Fresno Pacific University is a private university in Fresno, California and first became a Softdocs client in 2010. With about 4,000 students and about 800 faculty and staff, Fresno Pacific counts being “Innovative” and “Student-focused” among its core values. Fresno Pacific has always sought to provide exemplary service to its students. So, when their students started having trouble with the electronic payment process in place, Fresno Pacific worked to solve that problem with the help of Softdocs, in particular the Forms, Flow, and Document Management solutions.
Bryan Taylor, the Associate Director of Student Financial Services, summarized the problem as “the frustration our students and staff were having when it came to late registration.” Danielle Jeffress, the University Registrar, described the problem in greater detail. “We would get the registration form, add the student to a course, and then send Financial Aid a spreadsheet each week with the students who had registered late for classes. They would apply the late fees, and at times it could take up to a month for the student to be notified of their charge for adding a course late.”
The students were being asked to chase down a lot of paperwork and at the end of it all, they often weren’t aware of how much in late fees they were on the hook for. Taylor described the challenges presented by the manual nature of the current process in place, “The students would get forms, they would take them to multiple offices to fill them out, get approval to pay for it, get them signed and bring them back.”
With the help of Softdocs’s eForms and workflow solutions, Fresno Pacific was able to come up with an elegant solution that tied together their 3rd-party payment processing vendor with their registration process. “By implementing payment in the workflow, we were able to take that process that was giving our students the runaround and condense it into one fluid process. Once your registration is approved, you’re ready to go. You pay for it, it comes back and submits your payment, and you’re done,” said Taylor. “That is a huge benefit for multiple offices on campus!”
The students have seen an immediate benefit from the new procedure. “It has a positive impact on the student being able to achieve that enrollment and make that fee payment up front,” added Jeffress.
Having seen the ease with which they were able to make this change and the benefits of this addition to their capabilities, Fresno Pacific is eager to try out this payment integration within other departments on campus. “We are excited about the positive impact it has had on our students and staff. We can’t wait to see what’s next. Will it be Student Life, Admissions?” wondered Catherine Lusk, Systems Analyst.