Paying Your Co-op Bills

From any page in HomeschoolGo, open the left sidebar and click Payments. You’ll land on a summary card at the top of the page showing your total charges, anything you’ve already paid or had credited, and the balance left to pay.

If your balance is zero, you’ll see a green “All clear” indicator and no further action is needed. If you owe something, the balance shows in red, and a Pay now button appears next to the pending charges below the summary (assuming your co-op accepts online payments — see the cash/check section if not).

The page is organized in four stacked sections:

If your co-op has online payments turned on, paying takes about thirty seconds:

Flexible billing: charges added to your account

Some co-ops use a flexible billing model, especially for class enrollment. Instead of paying immediately at checkout, the class fee is added to your account as a pending charge, and you pay it later. If your co-op uses this setup, you’ll see class fees appear on your Payments page without having gone through Stripe at enrollment time. You can pay those pending charges by clicking Pay nowwhenever you’re ready — or your co-op may accept cash or check instead.

Some co-ops also accept payment directly from a bank account (an ACH debit). If yours does, the checkout screen shows two buttons instead of one: Pay from bank account and Pay by card. Pick the bank option and Stripe walks you through connecting your bank — usually a quick login with your online-banking credentials.

The main difference from a card: bank payments aren’t instant. The debit takes about four business days to clear. In the meantime your Payments page shows a Bank payment processingnote next to the payment, and your balance already reflects it — you won’t be asked to pay the same charge twice while it settles.

If the debit doesn’t clear (for example, insufficient funds), you’ll get an email letting you know, the charge returns to your balance, and you can pay again — by card if you want it settled right away. If the payment was for a class enrollment, the seat is released back to the catalog when a debit fails, so re-enroll promptly.

Some co-ops prefer to collect tuition by cash, check, or bank transfer (often called “external” payments). If that’s how your co-op runs, you won’t see a Pay now button on your Payments page. Instead:

• Hand your check or cash to the admin or treasurer your co-op designates — usually at the next meeting day.
• The admin records the payment in HomeschoolGo on their end. Once they do, the payment will appear in your account summary and your balance will drop accordingly.
• External payments don’t count toward your “owed” balance for sign-up purposes — in other words, if your co-op is collecting by check and hasn’t recorded yours yet, you won’t be blocked from enrolling.

If you have an unpaid balance on a card-based co-op, HomeschoolGo blocks new class enrollments and event sign-ups until you’re caught up. You’ll see a message with the amount due and a link straight to the Payments page.

It’s not a penalty; it just means your treasurer isn’t chasing balances at the end of the term. Pay your balance, and the block lifts automatically the moment payment clears.

When a class is full, you can still add a student to the waitlist at no cost — no card charge, no fee, no surprise bill. If a seat opens up and the co-op admin promotes your student from the waitlist into the class, that’s when the class fee gets added to your account.

You’ll be notified by email any time you’re moved from the waitlist to enrolled, so you’ll never be surprised by a charge you weren’t expecting.

If your co-op issues you a credit (for a cancelled class, a scholarship, a board discount, or any other reason), it shows up in your Payment History on its own line, in green, labeled with the reason your admin entered, and reduces your balance the same way a payment does.

Refunds for online card payments are issued back to the original card, usually by your co-op admin from your ledger, the class roster, or their own Stripe dashboard. Either way, HomeschoolGo picks up the refund automatically and reflects it on your Payments page, so you don’t need to ask your admin to record it separately. The money itself usually posts to your card within a few business days, depending on your bank.

Sometimes a refund comes with a credit in the same step. For example, if your co-op refunds a payment but wants you to keep your spot, they can cover the reopened balance with a scholarship or other credit right away. If that happens, you’ll see both the refund and the credit on your Payments page, and your balance nets out to what it was before.

One case refunds itself: if a student was promoted from a waitlist into a paid class and then needs to move back to the waitlist, that class fee is refunded automatically, with no request needed.