Create reusable payments for the fees you collect, request them from families, and track what's been paid.

Your organization needs a connected Stripe account first. See Get started with Payments.

Create a payment

1. Go to Payments in the left navigation.
2. Select Create new payment.
3. Enter a payment name. Families see this name, so use something they'll recognize, like "Uniform fee."
4. Add a payment description if the name needs more explanation. Families see this too.
5. Enter the payment amount in US dollars.
6. Select Create payment.

The payment is now reusable — request it from as many families as you need without recreating it. You can request payments in 2 main ways: 

Request payment from specific students

1. On the Payments page, find the payment you want to request.
2. Open its row actions and select Request payment.
3. Search for and select one or more students.
4. Confirm the request.

Request payment for a group of forms

Use this when you're charging the same fee across many applications at once.

1. Go to Forms and select the forms you want to charge.
2. Open the More menu and select Request payment.
3. Choose which payment to request.
4. Confirm.

Avela creates one request per selected form. Selecting the same form twice does not charge it twice, even if it is a submission to two different schools.

Track payments

1. From the Payments page, select Payments activity.
2. Search by student name or payment name.
3. Select Filter to narrow by payment, status, or date range. The Filter button shows how many filters are applied.

To see a receipt for any completed payment, open that payment's receipt from the activity list. This is the same receipt the family sees. See how families interact with this by reading Paying a fee.

Edit or delete a payment

Open the row actions on the Payments page to edit or delete.

Before deleting, check the in use count for that payment. It tells you how many families currently have an outstanding request for it. Deleting a payment that's in use affects those requests, so confirm the count is zero when you can.

Editing a payment's amount does not change requests already sent.