Payment Orders are used in TutorCruncher to facilitate payments to your Tutors. They act similarly to payslips/pay stubs that provide the company and individual Tutors a breakdown of finished work and earnings. Payment Orders are generated once the Invoice associated with Lessons on the Payment Order has been paid unless specified otherwise.
Note: Generating and raising Payment Orders does not actually trigger a payment to the payee Tutor, it is simply an accounting tool to help you and your Tutors keep track of work done and monies owed.
Whenever a Payment Order is raised to one of your Tutors for their tutoring services, it will appear in your Raised Payment Orders page, found via Accounting > Raised Payment Orders. This page contains a list of all Payment Orders you have raised, the Tutor the payment is due to, the Payment Order's status (whether it has been marked as Paid, Unpaid, In Pay Run or Void).
An example of a Raised Payment Orders page.
Here you can:
Click on a Payment Order in the list to view its details.
Cycle through the status tabs at the top of the list to filter the listed Payment Orders by their status.
Use the filters to filter out the raised Payment Orders by their date range and/or Tutor/Affiliate.
Use the Add Items to Pay Run button to add the item to the 'In Pay Run' list - read more on Pay Runs below.
Note: If your organisation is using Split Payments, any Invoices that are going to be paid using this feature will be marked as such:
An example of a raised, unpaid Payment Order.
Here you can:
Use the View PDF button to view the Payment Order in PDF form as it would appear attached to the Tutor's Payment Order email.
Use the Resend Payment Order to resend the Payment Order.
Use the Add to Pay Run button to add the Payment Order to a Pay Run.
Use the Mark as Paid button to mark the Payment Order as 'Paid'.
Use the Mark Void button to mark the Payment Order as 'Void'.
How do my Tutors access their Payment Orders?
If you chose to notify them via email, your Tutors can find their Payment Orders in their email inbox. In all cases, they can also access their Payment Orders via the 'Payment Orders' tab on their Tutor dashboard.
What is a 'Pay Run'?
Pay Runs allow you to create a secure CSV export into an external payout system like Wise, Xero or Quickbooks for bulk payment of Payment Orders. Rather than paying your Payment Orders one-by-one, you can use the Pay Runs feature to pay all of your outstanding Payment Orders in one go.
To use Pay Runs, you will need to enable Pay Run functionality by navigating to System > Settings > Accounting Settings > General and enabling the 'Use Pay Runs' checkbox.
For Pay Runs to work, you will also need to add your Tutor's bank details to their profile. They can do this themselves by logging into their Tutor dashboard and opening the 'My Profile' tab and inputting their bank details into the 'Payout Bank Account' panel found within.
An example of a Tutor's profile page, with the 'Payout Bank Account' panel highlighted.
You can also do this from your end similarly by navigating to the Tutor's profile and opening their 'Accounting' tab - from here, you can use the Add Bank Details button found within the 'Payout Bank Account' panel to add their bank details.
Note: A Tutor's bank details will only be visible to Administrators with owner level permissions and the Tutor themselves.
How do I use Pay Runs?
Note: We recommend using Wise as your payout system, as this is what the Pay Runs feature was designed with in mind.
Once you've enabled Pay Runs and added your Tutors' bank details, using Pay Runs is simply a case of raising Payment Orders (see the steps above if you aren't yet familiar with that process).
Once you have raised your Payment Orders, follow these steps to add them to a Pay Run:
Within your Raised Payment Orders page, cycle through to the 'Unpaid' tab to view all of your unpaid Payment Orders and select the Payment Orders you would like to add.
With the desired Payment Orders selected, click Add all Items to Pay Run and confirm.
This will move those items to the 'In Pay Run' tab, navigate there to view all of the Payment Orders to be included in the Pay Run (if you have added a Payment Order erronesouly, simply click on that Payment Order to view its details and use the Remove From Pay Run button).
Use the Generate Pay Run Export button - selecting this will send you a link via email to download your Pay Run export.
Once the export has been downloaded, you can import that into your payroll system to pay your Tutors in bulk.
Once those Payment Orders have been paid, navigate back to the 'In Pay Run' tab on the Raised Payment Orders page to mark those Payment Orders as 'Paid'.
Note: TutorCruncher's Pay Run system is designed to store each Tutor sort code and account number in the safest way possible; we have a number of safeguards in place for storing these details:
Tutor bank details can only be entered by a Tutor or an Administrator with owner permissions. Once entered, they are encrypted, and only the last two digits of the sort code and the last four digits of the account number are shown and are only visible to Administrators with owner permissions, and tutors. If a user wants to modify the bank details they need to enter all the details again, and do not have the ability to view the existing ones.
The export is also safeguarded in a number of ways to ensure that Tutor bank details are as secure as possible. When an email is sent to access the CSV export, the link expires after ten minutes, and only allows the user to download this list one time.
Furthermore, whenever an Administrator requests the Payout export all other admins are also sent an email, notifying them of which user has requested the CSV export.