Setup Considerations: Student Charges

What They Are

Student charges represent the costs that Workday assigns to students. Student charge items describe what students owe, such as tuition or housing.

Business Benefits

You can calculate how much students owe and present the information to them. Charges enable downstream financials processing, such as collecting student payments and recording accounting for student financial transactions.

You can configure student charges to work with Workday Financial Aid.

You can simplify financial reconciliation and improve performance by grouping student charge transactions into aggregate journal lines.

Use Cases

You can use student charges to:

Assign different tuition rates for undergraduate students and graduate students.

Charge lab fees.

Charge students for campus services such as housing, meal plans, and health services.

Record fines for late library returns.

Questions to Consider

Questions	Considerations
What department defines the fees that your institution charges to students?	When different offices are responsible for establishing various fees, consult each office to understand all of the charge items to configure at your institution. Examples: The registrar defines tuition, housing, and mandatory fees. Auxiliary services define meal plans. Health services define health insurance fees.
Where do your institutional charges originate from?	You can use: Registration-based fees to charge students based on the number of their registered units. Example: Charge different tuition rates for full and part-time students. Charge item assignments to charge all students in an institution or program of study (POS) a common set of charges. Example: Assign mandatory fees to all students at Alma Mater University. Course fees and additional fees to charge students for specific registered courses. Example: Assess lab fees to students registered for a section of BIOL-101. Courses with course fees don't count toward registration-based fees. Courses with additional fees can count toward registration-based fees when they don't have course fees. Charges can also originate from other sources. Examples: Collection agreement fees. Refund recovery charges. Manually posted charges.
What is the academic structure of your institution?	Academic units and POS can inherit registration-based fees and charge items from superior institutions. You can assign additional registration-based fees and charge items to subordinate institutions and POS. You can't override or remove inherited fees or charge items.
How do you determine due dates for student charges?	You can anchor the due date for a charge to certain points in time. Examples: 20 days before the start of an academic period. 2 days after posting the charge. The fifth day of the month.
How do you adjust tuition and fees when a student drops a class or withdraws from your institution?	You can configure on student charge items whether associated charges are refundable and how much to refund. For partially refundable charges, Workday uses a charge adjustment schedule to prorate the student's charges. The schedule defines the proration for the charge, given the timing of the event. You can link charge adjustment schedules to charge items through a group of charge adjustment schedules. Wash period policies enable students to swap eligible registrations without financial repercussions. Example: When a dropped registration washes with a new registration, Workday doesn't post a proration for the dropped registration.
What limits do you want to set on the number of times or the total amount that you can charge students?	You can link rules for student charge aggregates to student charge items to limit associated charges. When a student reaches the limit, the rule prevents Workday from charging the student any further for the charge item. When necessary, you can manually post a charge that exceeds the limit.
What limits do you place on students attempting courses?	You can create a policy to charge students an additional fee when they attempt to repeat a course too many times.
How much detail do you need to track for accounting reporting for student charges?	Coordinate with your financial office when configuring worktags and revenue categories for student charges. Analyze the financial structure of your institution in Workday Financial Management and determine the requirements for proper reporting on student charges. Your institution might also require balancing worktags.
How granular are your transaction worktags for record student charges?	Consider: Defining an academic level on the charge item. Creating charge items for different academic levels that are otherwise identical.
Do you consider tuition for summer terms as deferred revenue?	When you have different revenue recognition requirements for different academic periods, you must create separate charge items with different revenue categories.
Which student groups, if any, require charge reassessments for membership status changes?	You can configure Workday to reassess charges for a student when their membership in a student group changes. Example: The student adds, drops, or changes their status in a cohort or athletic team.
Does your institution permit students to apply for Federal Student Aid to noninstitutional charges?	You can configure the Federal Student Aid Authorizations Policy at your institution. This policy enables students to authorize financial aid to apply to noninstitutional charges like books and supplies.

Recommendations

Create meaningful names and descriptions for student charge items. Avoid acronyms and shorthand, such as TUIT for tuition. When students review their account transactions, descriptive charge items can help them understand their charges more easily.

Limit charge items for students to a single origin. Don't reuse student charge items across origins. Example: Don't use the same charge item as both a registration-based fee and a charge item assignment. When necessary, copy charge items to use in separate originations.

