The Office of the Bursar has begun instituting an electronic initiative that will make tuition statements and bill payments available online, while allowing students to authorize those paying their tuition to do so immediately over the Internet.

Under the new system, students can authorize a parent or another person paying their tuition to see their tuition bill electronically and make a direct payment against their charges, according to University of Wisconsin Bursar Cathie Easter.

Easter added the new system has many advantages over the previous one, which relied almost entirely on paper copies of bills that could only be mailed to two different addresses.

Previously, tuition bills and payments relied on the efficiency of the United States Postal Service, which often caused complications.

“Unfortunately, with 40,000 students, there’s always some checks that don’t make it to our office or take longer to get to us than others,” Easter said.

She added the Bursar’s Office often had bills returned as undeliverable because students forgot to update their address, a problem she hopes the new system will alleviate.

The electronic billing system also allows payments on student accounts to be posted in real time, where in the past they were loaded into a batch that would post overnight.

“Students and parents can now see immediately that their payment has been posted and have the assurance that it is on their account and they met the due date,” Easter said.

Easter said the electronic system also makes sense from both an economic and environmental perspective.

“This will save a huge amount in paper, printing and postage,” Easter said. “Given the current budget situation, that’s helpful, and (with) the current efforts to go green, it’s a lot more efficient to be able to do this electronically.”

Paper bills will continue to be sent out this semester alongside the e-payment option, but effective Jan. 1, 2010, no tuition bills will be sent through the mail, according to Easter.

“Our big message at this point is if the student is not the person paying, we really want them to be setting up their parents for e-billing,” Easter said.

Those who feel uncomfortable making payments online, however, will still be able to print a paper copy of the statement locally and send it by mail.

Also consistent with a university-wide push to better utilize electronic resources, the UW Office of Financial Aid is nearing completion of a system that will allow students to apply for all the university scholarships they qualify for at once and online, according to Susan Fischer, director of financial aid.

“It can be really cumbersome to have to go to each place to apply for separate scholarships individually,” Fischer said.

She added that under the new system, there will be a common application for university scholarships where students fill out one form and are automatically applied to those they qualify for.

Though scholarships associated with individual schools and colleges have not been added to the system yet, Fischer said the university hopes to achieve this switch in the next two or three weeks.