Managed Services
Jenzabar Student Accounts: Practical Lessons from a Peer Roundtable
What happens when a group of Jenzabar users get together to talk shop? In a recent CampusWorks roundtable, the answer was clear: practical ideas, process improvements, and plenty of opportunities to learn from peers facing the same challenges.
This session was the second in a series of CampusWorks Community Roundtable discussions focused on helping institutions maximize their Jenzabar investment. Following a financial-aid focused roundtable, this conversation hosted by CampusWorks’ Jon Hazelgren and featuring Jason Snider, shifted to Student Accounts, where participants exchanged ideas on billing, refunds, holds management, and automation.
Automating Billing Without Running Full Cycles
One of the most engaging topics centered on billing automation.
During the discussion, Snider shared how an institution avoids running full billing cycles throughout the day by using queries that identify only students whose records have changed since the previous run. The process captures events such as:
- Registration changes
- Course adds and drops
- Residency updates
By processing only affected students, institutions can keep account balances current while significantly reducing processing time.
For many attendees, this approach offered a new way of thinking about billing automation within Jenzabar.
Solving Common Refund Processing Challenges
Several participants compared experiences with refund processing and preliminary billing.
A recurring issue involved future-term payments appearing during current-term refund processing. The group discussed how customized queries can help ensure refunds are tied to the correct billing period and prevent unnecessary manual review.
The conversation quickly turned into a collaborative problem-solving session, with participants sharing queries and configurations that had worked at their institutions.
Building Smarter Hold Processes
Another popular topic was student holds. Rather than using a one-size-fits-all approach, Snider described a two-tier hold strategy:
- A low-balance hold that alerts students to outstanding balances while still allowing registration
- A high-balance hold that prevents registration until payment requirements are met
Participants also explored ways to automate hold management through queries and batch processes, minimizing the need for staff to manually add and remove holds.
Simplifying Jenzabar Configurations
A key lesson from the discussion was that complexity often creates unnecessary work.
Snider noted that institutions with large numbers of billing rules may experience slower processing because every student must be evaluated against every applicable rule.
The group discussed ways to simply configurations by:
- Consolidating billing rules
- Standardizing fee structures
- Eliminating unnecessary exceptions
- Regularly reviewing legacy processes
In many cases, simplifying setup can improve both performance and maintainability.
Let the Right Departments Own the Data
One innovative strategy involved shifting course fee management away from Student Accounts. Instead of maintaining large numbers of course-specific billing rules, institutions can use Jenzabar user-defined fields to allow academic offices to assign fees directly when courses are created.
Benefits include:
- Fewer billing rules
- Faster processing
- Reduced maintenance
- Improved data accuracy
As the group discussed, the people responsible for creating the data are often best positioned to maintain it.
Rethinking Holds Across Campus
The conversation also highlighted a recent CampusWorks project where an institution dramatically reduced the number of active holds in its system.
Many of the holds were being used primarily as reporting tools rather than actual student restrictions. By replacing those holds with more appropriate tracking methods, the institution simplified its environment and improved usability.
The takeaway: holds should be reserved for actions that truly impact the student experience.
The Value of Learning from Peers
Throughout the session, Hazelgren emphasized the value of bringing institutions together to share ideas and solve problems collaboratively.
Participants exchanged billing queries, hold strategies, reporting techniques, and automation ideas that may have otherwise taken months or years to discover independently.
As the second installment in CampusWorks’ Jenzabar Community Roundtable series, the discussion reinforced a common theme: some of the most valuable insights come directly from peers who are solving similar challenges every day. By sharing practical experiences and best practices, institutions can accelerate improvements and get more value from their Jenzabar investment.
Ready to Get More from Jenzabar?
Whether you’re looking to streamline billing, automate hold management, improve reporting, or optimize your Jenzabar environment, CampusWorks can help.
Our consultants bring deep functional and technical expertise to help institutions simplify processes, improve efficiency, and maximize the value of their Jenzabar investment.
