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What is an Anniversary Charge/Anniversary Fee?

IN THIS ARTICLE:
Learn about Anniversary Charges/Anniversary Fees, how they can be configured, and how iClassPro determines who is eligible to be charged a fee.

What are Anniversary Charges?

Sometimes referred to as a "Registration Fee", "Annual Fee", or "Membership Fee", Anniversary Charges are recurring charges which are billed on either a per-family OR per-student basis when a customer is actively enrolled at your facility. This fee is normally billed to accounts every 12 months based on the day the family/student first enrolled; however, this billing frequency can vary based on your specific requirements.

Where Do I Set Up Anniversary Charges?

Anniversary Charges are configured in Settings > Setup > General Settings > Anniversary Charges.

  • Fee Type - select whether the fee is issued per student or per family. (Also determines whether the anniversary fields are shown under the family or student profiles.)
  • Anniversary Program: choose the financial Program that will automatically be assigned to any Anniversary Charges that are created.  (NOTE: Because tax rates can be assigned directly to Programs, this will also determine which tax rate [if any] is automatically applied.)
    • If the “Location Method” below is set to “All Locations”, you should only have a single tax rate associated with the Anniversary program.
    • If the “Location Method” below is set to “Per Location”, you may wish to have one tax rate set per location.
  • Anniversary Timeframe - Enter the number of months between charges.
    • One-Time Fee - If enabled, the system will check to see if an Anniversary Charge exists at all for the student/family (regardless of the charge date) and will not charge them again if one is found.
  • Fee Amount - Enter the amount that should be billed (all locations).
  • Location Method - choose how the fee will be billed based on enrollments at multiple locations.
    • All Locations - the student/family will be charged a single anniversary fee whether they have enrollments in one location or several locations.
    • Per Location - the student/family will be charged multiple anniversary fees, one for each location.
      • Location Fee Override - If billing per location, designates the amount to be billed for specific locations.

 

Customer Exceptions

If certain families or students have an exception to the general anniversary setup (such as being exempt or paying an amount other than the one specified in your settings), these items can be overridden by editing either the family or student, depending on the "Fee Type" setting.

Each customer will have three fields located in either the family details or student details which are taken into consideration for anniversary charge billing. These fields are:

  • Last Anniversary Charge Date - a quick reference field that reflects the charge date of the most recent anniversary line item charge on the customer's ledger. (NOTE: This field cannot be manually edited.)
  • Anniversary Charge Eligibility Date - by default, this field tracks the initial signup date for the student (when the student record was created) but can be future-dated to defer anniversary charges for a period of time. If this date is in the past, it has no effect on future charges.
  • Anniversary Fee Override - a field which allows staff members to bill a specified amount for this family or student at all times.

NOTES:

  • Anniversary Charges cannot be discounted for multiple students when issuing the fees once per student or be "capped" per family (no maximum charge amount per family).
  • Promotional Codes cannot be applied toward Anniversary Charges.

Customer Eligibility

Whenever the Anniversary Charge is automatically created via the TRANSACTIONS task, Customer Portal/Mobile App, or New Enrollment Wizard, the system uses the following criteria to judge whether a student or family is eligible for an Anniversary Charge:

  1. Does the Family/Student have an Active enrollment?
    Only students with an Active, approved enrollment in a class or camp are eligible for an Anniversary Charge. (NOTE: appointment bookings do not trigger an "Active" enrollment status and therefore will not make the student eligible for an Anniversary Charge.)
  2. Is their Anniversary Charge Eligibility Date in the future?
    If the Anniversary Charge Eligibility Date is in the future, the student or family is not eligible for an Anniversary Charge. Only students/families with an Anniversary Charge Eligibility Date that is equal to or before the current date will be deemed eligible to be charged.
  3. How is the Anniversary Timeframe configured under SETTINGS>SETUP>GENERAL SETTINGS>ANNIVERSARY CHARGES?
    • If a Timeframe is configured, is their Last Anniversary Charge Date outside of the Anniversary Timeframe?
      A family/student is only eligible to be charged if no Anniversary-type charge exists on the family ledger within the Anniversary Timeframe.
    • If "One-Time Fee" is enabled, has the family/student already been charged?
      A family/student is only eligible to be charged if no Anniversary-type charge exists for them on the family ledger (regardless of when the charge was created).

If all of these criteria are true, then the student or family is eligible to be charged an Anniversary fee.

How do Anniversary Charges Get Tracked/Applied?

iClassPro's Anniversary Charges are not applied automatically. 

