Communicating with students is an on-going task for financial aid administrators, especially at busy times of the year. Fortunately, Payment Planner has a solution that makes it easier.

Payment Planner’s Counselor Portal provides a secure means for the Financial Aid Office staff to communicate with students. Almost like an integrated email account, counselors can view current messages from students, search for previous messages from students, easily respond, and maintain a record of all correspondence. With this tool counselors can post a message to one student or to a group of students. However, instead of keeping track of different email addresses in an overcrowded email address book, the Counselor Portal lets administrators sort their students by a variety of attributes, from as specific as name to as broad as whether they receive aid or not. This feature is especially helpful for notifying a particular group of students about an available scholarship or an activity on campus.

Additionally, counselors can assign a Reason to emails so as to categorize inquiries based on subject matter. This helpful tool allows administrators to sort their emails based on content, not based on student, opening up a wide variety of possibilities. Many counselors use this feature to determine if there is a common question that needs to be addressed for all students in a more thorough manner. 

The Counselor Portal is an optional feature of Payment Planner that may solve many of your communications issues. Email groups of students and keep track of emails without any of the hassle involved in email search features. The Counselor Portal is only one of Payment Planner’s many features designed to help schools help students. Check it out at the Payment Planner website!