Requirements

Institutions must have a:

Company associated to post student charges to operational accounting journals and to report on these charges.

Charge item for refund recovery before you can disburse financial aid, payments, or sponsor contracts.

Limitations

Workday doesn't support calculations based on nonstandard academic periods for charge items that you assign to academic units, programs of study, or program areas. The charges for these fees always post to standard academic periods.

Tenant Setup

No impact.

Security

These domains in the Student Financials functional area:

Domains	Considerations
Manage: Federal Student Aid Authorizations	Assigned users can access Federal Student Aid Authorization-related tasks and reports.
Manage: Student Charge Processing	Assigned users can process student charges.
Manage: Student Charge Adjustment Processing	Assigned users can adjust student charges.
Self-Service: Student Financials	Students can view their student charges.
Set Up: Student Charges	Assigned users can configure student charge items.

Business Processes

You can use the

Apply Student Charges

task to post and approve charges manually for a student on an ad hoc basis. The task initiates the Student Charge Event
business process, enabling you to select a due date, amount, worktags, and other details that differ from:

What Workday assigns with the nightly Assign Student Charges job.

When you use the manual task on the

Run Student Financials Processes by Period

report.

You can configure the Federal Student Aid Authorizations Event
business process as a subprocess on the Student Onboarding Event
and Continuing Student Registration Onboarding Event
business processes.

Reporting

You can use these reports and others based on security access as you define and manage the Student Charges functionality:

Reports	Considerations
Find Charge Adjustment Schedules by Group	Enables you to find charge adjustment schedules by group, year, and academic period.
Find Charge Assessment Schedules	Enables you to access charge assessment schedules and uses the Charge Assessment Schedules data source.
Find Charge Due Date Rules	Enables you to find Charge Due Date Rules.
Find Inactive Student Financials Period Records with Active Charge or Waiver Transactions	Enables you to identify students with active transactions on inactive student financials period records.
Find Student Charge Aggregate Rules	Enables you to access the aggregate rules for student charges in your tenant. The report uses the Student Charge Aggregate Rule report data source.
Find Student Charges	Enables you to view details for student charge transactions, including charge name, student, transaction date, due date, charge amount, and amount due. You can drill down to view an individual charge. We plan to retire the legacy Student for Student Charge field in a future release. Workday recommends that you use the Student for Student Charge calculated field instead. You can update your custom reports by replacing the legacy field with the calculated field version to ensure long-term report stability.
Find Student Charge Items	Enables you to find student charge items based on Type and Revenue Category.
Find Student Fee Groups	Enables you to find Student Fee Groups based on Name, Academic Unit, and Academic Level.
Find Student Registration-Based Fees	Enables you to find Registration-Based Fees using the Name, Charge Item, and Fee Tier Calculation to filter the results.
View Student Fee Assignments	Enables you to see fee assignments for Academic Unit and Level or Program of Study for an Academic Period. This report includes the charge items and their inheritance.

Integrations

You can use these web service operations to import and export student charges and charge items:

Web Service	Description
Get Charges for Students	Provides you with charge information and lists the adjustments made to the charge.
Get Federal Student Aid Authorizations Policies	Provides you with the Federal Student Aid Authorizations Policies at the institutional level.
Import Charges for Students	Enables you to load a large number of student charges and processes the job in small batches
Import Student Charge Aggregate Beginning Balances	Enables you to load beginning charge balances for charge items with an associated aggregate rule for student charges.
Put Federal Student Aid Authorizations Policy	Enables you to create or update Federal Student Aid Authorizations Policies at the institutional level.
Put Student Charge Item	Enables you to create or update Student Charge Items.

Connections and Touchpoints

Features	Considerations
Workday Financial Management	Student charges require: Companies for associated academic units. An accounting structure to drive operational journals. Worktags. Revenue categories.
Student Registration	Workday uses the number of billing units that a student registers for to calculate student charges.
Financial Aid Disbursements	When you consider anticipated financial aid payments in reference to student charges, students can better estimate what they'll owe after their financial aid disburses. You can also configure Workday to consider anticipated aid against registration soft drops for past due balances. Every institution must have a charge item for refund recovery before you can disburse financial aid.

Workday offers a Touchpoints Kit with resources to help you understand configuration relationships in your tenant. Learn more about the Workday Touchpoints Kit on Workday Community.