We charge an application fee. It would be great to have the ability to include a payment form in the online application so we can process this like all of the other application components.
11 comments
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Shane Flynn Jeremiah~ Are you all using the financial module and/or bookstore module w/ Populi?
We are looking to impliment both soon and I was thinking about this exact issue and was hoping the built-in credit card processing and invoicing associated with those two modules would allow us to "invoice" the prospective student for their app fee. then when the prospective logs in to their application, they see an alert at the top to pay their app fee.
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Jeremiah Miller Shane, we are using the financial and bookstore modules. I just spent some time today going back and forth with Populi and they suggested a similar scenario like what you've mentioned.
We spent some time thinking about it, and one of the things that could be done is set up an application fee, but then you either need to manually invoice each applicant, or set up a rule to trigger this automatically. We had thought of creating a custom field for the application, like "Are you going to pay your application fee online or via mail?" Then, if they select "online", it will trigger the fee.
The problem with this, however, is the limited (or too broad) roles. Admissions roles can't invoice the student, so they'd have to get the student billing people to do it. And, once the student pays the fee, Admissions can't see whether the student has actually paid the fee or not. I really don't want to give our admissions team access to student billing. So, it still becomes quite a cumbersome process.
In the end, I think we're going to hold off on this until Populi can improve things a bit.
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Carlos Marin Brandon: How is Populi envisioning this would work? Would the functionality be in the body of the basic initial application? This is exciting!
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Patrick Friesen I'm just setting up our online application and am eagerly awaiting to see what Populi does.
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Alexander Hathaway I just made an open-ended payment through Populi since the Application Fee component said I could pay online but did not specify how. Are you saying Admissions will not be able to view this payment, much less count it towards my account?
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Alexander Hathaway Disregard. It looks like the fee was processed without issue. Cool.
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Mary Neel This would be a good feature if it were optional. One of our Prospects paid with cash yesterday. If they opted to pay at some other point during their collection status, can it follow them through the collection status until it is paid?
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Carlos Marin Has anyone consider the pros/cons of having the application fee as an initial requirement on the initial online application form? https://pbc.populiweb.com/application/index.php
Currently there are three sections: "About You", "Academic Interest" and "Contact Info". How about adding a "Application payment" section.
On one hand, it would probably lower the number of inquiries coming in through this form and discourage those not really interested in applying. This could be addressed by having another interest form on the website to catch those, but if this is intended for actual applicants, wouldn't it help to have this hurdle to show commitment?
On the other hand, my marketing brain says "I'd like to get as many inquiries no matter how"...
I'd be interested in hearing others' opinions or points of view on this.
Populi team: would this even be technically possible?
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Carlos Marin Here's my work around for the time being... has anyone else done something like this? http://www.portlandbiblecollege.org/index.php?cID=705
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Jeremiah Miller We do something similar. There is a checklist on our website -- the Populi application form is step one, and the application fee is another one of the steps
http://www.elim.edu/apply/. We can't wait to have it integrated into the application!
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Brendan O'Donnell Hi, y'all. We just released the ability to include an online application fee component. Read more about it here.