Elevating Financial Efficiency: Indiana University’s Journey with Sponsor Billing and Payments

Indiana University is an ecosystem of nine campuses and 90,000 students system wide. On just the Bloomington campus—Indiana University’s main campus—there are about 47,000 students.

While coordinating across several campuses in various cities, having an efficient sponsor billing and payment system wasn’t just a desire; it was a necessity for Indiana University. They valued providing better services to all their campuses and needed a way to become more efficient with communication, billing, and reporting.

Sponsor Billing and Payments helps institutions become more efficient, build and maintain relationships with sponsors, and focus more on their students’ success. For this to work for Indiana University, their system needed to change.

Sponsor billing is becoming more common as more employers offer tuition benefits to their employees. For Indiana University, this means accommodating the unique needs of sponsors and the students they are sponsoring.

 Indiana University’s billing process was long, tedious, and overwhelming for staff. Manually generating bills for sponsors to pay thousands of students’ tuition could take weeks and leave sponsors waiting for prolonged periods of time to receive and settle their bills.

“Sponsors wanted email invoices, [invoices] by fax. Some still wanted them mailed. Some wanted them mailed to special locations. Some wanted them mailed with special documents,” Dina Adkins, Associate University Bursar, said.

With the long billing process and numerous ways sponsors wanted invoices, it became almost unmanageable for Indiana University staff to take on everyone’s requests.

On top of the need to be flexible with providing bills, Indiana University had to find new ways to be more efficient with their resources. They needed a better way to make the most of the resources they had as more students returned to school to learn the skills their employers wanted and employers offered tuition benefits.

For Indiana University, teaming up with Nelnet Campus Commerce to implement Sponsor Billing and Payments was the perfect solution.

Nelnet worked alongside Indiana University as a partner to understand their current processes, how they could be improved, and develop a solution that worked for their institution. Indiana University had the opportunity to provide feedback throughout the process, ensuring the solution was one they could count on.

After implementing Sponsor Billing and Payments, Indiana University transformed their weeks-long billing process into a matter of minutes. Sponsor Billing and Payments didn’t just provide a platform for uploading invoices and collecting payment; it also integrated with the third-party contracts module in Campus Solutions to automate billing, payment posting, and provide real-time account activity displays.

University Bursar Amanda Srichareon also said, “We had a lot of hopes for what the product would do, so we really jumped at it knowing this is going to be a great win for IU, but also a win for some of the other institutions out there that are facing the same challenges.”

Indiana University went live with Sponsor Billing and Payments in June 2023 and exceeded their expectations. With this new process, they were able to see immediate time and resource savings, giving their team more time to focus on what is important: the students.

With Sponsor Billing and Payments, Indiana University was able to achieve their goals and make handling finances at their institution better than ever. Learn more about Sponsor Billing and Payments or reach out to our team to find out how this solution can benefit your institution.