Students Will Soon Be Able to Handle Many of Their UO Financial Transactions Online

Electronic billing and payments, with real-time accounting, revolutionize the way the UO does business

After more than a year of research, planning, and creative programming, the UO is on the cusp of changing the way it does business.

Thanks to the efforts of the Business Affairs office and a programming team from the Computing Center's Administrative Services group, students will soon be able to handle most of their financial transactions online via DuckWeb.

Business Affairs' Assistant Director of Information Systems Mark McCulloch led the effort to make e-bill and e-pay a reality at the university. Building on a prior experience with electronic payments through an arrangement with US Bank, Mark and his group consulted with the Computing Center about the possibility of adding an electronic billing component and making account records accessible through DuckWeb.

After many months of discussion and research involving several groups, including the Banner Coordinating Group and the Computing Center*, followed by approval from the UO's Strategic IT Issues committee, the Business Affairs and Computing Center team decided to work with infiNET, a software company with a proven track record in providing full-service automated billing, payment processing, and commerce solutions designed specifically for higher education.

It was then up to systems analysts Joey Mitchell and Robert Gillespie to integrate the QuikPAY® software into the BANNER enterprise system and the DuckWeb server. Their programming assignment was challenging, as entirely new interface modules had to be written in order to integrate seamlessly into DuckWeb.

The QuikPAY® system is being phased in with both electronic and paper billing still functioning. Ultimately, electronic billing will completely replace paper billing, but students who wish to continue to receive paper bills may submit a request to opt out of QuikPAY®.

Briefly, here's how QuikPAY® works:

1. Students may log into their DuckWeb account using their UO ID and personal access code (PAC) and authorize their parents, guardian, or sponsor to view and pay their UO bills (tuition, fees, campus card deposits, loan payments, housing and parking fees, undergraduate application fees, and so on). If desired, bills may be printed out from the web in PDF format. The printout contains a scan line that facilitates bank processing.
   
   
2. Each billing cycle, students and their authorized payers will receive email notification on how to retrieve their QuikPAY® E-bill.
   
   
3. Students have complete control over access to their account information: they may change authorized payers at any time and may also restrict viewing access according to their preferences.

The advantages of the new system are considerable. Not only is it extremely convenient, giving students and their authorized payers the ability to access financial account information and pay bills via the Internet at any time, but it will enable significant savings in paper, postage, and staff processing time each year.

One of the most advanced features of the new system is that payments are posted to Banner and updated in real time, which means that there is no longer any lag time between the time a bill is paid and the time it's credited to a student's account. It also means that holds placed on a student's registration can be released immediately, when the bills are paid and recorded online.

Another convenience is that parents or other authorized payers who wish to send money to their students can now make secure online deposits to the student's Campus Cash account.

QuikPAY® is fully compliant with all federal privacy requirements as mandated by FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act). To learn more about the new QuikPAY® system, please see http://baomail.uoregon.edu/studentservices.htm

* Implementation of QuikPAY® is the result of teamwork between the staff in BAO Student Financial Services and Information Systems, Admissions, and the Computing Center. A lot of time and care went into testing the system, developing informational communication pieces for students, parents, and staff, and analyzing service needs. ASUO representative Katie Wallace also provided valuable feedback for developing our informational materials.