Case Study (Education): Payment Reconciliation for ADvTECH

Managing payments across multiple campuses presented several operational and financial challenges.

Student payments were being processed through Point of Sale (POS) devices located at various institutions, creating a need for consistent payment allocation and reconciliation across the group.

ADvTECH needed a solution that could:

• Automatically allocate payments to the correct student or applicant account
• Eliminate manual reconciliation processes
• Reduce payment allocation errors
• Provide near real-time visibility into transactions across campuses
• Improve the payment experience for students and applicants
• Integrate seamlessly with the existing Student Information Management System (SIMS)
• Ensure compliance with industry security and payment standards

Without an integrated solution, finance and administration teams spent valuable time manually matching payments, resolving discrepancies, and consolidating information from multiple campuses.

Intellergy implemented a centralised payment and reconciliation platform that connects campus POS devices directly to ADvTECH's Student Information Management System (SIMS).

The solution serves as a payment orchestration and reconciliation layer, ensuring that transactions are processed, validated, allocated, and reported on automatically.

The process works as follows:

• Students or applicants make payments at their respective campus POS devices, accessed by authorised, role-based campus users
• Payments are securely processed through the payment gateway
• The platform validates student and applicant information against SIMS
• Students or applicants provide the applicable fee category (e.g. tuition fees, application fees) at the point of payment
• Payments are allocated to the correct student account in the client's Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system
• Reconciliation dashboards provide real time visibility into payment activity across all campuses

The platform supports:

• Application fee payments
• Pre-registration fee payments
• Tuition fee payments
• General payments
• Walk-in payments for prospective students
• Multi-campus transaction processing
• Automated reconciliation
• Real-time financial reporting and monitoring

By integrating payments directly into the student administration environment, the solution removed the need for manual intervention while improving financial accuracy and operational efficiency.

The new payment ecosystem transformed the way student payments are managed across the ADvTECH group.

Automated Payment Allocation: Payments are automatically linked to the correct student or applicant account in the client's finance system, with a single, traceable payment record created, removing the need for transaction-by-transaction manual capture.

Faster Payment Processing: Transactions are processed and confirmed at the point of sale, with allocation to student accounts and posting to the finance system handled automatically, removing the delays associated with manual capture.

Significant Reduction in Reconciliation Effort: Automated reconciliation capabilities reduce the need for manual matching and investigation. Daily transaction totals are designed to reconcile cleanly against bank settlement records, giving finance teams a reliable daily close instead of a backlog of unmatched transactions.

Improved Financial Visibility: Finance teams gain real-time visibility into payment activity across campuses through a centralised reconciliation dashboard, including clear visibility into payment outcomes and card types used, enabling faster reporting and decision-making.

Enhanced Student Experience: Students and applicants benefit from a faster, more seamless payment process, with clear payment references provided on receipts for easy follow-up, quicker confirmation, and reduced administrative delays.

Secure and Scalable Platform: The solution was designed to meet PCI DSS security requirements and aligns with POPIA principles for the protection of student and applicant personal information, while supporting high transaction volumes across multiple institutions and campuses.