending charges. After invoicing those charges, any invoice(s) including those charges must be paid in full before the account limit will be restored. Here's an example...

1. You set up a $500 charge-to-account limit.
2. A student charges $100 on an online order and later charges another $150 on a point of sale purchase. That leaves him $250 on his Charge to Account limit.
   • The $100 gets invoiced by itself on invoice #100
   • The $150 is included with a $5,000 tuition charge on invoice #101, for a total of $5,150
3. The student makes a $4,300 payment.
   • $100 goes to invoice #100, which is now paid in full
   • $4,100 goes to invoice #101; $1,050 remains on the invoice balance
4. As a result, his Charge to Account limit increases to $350:
   • $100 from invoice #100 (PAID) + $250 remaining on his Charge to Account limit = $350
   • Until he pays off the remaining $1,050 on #101, his Charge to Account limit will not go back to $500