In brightwheel Billing, parents can choose how much they pay toward a student's balance, even if this is in excess of the balance due. Sometimes, parents may make these payments against the incorrect student's account, resulting in an overpayment for one student and potentially late payments for another. In these instances, we will want to transfer the student's balance so that both student's accounts accurately reflect the amount the parent owes the school.
Please Note: This process can also be used to implement our current best practices for Family Billing.
Transfer a Student's Balance
Any administrator can complete the following steps to transfer a balance from the billing portion of brightwheel online. Two key steps to transferring a balance are issuing an Offline Refund and Recording an Offline Payment.
Issue an Offline Refund
The first step in transferring an overpayment will be to issue a 'refund' for the amount that you would like to transfer to the sibling. Pay close attention that the refund method chosen is Cash or Check as no money will actually be refunded or moved.
Navigate to the Billing section a choose the Student Accounts tab
Locate the student where the incorrect payment was received and click on their name
Click on the question mark in the circle in the green box and select Issue a Refund
The Refund Amount should be the total amount that should have been paid toward the other student's balance
For the Refund Method select Cash or Check
For the Reason for the Refund, create a new reason called: Transferring a payment
Click Issue Refund
Record an Offline Payment
Now that the overpayment has been removed from the original account, these funds can be appropriately logged against the sibling that these funds should have been paid against.
Navigate back to the Student Accounts tab
Locate the student that the payment should have gone to and click on their name
Choose Record an Offline Payment from the Select an Action drop-down
Select Cash or Check as the Payment Method
Enter the same amount that was issued in the refund
Add a Note to the effect of "transfer from sibling’s account”
Uncheck the Send payment receipt and click Add Payment
