Case Study: Stockton Christian School

"Our main goal was to find a solution that increased the convenience for parents to pay their tuition bills. PaySimple helped us achieve this goal, and we are now receiving payments more reliably than ever."

-Laura Ramonett, Stockton Christian School

The Challenge:

Stockton Christian School has been educating students for over 50 years in Stockton, California. Like many private schools, the school has been receiving tuition by paper checks from the parents of their students for years. With 176 families and over 250 students, there is quite a bit of time and expense involved with sending out paper invoices, collecting funds, depositing the checks, and reconciling statements. "Every month, we send out an invoice to the parents of all active students. We would wait for them to remember us, and I spent a lot of time reminding parents to send the check on time," said Laura Ramonett, Administrative Assistant at Stockton Christian School. "Sometimes the parents send the check in with their children, and by the time we get it. if we get it. the check is ratty from being in their pocket or school bag all day." In addition to the difficulty of collecting checks on time, many parents were requesting to pay their tuition bills with credit cards--something Laura and her staff could not accommodate but knew would improve the collections process both for the Stockton Christian School and for the students' parents.

The Solution:

After extensive research, Laura and Head Principal Harry Meeks chose PaySimple to simplify and streamline their collection process. Laura, who also works part-time for Blue Shield, is well aware of the value and scalability that a system like PaySimple can provide. At Blue Shield, and at other large corporations where she had worked in the past, there were large IT departments that could create and manage an electronic payment system. She was impressed with PaySimple's ability to bring this powerful functionality to smaller organizations without IT resources or .html experience. In the first 3 months of implementing the PaySimple Solution, Laura signed up approximately 10% of the school's families on recurring billing plans and hopes to have over 50% utilizing the system by the next school year.

The Benefits:

Stockton Christian School is already experiencing dramatic benefits from offering PaySimple's recurring billing, ACH direct-debit, and credit card processing capabilities. Many parents are ecstatic to "set-it and forget-it" when establishing their auto-recurring tuition payments, and Laura is experiencing a noticeable increase in on-time collections. A Stockton parent expressed, "I love that I can just know that my payment will be made and I don't have to think about it. This is the best thing to happen to your school's billing in. well, in forever!"

With a newly designed website, Stockton Christian School also plans to utilize PaySimple's online payment forms and invoicing functionality in the near future. With no programming experience necessary, Laura and her team will be able to create as many unique webforms as necessary for parents and benefactors to make payments and donations online. Laura will be able to send one-time or recurring invoices, with an imbedded payment button for parents to pay their bill quickly and efficiently. In addition, the school will be able to collect online donations for special events such as their annual "Jog-a-thon" fundraiser. The robust functionality and ease of use of the PaySimple solution is quickly becoming an operational backbone for the Stockton Christian School staff, and it is already providing immeasurable convenience to the families it serves.