Overpayments/Unpaid Fees for Events with Fees

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. 

It is the responsibility of the program’s leadership (not Reliant) to work with the participants who can not pay their program fees on time.  The policies may state that there is a late fee for late fee payments.  That late fee is enforced at the discretion of the program director and finance administrator.

The event leadership will need to notify the Reliant (events@reliant.org) if you want to add a late fee to a participant.  This Payment Appeal Form can be used to help with participants who are requesting an extension for when their program fees are due.  The Payement Appeal Form is simply a tool for the event finance administrator to use and keep and not to be sent back to Reliant.  It is the responsibility of the program’s leadership to work with the participants who have not paid their program fees.  We suggest assigning an event leader to the participant to help give guidance and accountability to participants needing financial help. 

Sometimes participants do not know that they have overpaid.  (It is common for participants to pay $5 extra because of the $695 fee and not realize it).  

If the Reliant gift processing department receives a payment for an amount over what is owed this is the process they will follow...

• Notify the events coordinator of the over payment and the events coordinator will temporarily raise the participant fee so the payment can be added to their name.  (To raise the fee, open up the individual event registrant and click on the arrows next to the fee you'd like to raise (usually the program fee)- always leave a comment to explain why).

• If the amount is over $25 it is policy that Reliant will automatically issue a refund to the participant. The events coordinator will contact the LT director to let them know of the refund, but will not need LT director approval per approved policy.

For those overpayments under $25...

• Reliant will notify the participant and document that they have made an overpayment and give them 30 days to request a refund prior to Reliant applying this overpayment as just a larger payment towards the event. 

• If they give their permission to give the overpaid fee to the event then we will keep the participants fee at the new raised fee permanently.  (assuming it is a small over payment of $20 or under).  
• If they would like their over payment refunded, the events team will contact the evebt director for approval for the refund.  If the over payment was made by check then the events team will create a check request and the check will be mailed to the participant.  If the over payment was made by credit card the gift processing department will refund the credit card. Click here for more detailed instructions about refunds.
• Once the fee has been refunded the events team will need to change the event registration fee back to the original fee so that the participant does not show an outstanding balance on their registration. 

One participant's over payments to the program will not be switched to another participant'ss underpaid registration. The only exceptions is if a church sends in payments to help the students in their church, payment amounts may be switched from an overpaid student to an underpaid one. The church needs to provide written confirmation that this is acceptable to them. 

There may be participants who try to make over payments because they raised more than they needed to raise. And since they signed the financial integrity committement that said they can not keep extra money they raised (over and above the cost of event fees) they may be wanting to just gift that to the program.  But, rather than the participant making an over payment we suggest two options. They can either gift directly to another participant or tithe towards the program (tithing is different than making an overpayment on their fee). Read the below nfo for more details.

Gifting towards payments for other participant program fees.

If a participant wants to contribute to another participant fees they will either need to…

• write a check to the other student directly and that other student will need to write a new check from their own account to Reliant.  
• Or they can anonymously gift cash to the underpaid student who will then have to go get a money order with the cash or deposit it and write a check from their own account to Reliant. 

We cannot accept any form of payment from anyone other than from the participant with the outstanding fee or from their parent with the same name or from the participant’s church.

In the past, the event 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 events 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 gifted 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.