The Post by Payment option can be set as the default for a scholarship program or for a specific scholarship award. Renewable Scholarships: Post by Payment provides an overview on post by payment for renewable scholarships.
It is recommended that the post by payment option be used for all scholarships in the system or none of the scholarships.
Set Post by Payment as the Default for a Scholarship Program
Set post by payment as the default for a scholarship program so all awards created for that scholarship have that setting.
- Navigate to the Scholarships page and click Scholarships in the left-side menu.
- Set Post By Payment using one of the options below.
Option 1: Default for All Scholarship Programs
- Click Set Post By Payment in the left-side menu.
Option 2: Default for a Specific Scholarship Program
- Click the scholarship ID.
- Click Edit in the left-side menu.
- Check the Post by Payment box, and then click Update.
Select Post by Payment for a Scholarship Award
A scholarship award can be edited to use post by payment even if post by payment was not selected as the default for a scholarship. Once the award is created, whether directly in CommunitySuite or synced from Scholarship Lifecycle Management, follow the steps below to set post by payment.
- Navigate to the Scholarships page, and then click the ID for the scholarship award.
- Click Edit in the left-side menu.
- Check the box for Post by Payment, and then click Save.
Implications of Post By Payment
It is recommended that users discuss the implications of using the post by payment feature with their organization's finance department and auditors before using this feature in their Live site. The implications of this feature are listed below:
- Post by payment awards briefly hit scholarships payable as payments are made. Unpaid award amounts will not show as a payable.
- If using post by payment, you can exceed the award’s initial total amount and the available fund balance.
- There is no warning if a fund has an insufficient balance to cover the scholarship award. It is recommended to use offline tracking of funds' available cash. Custom reports can be useful for this, but the data will be a day old.
- Post by payment awards cannot be canceled. Therefore, there is also no option to push the amount back to spendable. The only option to push a refund back to spendable is a manual distribution.
- All or None - It is recommended that post by payment is used for all scholarships in the system or none of the scholarships. On post by payment awards, CommunitySuite uses the payment line date as the post date. Awards that are not post by payment use the award date as the post date. If mixed, awards will appear inconsistently on fund statements.
- Fields show differently on fund statements.
- In the screenshot below, the yellow-highlighted row is a post by payment scholarship. The first column populates the standard {{vendor_name}} merge field, but the fields {{award_schools}} and {{student_name}} do not populate anything in that first column. In the Description column, the {{description}} merge field auto-populates the Scholarship Name concatenated with the student name.
- The green-highlighted row below is a non-post by payment scholarship. Nothing populates in the {{vendor_name}} merge field, but the fields {{award_schools}} and {{student_name}} do populate in the first column. For non-post by payment scholarships, if the standard grant description is unchanged, the description field automatically shows "Scholarship".
- If post by payment is used with Auto Approve, organizations must have the actual school listed on the scholarship and not a holding school to just get it on the books. If users need to set a holding school, then Auto Approve is not recommended.
- Imported scholarship awards must be marked as post by payment one by one while in the New status.
Why Does the Cancel Button Not Appear on Post by Payment Scholarships?
Post by payment scholarships cannot be canceled. Unpaid award amounts will not show as a payable or impact the general ledger, so cancellation is unnecessary.
There is also no option to push the amount back to spendable. The only option to push a refund back to spendable is a manual distribution.
Resolve Unpaid Award Amounts
- If there are unassigned amounts remaining on the scholarship, add a payment date for those amounts. This will create a recipient payment line and the amount will no longer be unassigned.
- Delete any unpaid recipient payment lines, including the one just created to resolve the Open Amount field.
- Create a manual distribution to refund to spendable, if applicable.
- Track the award amount in Scholarship Lifecycle Manager (SLM), if applicable.
- Track the award amount as a note on the scholarship record or in a custom field on the profile in CommunitySuite, if not already tracked in a scholarship applicant system.