They arrive identically.
They are not the same problem.
An unpaid balance looks the same in every case: a number on a list. Behind it are three different families, and the school's job is to sort them quickly, because the right response to each is almost opposite to the right response to the others.
The sorting mechanism is contact. A family who responds to the first neutral notice by updating a card was the first kind. A family who replies to say they are struggling has moved themselves into the second, and should be met with a decision rather than another reminder. A family who does not respond at all is the third, and the timeline exists for them. Schools that skip the sorting and send everyone the same escalating sequence get the worst of every outcome: good families feel harassed, struggling families disappear rather than ask, and the family who was avoiding you learns that nothing happens until week six.
Published at enrolment,
applied on the days it says.
The timeline is short, unremarkable, and its entire power is that it is the same for everyone and happens when it says it will. Publish it with the fees at enrolment so that nothing in it is ever a surprise.
Two design notes. The first two steps must sound administrative, not moral — a declined card is a fact about a bank, and a school that opens with disappointment loses goodwill from the many to address the few. And the timeline needs an owner: a named person who looks at the unpaid list on fixed days. Arrears processes fail far more often because nobody looked on day seven than because the rule was wrong.
On the mechanics: where tuition is billed as a recurring monthly plan, the payment processor will normally retry a failed charge on its own schedule and can notify the customer — that is Stripe's behaviour rather than something SprintUp adds, and it is worth confirming what is switched on in your own Stripe account rather than assuming. SprintUp's part is that payments run on the school's own connected account with 0% taken by the platform; the collection policy above is the school's to define and to run.
Two minutes on the phone
beats four more emails.
The day-seven call is the step small schools skip, usually because it feels awkward, and it is the step that resolves most arrears. A message can be ignored without any social cost; a short call from someone the family recognises cannot, and it almost always surfaces the real reason within a minute. The script is unremarkable: say who you are, say that a payment did not go through, ask whether everything is all right, and offer to take the details now or send a link. Do not open with the amount and do not rehearse the consequences — the call is the school being helpful about an administrative problem, and in the large majority of cases that is exactly what it is.
If the family says they cannot pay, the call ends the arrears process and begins the exception process. Do not try to settle it on that call; say you will look at options and come back today or tomorrow. That gives the school time to decide properly and the family the dignity of not negotiating on the spot.
State one you are willing to apply
to a family you like.
A timeline with no stated consequence is a suggestion. The usual consequence for a small school is that the student's place is paused until the account is settled, and it works because it is proportionate, reversible and announced in advance. Whatever you choose, the test is whether you would apply it to a family you like, because that is the case that will arrive first. A consequence you are unwilling to use teaches the school to pretend, and every family eventually learns which schools pretend.
Apply it quietly and reversibly. The student returns the day the payment clears; nothing is said to the student, who is a child and not a party to the invoice; the teacher is told only that the place is paused, not why. And keep two things off the table entirely: never withhold a student's own work, results or records over money, and be careful about anything that identifies a family's financial situation to anyone who does not need it. Where a school is inside compulsory education, or where suspension of a place engages other obligations, check the position for your jurisdiction before writing the rule.
For the family who tells you:
a decision, not a drift.
Every school meets the family who has lost work, had an illness, or is simply stretched thin, and who says so. This is not arrears; it is a request, and it deserves an answer rather than silence. The options are few and worth deciding in advance so that the answer can come within a day: a payment plan spreading the balance over an agreed number of months; a pause with the place held for a stated period; a move to a cheaper product — a group programme instead of one-to-one, fewer sessions a week; or, where the school chooses and can afford it, a reduction or a hardship place.
Whatever is agreed goes in writing with an end date, so that it is understood as a kindness with a boundary rather than a new arrangement that continues by default. Record it where the office can see it, so that the next person to look at the unpaid list does not start the timeline against a family who has an agreement. And review it at the date, rather than letting it lapse into a permanent discount nobody remembers granting.