A pre-collections product built from the ground up.

Past-due student balances are a growing crisis. 72% of schools carry balances exceeding $1M, 52% saw those balances increase in 2024, and 20–30% of accounts receivable are written off annually.

The way schools handled it made things worse, 86% relied on fully manual processes. Generic emails, spreadsheets, phone calls that rarely landed. With transcript hold bans gaining traction across states, institutions were losing leverage without gaining better tools.

The result was frustrated staff, students who felt cornered, and revenue slipping through the cracks.

The pre-collections lifecycle is designed to be lightweight for staff and self-sufficient for students. From tagging to handoff, the system runs itself.

We built a 12-week email and SMS campaign personalized with each student's name, balance, and school branding. The sequence escalates deliberately from a past-due notice to an urgent reminder to a final notice, and stops automatically the moment a student takes action.

I partnered with the CX team to shape the tone and messaging, and gave schools time to review and approve the new copy. I recently collaborated with engineering to update our templates using Cursor for light and dark mode.

The student experience

Getting students or parents from an email or text into the app quickly was critical. For first-time or returning users, we made accessing Pre frictionless with a simple sign-in code sent directly to their school email.

Once in, students could review their bill and set up their own payment plan of up to 24 monthly installments. They would enroll into autopay, automatic reminders, and smart handling of missed payments, all without any staff involvement. I designed and tested various versions of the home and payment plan screen.

Additional plan variations were tested with varying levels of options and detail.

The school administrator experience

The admin experience gives staff everything they need at a glance. The student page shows who has been contacted, who is on a plan, how much is owed, who has resolved, and who needs escalation.

Admins can review payments in detail, check status and method, and jump into any student profile to see plan details, personal information, and recent activity.

From there they can add an ally to the account, send a sign in link, or make changes to the payment plan directly.

Lastly, the overview dashboard gives admins a single view of annual revenue, student payments and plans, payment volume, and communication engagement, all filterable by population. Populations are custom student groups admins create themselves in settings.

This went live in May of this year, so far the feedback has been that it’s a nice to have. Admins are more actively reviewing individual student information overall.