Bethany Christian School is a co-educational Christian school in Paralowie, in Adelaide’s northern suburbs, teaching 535 students from its Early Learning Centre to Year 6. Founded in 1981, it bills around 390 families a year. Bursar Dean Huntley has led its finance and operations for nearly 15 years.
Before FACTS Payment Plans and Billing, the school invoiced through its general accounting software. Every year, November was a scramble to get in the fees that were outstanding.
Today, overdue fees sit at 0.6% of total fees owing, down from 20% to 30%. The start-of-year billing run has gone from three to four weeks to three to four days, and Dean’s team saves more than 65 hours every term.
The Challenge: Invoicing That Got Lost in the Day-to-Day
Bethany Christian School was running fee collection through accounting software never designed for school billing. The gaps only showed once the year was nearly over.
- Families were invoiced once a year and sent statements each term, with separate handling for every pay frequency
- Neither the school nor the family could easily confirm what had been agreed, or how often
- Overdue fees ran at 20% to 30% of fees owing
- Large sums of cash came in over the front counter during the busiest weeks of the year
Just the confusion for the parents, and the confusion for us as well.
What have we said? What pay frequency are you? What’s going on with it all? It was very time consuming.
The Approach: Making Direct Debit the Standard with FACTS Payment Plans and Billing
To end that cycle, Dean brought in FACTS Payment Plans and Billing. BPAY and ad hoc arrangements would go, and every family would move onto an actively managed direct debit payment plan. FACTS integration lead Jesse Colquhoun onboarded the school and worked with Dean throughout.
“It was lots of understanding how we operate as a school, how FACTS operate, and how we could merge the two together to get a better experience for our families,” says Dean. Naturally, Dean anticipated some pushback, so he planned for it. While the FACTS team handled the transition, he spent those months on his families. From July to December, ahead of go-live, the school told families exactly what was changing and why. Those who were uneasy sat down with Dean in person. Five pushed back. All five came across.
In its first year, 79% of families moved onto direct debit payment plans. Today that figure is 85%. Of roughly 390 families, 334 are on automatic direct debit and 59 are invoice-only, supported individually exactly as before.
The Results: A Term 4 Task Instead of a Year-Long One
0.6%
of total fees overdue, down from 20–30%
85%
of families on actively managed payment plans
3-4 days
to run start-of-year billing, down from 3–4 weeks
65+ hrs
of staff time saved every term
The start-of-year workload has moved into Term 4 and shrunk. Dean confirms which students are leaving, staying and starting, and sends the data to the FACTS team, who handle the back end for him. He loads the new year’s rates and checks the invoicing. Issuing it is a five-minute job.
- Dean checks the dashboard daily and can see who is behind while there is still time to act
- Remittance history reconciles against the bank account every month, and it always matches
- Dean pulls the dashboard up for his finance committee, and they can read it themselves
- Far less cash sits on site during the first weeks of the year. “Having that go straight into bank accounts protects my staff,” says Dean
Beyond Collection: Knowing Which Families Need Support
The change Dean values most isn’t the collection rate. It’s the ability to identify families who may be struggling within weeks, rather than waiting until the end of the year. That earlier visibility gives the school an opportunity to step in sooner. When Dean notices a family may need support, he raises it with the school’s wellbeing team, and they do the same with him, creating a more connected approach to supporting families.
FACTS helps us to know those families who are in financial concern and to raise that with our wellbeing staff.
They can connect with those families and see how the school can support them. It helps with the whole welfare of a family.
The Family Experience, from a Bursar Who Also Pays Fees
Dean is both a parent at Bethany Christian School and its Bursar, so he sees the experience from both sides. With many families speaking English as a second language, simplicity matters.
Through the Parent Portal, families can clearly see what they owe, broken down by tuition, camps and activities, and make a payment in just a few minutes. They can also update their own card details, helping keep sensitive payment information out of the school’s hands and supporting PCI DSS compliance.
Before any payment is taken, families have been notified four to five times through a combination of FACTS reminders and the school’s own communications.
“From a parent’s perspective, it’s one of the simplest tools I’ve had to use,” Dean says. “It’s kind of set and forget.”
I would strongly encourage any school struggling with their collection rate
or doing things manually to get FACTS Payment Plans and Billing. You’ll see a massive change in how families interact with you on a financial basis.
Ready for the Next Step?
Reduce fee collection admin and give your finance team more time for the families who need them most. Speak with our team today!
