From Complexity to Clarity: University of Colorado Boulder’s Journey to Billing Efficiency with StarRez

The University of Colorado Boulder, a dynamic institution serving over 35,000 students, is known for its innovative approach to student life and administration. Within the Division ofStudent Affairs, the Billing and Finance team plays a crucial role in supporting multiple departments and delivering efficient services across campus. By leveraging StarRez, Student Affairs has transformed its billing processes to ensure accuracy, transparency, and consistency. This collaboration has led to remarkable success in streamlining operations for various departments, including housing, dining, and student services, positioning the University as a leader in integrated financial management.

Navigating Complex Billing Processes Across Key Campus Departments

The Billing team manages billing for an array of Student Affairs departments, making coordination across different teams a complex task. Lauren Way, Division Billing Manager at CU Boulder, explains, “We coordinate billing for the whole Division of Student Affairs. It’s not just housing and dining—we’re billing for everything from Conference Services to student conduct fees.”

With the Student Affairs billing team handling billing for nine distinct operations, it was essential to use StarRez tools effectively managing billing for University Housing, Graduate & Family Housing, Campus Dining Services, Intern Lodging, conduct fees, and community living classes along with booking management for Basic Needs Emergency Housing and coordination with financial aid processing. Student Affairs processes approximately 65,000 charges annually, making accuracy and efficiency vital.

The Student Affairs Finance Team has been using StarRez for student housing billing since implementing in 2015. Over the past five years, Student Affairs Finance began supporting billing operations for additional units. Many of these new operations had previously used spreadsheets, different software platforms, and ad-hoc reporting tools to manage charges, which increased the risk of errors.“We were using a patchwork of systems to handle different aspects of billing,” said Lauren. “Without a central system, reconciling charges was challenging, and accuracy was a constant concern.”

“We were billing through various systems and platforms, which led to inconsistent revenue tracking and reporting. The complexity grew as different offices had their own methods.”

-Mary Ann Fountain, Associate Director of Revenue Management, University of Colorado Boulder

This complexity extended beyond billing for just student accounts. The Division ofStudent Affairs also supports special programs with short-term lodging, which require daily and monthly billing support. The number of unique scenarios, such as temporary housing or meal plans, made managing charges a substantial administrative burden.

Implementing Consistent and Transparent Billing Practices

Centralizing billing processes into StarRez transformed how the Division managed its financial operations. The Student Affairs Finance team was able to consolidate their billing functions into one system, streamlining daily charge uploads and ensuring accuracy across the board. StarRez’s flexibility allowed Student Affairs Finance to tailor their billing workflows to meet the specific needs of different offices.

The implementation of charge groups and charge items within StarRez helped the team break down billing by department and service, allowing for more granular reporting and visibility. Mary Ann highlighted the importance of this structure: “Using charge groups allows for a clear, top-down view of our billing processes. It’s transparent not just for our team but for other departments as well, making it easier to communicate the journey of charges to students and families at any point.”

One key benefit of centralizing billing operations into StarRez was the ability to handle diverse billing scenarios for the campus’ different housing communities. With StarRez, they now can efficiently handle billing for 8,580 undergraduate residents in traditional residence halls, 7,600 meal plans, 700 graduate and family housing residents, and 6 emergency apartments for their Basic Needs program.

With different housing options, resident types, and billing cycles, it was paramount that the team have confidence in the capabilities of their billing system. In addition, the Student Affairs Finance team facilitates 240 deposit refunds for Graduate and Family Housing and manages deposits for the 8,500 undergraduate residents using a StarRez-based workflow.

“It was critical for us to be able to manage these unique communities as efficiently as possible, and StarRez made it possible to automate and standardize much of the work.”

-Lauren Way, Division Billing Manager, University of Colorado Boulder

Streamlined Operations, Increased Transparency, and Time Savings

The impact of StarRez on CU Boulder’s Student Affairs’ operations has been profound. Since integrating billing processes into StarRez, the Student Affairs Finance team has achieved greater consistency and transparency across all billing functions. The Student Affairs Finance team now bills for nine different student affairs offices through StarRez, encompassing everything from housing and dining to UPS key charges, CU Police Department administrative violations, meal plans through dining, and Volunteer Resource Center student charges.

One of the most significant improvements was the reduction in manual communication between teams regarding important student transactions. This impacts at least 1,000 transactions a year that the team can process using dashboards instead of individual email communication for a single task, or communication from a bulk list. With customized fields and curated Dashboards, everything is centralized within StarRez and transparency has increased. Multiple campus partners can access the same data - reducing redundant emails and eliminating delays.

Teams can now easily track the status of a student's charges or refunds, allowing for faster customer service and clearer communication. Precise dashboards were built to show where a student is in the billing process, from deposit to refund. This has made it much easier to communicate across teams and helps the cash management team process transactions without delays.

“We’ve seen a drastic reduction in the time it takes to process things like deposit refunds. In some cases, students are getting their refund in a third of the time it used to take.”

-Mary Ann Fountain, Associate Director of Revenue Management,University of Colorado Boulder

The system's efficiency improvements have also extended to managing meal plans, which has handled billing for 7,600 plans and approximately 5,000 block meal plans each semester. Additionally, CU Boulder’s Division of Student Affairs has optimized the billing for its short-term housing programs, including its six Basic Needs emergency apartments and the Intern Lodging Program, both of which require frequent occupancy updates and billing adjustments.

In total, the efficiencies maximized through StarRez have allowed the billing team to expand their services across the division without adding additional staff. “We’ve picked up more work but haven’t had to increase our headcount,” Mary Ann commented. “That’s a testament to how much StarRez has streamlined our operations.”

Building on Success and Expanding Services

Looking ahead, CU Boulder’s Division of Student Affairs plans to continue expanding the use of StarRez across more Student Affairs offices.

“We’re constantly finding new ways to improve our processes. With StarRez, we’ve been able to make rate adjustments, track credits, and feel more confident in the accuracy of our billing. It feels like whenever we hit a point where something could work better, StarRez gives us the tools to do just that.”

-Mary Ann Fountain, Associate Director of Revenue Management, University of Colorado Boulder

The partnership with StarRez has not only improved billing accuracy and efficiency but also positioned the student affairs’ billing office as a model for how technology can support large institutions. “The lessons we’ve learned in expanding our use of StarRez have been invaluable,” said Lauren. “Our success story is one of using software to drive transparency, accuracy, and operational efficiency.”

As Student Affairs at CU Boulder continues to evolve its billing processes, the university remains committed to using StarRez to innovate and enhance student services.

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