6 Tips For Effective Fee Collection From Students For Coaching Classes

Fee payment and fee  collection is one of the most challenging aspects of running a coaching class business. After rendering excellent service to your students, you’re forced to wait for an indefinite time until payment is made. Without having the luxury of liquid assets and a steady cash flow, the success of a coaching class depends largely on its ability to receive payments on time.

Here are some tips that might help you to avoid late payments and allow you to better manage what you have to receive.

1. Stay Organized:

Fees instalments tracking definitely needs a good software, free tools like Google Sheets can be used to track your due fees. However, if you want to manage your coaching class business in a more organized way, then you may want to invest in a system specifically designed for coaching classes management like Classpro. Classpro integrates many aspects of your business into one easy-to-use system and will save you time and give your class the professional edge it requires.

2. Clearly Define Fees Structure:

The best advisable strategy will be charging fees for the whole duration of the course in advance by way of lump sum payment. But if your coaching class provides installment facility, then having a clearly defined installment structure with payment terms and date mentioned does come in handy.
Another strategy would be collecting the fee instalment in post-dated cheques at the time of admission and along with clear terms, if the cheque bounces then it would attract penalty.

3. Make a Reminder:

Be ‘proactive’ and give a call to students to remind them about the pending fee installment. Also, calling can be a good way to establish and maintain a personal connection with your students and their guardians.
Students often don’t pay fees on time simply because they’ve forgotten so sending a simple text message (SMS) a couple of days prior to a fee installment due, Provides a convenient reminder to students who are then less likely to forget.
If the student explains that he or she is having some financial issues, offer flexible payment options. Your student will appreciate your compassion and put you at the top of the list next time a payment is due. And you’re better off getting the money this way than any other – and much better off this way than not getting it at all.

4. Stick to the schedule:

When the student fee are overdue on payments, remember not to sound authoritative or submissive. Following up too quickly or without any pattern might appear as if you are disorganized. If you feel that manually tracking the overdue fee installments and sending reminders are a pain, then try our automated fee reminder feature.

5. Late Fees:

If you aren’t already charging interest on late fee payments, you definitely must begin now.
Late fees add urgency to fee payment, ensuring they don’t end up at the bottom of the bills-to-pay pile. Be sure to reference late fees in the initial fee receipt. Let your students know exactly what the late payment charge percentage is and when it applies (i.e., a 2 percent interest fee will be charged per month on late payments.) This lets the students see what additional payments they would have to make if they don’t clear that balance fee payment on time.

6. Be polite, yet professional:

Ensure you maintain professionalism in all your communications. One late payment incident should not be the reason you hassle the student for eternity. Use ‘Please’ and ‘Thank You’.

Following up with your students in a scheduled, process-driven manner will ensure the smooth flow of cash into your accounts without you actually having to sound like a broken record.

Have you had experience tackling late payments? Share them with us. We’d love to hear them.

Thanks to Anjan , Divya Dinesh, and Vijay Suryawanshi for reading drafts of this.