Anniversary fees can be applied in one of four ways:

  1. From the TRANSACTIONS Page, using the Anniversary Charges task.
  2. From the Customer Portal/Mobile App, during the online class or camp registration process.
  3. From the Office Portal, when using the New Enrollment Wizard to create an enrollment.
  4. Manually, from the Customer's Ledger (using the ANNIVERSARY line item type).

To distinguish anniversary fees from other charges placed on accounts, iClassPro records and tracks how and when families have been billed for anniversary charges using the line item type "Anniversary. " This line item type is used automatically for system-generated charges (from the TRANSACTIONS page or Customer Portal/Mobile App).  When manually creating Anniversary Fee charges on the customer's ledger, staff will need to be sure to select this line item type.

From the Customer Portal/Mobile App or from the TRANSACTIONS page, iClassPro will use the settings for the anniversary timeframe to determine if the customer is eligible for a charge (NOT the customer's original anniversary date). When manually billing from the customer's ledger, the charge can be created at any time regardless of the last time they were billed.

Most businesses will use a combination of all four methods to bill for Anniversary Charges. Keep reading for more information about how each of these options works.

Anniversary Charges from the TRANSACTIONS Page

Some customers may remain enrolled in the same class or camp for longer than a year or simply may not choose to use online registration when changing enrollments (leaving the opportunity for the anniversary charges to not be applied). For these reasons, we recommend that businesses use the Anniversary Charges task located under the TRANSACTIONS page regularly to ensure that no students are missed.

For each of your business' billing cycles, we have a list of recommended tasks available in the Billing Operations Checklist to create a smooth billing process for your employees and customers to follow.

Anniversary Charges Task

Below is an overview of the available options and filters when applying Anniversary Charges globally:

  1. Navigate to TRANSACTIONS>ANNIVERSARY CHARGES.
  2. Choose a Charge Program. The Program selected here will be used to label the charge on customer ledgers (and will determine how payments are applied/shown in financial reports). It also determines the tax rate to be applied to the charge (if a tax rate is associated with the selected Program).
    • NOTE: The Program will default to the one defined under SETTINGS>SETUP>GENERAL SETTINGS>ANNIVERSARY CHARGES, but can be changed if needed.
  3. Choose a Charge Category. This (along with the Program defined earlier) will be used to label the charge on customer ledgers (and will determine how payments are applied/shown in financial reports).
  4. Under the Enrolled In drop-down menu, choose whether to bill the fee for families/students based on whether they are enrolled in classes, camps or both.
  5. Choose a Student Active option to determine when the customer must be enrolled to be eligible for this billing.
    • Using the "In Month Of" option allows you to pre-bill for customers who will be active in the selected month and are due at any point before that month is over (recommended). The anniversary time frame will be counted backwards from the 1st of that month.
    • Using an "As of Date" will allow you to bill this fees for any customers which are active as of that date and due on or before that date. The anniversary time frame will be counted backwards from that specific date.
  6. Select a Charge Date to indicate when the fee is being assessed. (NOTE: In financial reports, payments will not show as applied to these charges until the charge date.)
  7. Select a Due Date to indicate to the customer when payment is due for the charges.
  8. Select any Family, Student, or Class Keywords that should apply to the results.
  9. (OPTIONAL) Check Ignore Previous Anniversary Charges to bill all active customers at once .(NOTE: Enabling this option ignores eligibility timeframe/one-time fee and bills all active customers as long as their Anniversary Charge Eligibility Date is not in the future).
  10. (OPTIONAL) If you choose to enter an amount in the Override Anniversary Fee box, this amount will be billed to all customers in the preview instead of the anniversary charge amount in settings. (NOTE: Enabling this option will ignore any individual Anniversary Fee overrides in place for the selected families/students.)
    • NOTE: If "One-Time Fee" is enabled under SETTINGS>SETUP>GENERAL SETTINGS>ANNIVERSARY CHARGES, the system will display a message noting this configuration.
  11. Click Preview. Once the background task for your preview is finished processing, it will open automatically.
  12. From the preview, de-select any customers you do not wish to bill.
    • Selected customers will be marked with a blue box. When de-selected, the selection box is white.
  13. Click Process to issue the charges to all selected customers.

Record Keeping

Once complete, the task status will read "Done" and a down arrow will appear next to the task. Clicking the down arrow will take you to a summary page of all charges that were processed and the filters used for creating the charges. To save this information, click Save to CSV. This document will also generate in your background tasks. Once complete, click on the document icon or down arrow to save the file for your records.

NOTE: The Process Result file will include a column noting any errors that may have been detected when creating Anniversary charges.  You may need to make manual corrections to these entries.

