Collections Procedures

Summer Program Directors will decide how many payments, how much will be due, and when to schedule payments before the program begins on the Event Set Up form.  These dates and payment fees will then determine the balances due on mygcm.org under each student.  The collections administrator will be able to export data from mygcm.org to help with collection times.  Only authorized staff, that are familiar with the Collections Policies and Procedures should handle the collection of any monies. The Program Director and the person delegated responsibility as Collections Administrator (in the Event Set Up document) are ultimately responsible for ensuring these policies and procedures are followed.

Payments by the Participants

See also intern and staff payments for LT. 

All participants no matter the total of their program fee (even if it's free- example $0 for third year returning LTers), will still have to pay their application fee ($25, $50, $75 depending on the date they apply).  Application fees are calculated on the date they are paid (not the date they being filling out their application).  Application fees change to the next fee amount at midnight eastern standard time on the day written on the event set up form.  

Participants can not make payments for their fees until they have been accepted into the program.  In order for your participant to be accepted and able to make a payment or to participant in any LT activities your participant will need to have at minimum signed the agreement page on the online application, uploaded their medical liabilitiy releave waiver as well as their medical disclosure form. 

Any changes to specific participant fees (ex. refunds, adding late fees, etc.) can only be approved by the director or finance administrator. 

Acceptable forms of payments by the participants. 

• Credit card payment online
• Credit card payment over phone through Summer Programs Coordinator, at the Reliant office
• Personal check written to Reliant from the participant 
• Money order from the participant 
• Online banking- send your e-check to Reliant at 11002 Lake Hart Dr. Suite 100, Orlando, FL 32832.  Please make sure that you write the name of your summer program and your name in the memo line of the check. And notifiy Judi Major (judi.major@reliant.org) to let her know to look for it.

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• •  Participant’s Name
  •  Issuing Church/Organization/Ministry (IE.  New Life Church or GCMC)
  •  Issuing Church/Organization Contact Information
  •  Event Name and/or Description
  •  Payment Amount and Method of Payment
  •  Check # or Money Order #
  •  Date payment is received
  •  Printed Name of Collections Person
  •  Signature of Collections Person

Personal check guidelines 

• Make sure name and address of account holder are printed legibly on the check (many students open new accounts and use starter checks with no name or address on them, and we can’t read the signature)
• ALL checks must be clearly marked with the participants name that it should be credited to.
• You can NOT write a check that was written to you over to Reliant (payable to Reliant).  Reliant can only receive checks written directly to them for auditing purposes. 
• We would strongly prefer only one check per collection payment.  
  
  

  Ensure that each check or money order received has the following information printed legibly on it:

  •  Participant’s name – printed legibly
  •  Address
  •  Amount – numeric amount should match written amount
  •  Check or money order number associated with the payment.  (please assign unique numbers to starter checks, write it on the check and in the ledger sheet)
  •  Date
  •  Signature
  
  
  
• Students raising financial support on their own (are required to fill out the FINANCIAL INTEGRITY FORM) must have their donors make their checks payable to the student, not to Reliant, and donor checks must be given directly to the student.
• The program participant will always need to pay Reliant with a check or money order written from the participant or from a parent with the same last name with the exception of accepting a work paycheck written over to Reliant). 
• All other checks received by the participants from the donors need to be deposited into the participant's account and a new check must be written to Reliant from the participant. We will not allow students to sign over to Reliant a donor’s check written to them (PAY TO THE ORDER OF RELIANT on the back) because that check from the donor to the participant is not tax deductible. 
• If a student receives a check from a supporter/donor written directly to Reliant they will need to return the check to the donor and ask them to rewrite the check payable to the student. 
• We will also NOT allow a student to sign over their paycheck to Reliant.  (*In the past this was allowed, but due to new auditing rules we can no longer accept any checks (including paychecks) that have not be written out directly to Reliant. 
  
  

Cash Payments

• Never collect cash if at all possible.
• If participants have cash they should go purchase a money order (usually costs between $3-$5 at your local grocery store, convenience store or bank) for the exact amount needed and use that in place of cash.
• If cash must be collected from students (as sometimes is the special case of our remote summer programs that lack access to banks and stores) then the administrator will need to go buy a money order on behalf of the student(s) that could only give cash and it should be written to Reliant for that total amount of cash collected from all the individuals.  A note must be attached to that money order detailing the names and amounts for each participant.  Please mark the memo line as “cash payments received”.  These payments will be entered as a cash payment in each of the participants’ records.
• How do I fill out the money order?  If the participant has purchased it, it should be written to Reliant and signed by the participant.  If the LT finance administrator is buying a money order for multiple participant payments, it should be written out to Reliant and then the LT finance administrator should sign the money order and attach the detailed note of names and amounts. 
• All cash received must be submitted to the Reliant Gift Processing Department using the guidelines written above. Do not deposit it into your petty cash. 
  
  

Over payments/ Unpaid fees

Participants may choose to pay the pre-determined amount for the fee due date or they may pay more than is required for that due date. 

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As the program finance administrator, you may have participants who want to make over payments because they raised that money and since they signed the financial integrity form that said they can not keep money raised they may be wanting to donate that to the program.  Rather than the participant making an over payment read the donations/tithing info below.

Donations/Tithing 

Donating towards payments for other participant program fees.

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In the past, the summer program finance administrator in charge of collections has been allowed to write a check on behalf of students to Reliant to help make payments when others who gave to help their payments have wanted to remain anonymous. This is no longer allowed.  The summer program finance administrator could however, go get a money order and send that money order to Reliant on behalf of another student. If the summer program administrator has collected multiple donated payments for multiple participants they will need to send a list with the money order listing which participants the payments should go towards and how much.

Donating/Tithing towards your summer program.

If your summer program participants wish to donate or tithe to your specific summer program they should write a separate check or money order that is clearly labeled with the purpose of donation/tithe from that participant to avoid possibleconfusion as a summer program payment.  Also, any checks/money orders that are donations or tithes need to be listed on a separate ledger sheet than the one that includes summer program payments.  These donations to the summer program itself will be considered charitable tax-deductible gifts.

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