Budgets are tight. Staffing is down. You know you need to automate more work to simply keep up. But where do you start?
Asked to rate their current processes, nearly ⅔ of the 100+ attendees of a recent Flywire webinar said their process for third-party and sponsor invoicing took too much time. Higher education institutions are "spending a lot of time on what typically amounts to a relatively small population of students, which limits your capacity to do other things,” as Daryl Robinson, Senior Product Manager at Flywire, put it.
Invoicing sponsors and other third-party organizations - for both international and domestic students - is traditionally done via email, mail or even fax, and payments often sent by check or bank wire. There is no visibility into whether the sponsor received and processed the invoice, and if they have, no tracking capabilities to determine payment status. This leads to already time-strapped staff chasing down what little information they can glean to relay to students anxious to settle their bills to either start or continue their studies.
On a recent Flywire webinar, Columbia University, Texas A&M University, and the University of Pittsburgh, shared their experiences automating invoicing and digitizing payment processes for sponsors and third-parties. In sum: automating the process shaves weeks off invoice transit, speeds payment to improve cash flow, and strengthens data security as well as relationships with sponsors and students.
“The staff can be so much more efficient,” said Corey Jackson, Director of Operations for Student Financial Services at the University of Pittsburgh. “They do not have to do all these tedious, repetitive tasks. It’s a set it and forget it mode, and you can actually focus your time on real challenges, real problems and real student service.”
Benefits like these were a consistent theme throughout the discussion with the following five outcomes of more automation:
1. Cut sponsor invoice creation, chasing, and delivery from weeks to minutes
Each semester, roughly 11,000 sponsored students come to study at Texas A&M. They are supported by eight full time employees (FTEs) and two student workers. Prior to implementing Flywire, creating, printing and sending invoices took nearly a month, according to LeeAnn Pickett, Assistant Director in the Student Business Services Office. And they still had no visibility into whether sponsors actually received them until they were paid. Now, invoice delivery takes minutes and they can easily track whether the sponsor received it. Flywire’s third-party invoicing software makes it easy to see “at-risk” invoices and automatically sends reminders.
“If you’re able to get the sponsor the invoice faster, then they’re going to be able to turn around and get you paid quicker,” she said. “That has been a game changer.”
Columbia University, where one FTE supports 1,000+ sponsored students, saw similar time-saving benefits, according to Jino George, Director of Financial Operations for Student Financial Services. Using Flywire, the department was able to reduce the time spent on the entire process from five weeks to one week.
“We saw a significant decrease in effort that it took to generate an invoice, and as a result of that, it has improved our cash flow,” George said.
2. Save time by automating reconciliation of wire payments
Before Flywire, wire payments would arrive with little to no information on them – and the staff would have to basically guess based on the country of origin who the payment was for, Texas A&M’s Pickett said.
Now, wire payment information is automatically transferred over to their Ellucian Banner system. “Flywire ensures that our payments are being applied correctly, which helps with our reconciliation,” she said.
Similarly, payments would arrive as lump sums in Columbia’s bank account, requiring manual matching and sometimes an additional call to the sponsor for more details. Now, Columbia gets an end-of-day file, and it is posted to the student account to ease reconciliation.
3. Communicate better with students to help them meet payment deadline
Before implementing Flywire, Columbia was not able to tell students whether their sponsor viewed the invoice or if they initiated a payment until they either received payment or communications back for confirmation that they received the invoice. Now that is all viewable and trackable on the platform, helping teams work more efficiently to support students.
“We can actually let the student know, ‘Hey, we saw the sponsor looking at the invoice. It's approaching the deadline, is there something that's going on with your sponsor?,” George said. “It has helped us be more proactive. That has really helped us in our communications to the students, and they're more appreciative.”
Ensuring third-party and sponsor payments are made on time is a big benefit for the University of Pittsburgh, where 1.5 FTEs support 400 sponsored students.
“If the sponsor doesn't pay, charges are reverted back to the student's account. Now we can get to that point quicker, especially looking into a spring term. You have to get those accounts resolved before these students leave for summer,” Jackson said.
4. Offer sponsors local support to boost adoption, satisfaction
All institution panelists agreed that there is a lot that sponsors and third-party organizations like about an automated process. Benefits include:
- Being able to see all invoices across institutions and students in one place – sponsors only need one log-in and can easily find and download files.
- When paying through the Flywire platform, sponsors can make payments in their preferred currency – seeing all foreign exchange (FX) fees up front – and the institutions settle in USD, reducing the possibility of a short payment.
- Access to multilingual support in 30+ languages in their local time zone should sponsors have questions or need help navigating the process.
“Our sponsors can speak to someone in their home country and home language whenever they have payment or banking questions,” Pickett said. “That’s just amazing, and an added service we can provide to sponsors.”
5. Eliminate paper to improve student data security processes
Pickett also emphasized the security benefits of Flywire, noting the challenges of "mailing or faxing (invoices), and wondering its status? Is it there? What's going on? For fax machines, where is that fax machine located? Did someone walk off with that fax? That's sensitive student information."
By automating all third-party and sponsor communications and invoice distribution, institutions are now able to securely create, issue and track invoices electronically. In addition to eliminating paper, this also encourages more timely payments from sponsors and other third parties.
Proven Flywire results across institutions
- $200M+ invoiced through Flywire to date
- 1,000+ sponsors and third-party organizations using the system
- 3,000+ students receiving tuition support from sponsors and third-party vendors invoiced through Flywire
- Up to a 70% increase in on-time third-party tuition collections after requesting payment via Flywire
- Significantly less time spent manually reconciling and answering payment-related questions
For more information on Flywire’s Third-Party Invoicing solution:
- See how Flywire streamlines third-party and sponsor invoicing
- Watch our “Automate Third-Party & Sponsor Invoicing to Increase Cash Flow" webinar on demand featuring Columbia University, Texas A&M University and University of Pittsburgh
- Get a demo of Flywire's third-party invoicing solution