How a top Canadian university’s finance team simplified event payments and reconciliation
Managing payments for hundreds of events can become a logistical nightmare for a university finance department. Discover how Université de Sherbrooke centralized bank reconciliation and automated tax compliance through the Fourwaves and Stripe integration.
University Finance Department
Stripe (PCI compliant)
Approval workflows and tax management
Managing event payments at a large university is a financial operations challenge as much as it is an administrative one.
As a major research university, Université de Sherbrooke hosts a high volume of academic conferences, events, and research-driven symposia. Each year these local and international events generate high volumes of registrations, each with their own pricing structures, tax rules, and reporting requirements.
These events are often organized by independent academic units, with their own timelines, registration models, and funding structures.
This creates a recurring need to balance flexibility for organizers with strict requirements around compliance, tax management, and financial oversight.
Reconciliation headaches and slow event set up
Before adopting Fourwaves, event registration payments were deposited directly into the university’s bank account and used different payment gateways.
According to Stéphanie Boucher, an Accounting Director at the Université de Sherbrooke’s finance department, this meant manually breaking down bank deposits to identify which transactions belonged to which events. The process worked, but was time-consuming.
Also, credit card payments were not easy to set up and required different internal teams to coordinate with event organizers. This created frustration for event organizers who often needed to move fast.
As event activity increased, the finance team needed a more structured and scalable approach to managing event registrations and payments.
Searching for a secure, standardized solution
The finance team defined clear requirements from the outset. Security and compliance were non-negotiable. Stéphanie adds:
One of the most important criteria was PCI compliance. Payment processing needs to meet strict security standards.
Financial resources services, Université de Sherbrooke
Equally important was the need for standardization. The finance team wanted a single event management platform to use across the institution, rather than multiple tools that would complicate oversight and reconciliation.
From a financial operations perspective, centralizing event management and payments was essential to reducing risk and manual work.
At the same time, the solution had to meet the operational needs of event organizers. Ticketing tools like Eventbrite are not enough for the academic community. When organizing a scientific event, it often requires abstract submissions, flexible registration fees, such as early bird pricing, published programs, communication tools and accurate tax management.
The objective was to support organizers without creating additional complexity for finance.
Centralized approvals, event oversight and fast setup for organizers
After evaluating several solutions, Université de Sherbrooke adopted Fourwaves for its focus on the needs of academic and higher-education events, but also for its ease of use and fast support.
The platform integrates easily with our internal processes and helps reduce manual work. Our team as well as event organizers appreciates its ease of use and the responsiveness of the support team.
Financial resources services, Université de Sherbrooke
Fourwaves connects to the university’s Stripe account. All event payments are grouped and deposited on a regular basis, clearly identified as conference registrations.
Centralized dashboard
Finance has a centralized dashboard with:
- A real time overview of all linked events
- An approval status
- An audit trail (user and date of decisions)
- Additional event information
- Transaction overview and reports.
Real screenshot with fake data to protect privacy.
Custom approval form
Finance can setup an approval form with required fields for anyone who requests to connect to the payment gateway.
They can request edits to organizers and automated emails create a loop of fast response.
Finance can customize questions asked to event organizers when they want to link their events.
Tax rules setup and reporting
Financial services can see the items and their tax rules in the approval form and request edits. That ensures they only approve events when taxes are properly configured.
They can access all transactions in real-time, filter, search and generate detailed deports instantly.
Every single payment and refund is accessible by the finance team in real-time. Fake data shown.
Autonomy for organizers, less work for finance
When an event organizer contacts the finance department to open a new internal budget unit (UBR), they receive clear documentation outlining the steps to follow.
This includes the requirement to use Fourwaves to collect registration fees, the rules for configuring taxes correctly, and the steps to connect the event to the university’s payment gateway.
With this framework in place, organizers are largely autonomous. Stéphanie explains:
Organizers can configure their events independently and submit a connection request once everything is ready.
Financial resources services, Université de Sherbrooke
Her role is focused on review and approval. If tax rules are correctly set, the request can be approved quickly. If not, organizers are asked to make adjustments before the event becomes operational.
This approach creates a clear separation of responsibilities. Organizers retain flexibility and speed, while the finance team maintains the level of control required to ensure compliance and consistency across all events.
Faster reconciliation and clearer reporting
Once events are live, reporting and reconciliation become substantially more efficient.
Each week, organizers submit a deposit report to the finance department for revenue recognition in their UBR. This report is accompanied by a Fourwaves transaction extract that confirms all registrations and provides a detailed financial breakdown.
Stéphanie noted that it is easy to see the amounts of taxes to be remitted to governments, the Stripe and Fourwaves fees applied, and the taxes recoverable on those fees.
Tax breakdown can be easily exported. Fake data shown.
Having all this information centralized and structured makes it much easier for finance to review and approve deposit reports. What once required manual investigation and follow-ups can now be validated quickly, with far fewer back-and-forth exchanges.
From a finance operations standpoint, this clarity reduces errors, accelerates approval cycles, and improves month-end processes.
Customer support that reinforces confidence
Beyond the platform itself, the quality of Fourwaves’ support served as the cornerstone of the team’s adoption. Stéphanie notes that event organizers appreciate how responsive and effective the technical support is, particularly when they are setting up their events for the first time.
That responsiveness also extends to the finance team. When questions arise, answers are provided quickly, which helps maintain confidence in the process and avoids delays.
A scalable model for university finance teams
For Université de Sherbrooke, the partnership with Fourwaves has transformed event payment management into a controlled, repeatable workflow that can scale with the university’s academic activity.
3 clear benefits were noted:
- Finance teams benefit from centralized oversight, predictable weekly deposits, and the ability to validate tax configuration before any funds are collected.
- Organizers benefit from greater autonomy and faster setup, without creating additional workload for finance.
- The university benefits from a standardized model that supports scientific events while maintaining strong financial governance.
Asked what she would say to another university finance team considering Fourwaves, Stéphanie’s answer is direct:
Fourwaves is easy to use for both event organizers and finance teams, and all the information needed for accounting and reconciliation is centralized in one place.
Financial resources services, Université de Sherbrooke
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