Collecting school fees
The Diocesan Development Fund (DDF) also offers an easy-to-use service for the collection of school fees in Catholic Diocese of Parramatta.
BPAY
BPAY allows parents whose children attend Catholic Education Office schools to pay their fees 24 hours a day, 7 days a week over the phone or Internet using their debit or credit card at a time convenient to them. School fees paid by BPay are credited daily to your School’s DDF S4 account.
These payments can be viewed at any time via CDF Online and identified through the CRN (Customer Reference Number).
Transferring BPay Credits from your DDF S4 Account
Each Friday the balance of your S4 BPay holding account will be transferred automatically to your S5 cheque account. This means you won’t need to manually transfer funds between accounts, it will happen automatically each week.
Using BPay to Make Periodic Payments Did you know parents using the Internet to make BPay payments can set-up their own periodic payment? Parents are able to select a period (e.g.: monthly) and pay their fees by instalments similar to Direct Debit authorities. So keep this in mind for parents who are ineligible for the Direct Debit system of paying fees.
The benefits to schools and the DDF are that parents initiate the payments, which means a lot less paperwork and no more rejected payments. The four details a parent must know to make a payment are:
- BPAY Biller Code of the School
- Their Customer Reference Number
- Amount of the payment
- Due Date
Reversals and Error Corrections
The daily BPAY settlement is the amount of total payments less any error corrections/reversals (ie: the settlement amount is a net amount).
Transaction Queries from Schools
If your school has a query about the BPAY facility or a BPAY transaction, the query should be directed to the DDF, not the CBA. The DDF will deal directly with the CBA for any BPAY queries.
Transaction Queries from Parents (Payers)
Under no circumstance is a school to provide a refund (error correction) to a Payer. If a Payer has a query, the school must always advise the Payer to contact the Payer’s Financial Institution. Regardless of the reason for the incorrect payment, the error correction is always to be initiated through the Payer’s Financial Institution. The correct process for a customers transaction query is:
- Payer contacts their Financial Institution
- Payer’s Financials Institution contacts the CBA (if Payer doesn’t bank with the CBA)
- CBA contacts the DDF
- DDF will contact the school about the transaction
- DDF and the school decide if the error correction is valid
- CBA contacts the Payer’s Financial Institution within 2 business days (if Payer doesn’t back with the CBA)
- Payer’s Financial Institution passes the error correction transaction
The School will then see the error correction transaction on their DDF S4 account. Their daily BPAY settlement will be net of the amount of the error correction. The process and time frames for error corrections are detailed in the Biller Operations Manual BPAY Payments. The DDF has agreed to comply with the terms and conditions of the Biller Operations Manual BPAY Payments on behalf of all schools. The reason why an error correction has occurred is shown in the Reason Code for Reversal/Refund field in the transaction record. An error correction is used to rectify a customer-initiated error. There are eight error correction codes. The below table details why a payment has been reversed: Code | Definition |
| 001 | Payer paid twice |
| 002 | Payer paid wrong account |
| 003 | Payer paid wrong Biller |
| 004 | Payer paid wrong amount |
| 005 | Payer did not authorise |
| 400 | Visa chargeback |
| 500 | MasterCard chargeback |
| 600 | Bankcard chargeback |
All error corrections should be advised to the DDF for acceptance, prior to the transaction being reversed. Please see “Transaction Queries from Parents (Payers)” for further details.
EFTPOS
An EFTPOS terminal can be installed by the Commonwealth Bank and connected to a telephone line allowing you to debit parents credit or debit cards. Payments are credited daily to your DDF account. The reference used to identify these payments is your school’s DDF agent number. So as these payments aren’t confused with your school’s bank deposits, remember to run a daily reconciliation on your terminal to keep track of parents paying by EFTPOS.
Direct Debit Authorities
This system was introduced to allow families experiencing financial hardship to pay school fees by instalments. Unfortunately, due to the amount of time involved in processing and maintaining this system it is not possible to extend the service to all families. It is recommended parents ineligible for the Direct Debit system use BPay instead.
When offering this facility to parents, it is important to advise them that if a payment rejects a fee of approximately $40 is charged to their bank account and a fee of $2.50 is charged to the school’s DDF account. These fees are charged by the parent’s financial institution and NOT the DDF. Unfortunately, due to the fees associated with Direct Debits, authorities which have rejected three times are automatically cancelled.
Assisting families experiencing hardship is an important role for our Diocese and one that is given careful consideration. We would like to assure all schools of our ongoing support and would be happy to discuss with you any of the above details.