Anniversary Charges from the Customer Portal

Anniversary charges can be automated for online registration if you allow customers to register and be automatically approved for classes and/or camps in the Customer Portal.

After the customer adds a class or camp to their cart in the Customer Portal and chooses to Proceed to Checkout, the anniversary charge (labeled registration fee) is added to the cart either once for the family or once per student being enrolled (depending on the type of fee specified in your Anniversary Settings.

Note: If a class or camp enrollment is submitted as a request, the customer will not be charged for the anniversary fee because the student must have an active (approved) enrollment before being eligible for the charge.

Customer Portal Anniversary Charge Settings

The settings which dictate whether an anniversary charge is billed during checkout in the Customer Portal can be found under SETTINGS>CUSTOMER PORTAL>OTHER SETTINGS. Anniversary charges can be enabled for just classes, just camps or for both classes and camps by following the instructions below.

Class Registration Instructions

To enable anniversary charges to be added to the cart when a student is automatically approved and successfully enrolled in a class using the Customer Portal:

  1. Navigate to SETTINGS>CUSTOMER PORTAL>OTHER SETTINGS.
  2. Expand the Class Registration section. 
  3. Enable the Anniversary Fee option.
  4. An option will appear so you can choose whether or not to Charge Anniversary Fee for Free Classes. If enabled, this will charge any eligible family/student their anniversary fee even if the class has a $0 tuition fee attached to it. (This setting applies to auto-approved ACTIVE type enrollments only.)
  5. Select an Anniversary Fee Charge Category from the drop down menu.
  6. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click Save Settings.

Camp Registration Instructions

To enable anniversary charges to be added to the cart when a student is automatically approved and successfully enrolled in a camp using the Customer Portal:

  1. Navigate to SETTINGS>CUSTOMER PORTAL>OTHER SETTINGS.
  2. Expand the Camp Registration section. 
  3. Enable the Anniversary Fee option. (If enabled, the system will use the same Anniversary Fee Charge Category specified under SETTINGS>CUSTOMER PORTAL>OTHER SETTINGS>CLASS REGISTRATION.)
  4. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click Save Settings.

Anniversary Charge Settings for the Enrollment Wizard

iClassPro has separate settings to control whether enrollments created via the Enrollment Wizard will be automatically charged an Anniversary Fee if the family/student is eligible.

To enable these options:

  1. Navigate to SETTINGS>SETUP>CLASS SETTINGS>ENROLLMENT WIZARD SETTINGS.
  2. Enable the Anniversary Fee option. (If enabled, the system will use the same Anniversary Fee program specified under SETTINGS>SETUP>GENERAL SETTINGS>ANNIVERSARY CHARGES. Any Tax Rate associated with that Program will be used automatically when creating Anniversary Fees.)
  3. Enabling this option will reveal two additional fields:
    • Charge Anniversary Fee for Free Classes - When enabled, this option will bill a flat fee to customers either per student or per family if their ledger does not contain an Anniversary line item charge within the number of months specified under SETTINGS>SETUP>GENERAL SETTINGS>ANNIVERSARY CHARGES, even if the class has a $0 tuition fee attached to it.
      • NOTE: This setting applies to ACTIVE type enrollments only.
    • Anniversary Fee Charge Category - Select a charge category to label the anniversary fee charge with.
  4. After making your selections, be sure to Save your settings.

Anniversary Charges from the Customer's Ledger

To see if a customer is eligible for the fee when manually registering and billing a student you can view the last charged date by editing either the family or the student (depending on the type of fee selected in your settings)

This step is vital because iClassPro will not prevent you from manually adding an Anniversary charge to a customer's account, regardless of the last date on which the customer was charged the fee.

To create an Anniversary Charge:

  1. Click on the ledger icon next to the family or student.
  2. Click New Charge.
  3. Enter a Charge Date to indicate when the fee is being assessed. In financial reports, payments will not show as applied to these charges until the charge date.
  4. Enter a Due Date to indicate to the customer when payment is due for the charges.
  5. Select the Anniversary line item type from the drop-down menu.
  6. If you charge Anniversary Fees per student, choose a Student to connect the charge to.
  7. Enter a Charge Category to label the charge for financial reports.
  8. (OPTIONAL) Edit the Line Item Title, Amount, Discount and Charge Sales Tax options as needed.
  9. At the bottom of the window, click Save to record the charge.

Need more assistance?

Customer support is available at 1-877-554-6776 Mon - Fri, 9 am to 9 pm (CT) and Sat, 9 am to 6 pm (CT).