What is the Class Tuition Charges Task (Global Class Billing)? – iClassPro Support

IN THIS ARTICLE:
Learn about the Class Tuition Charges task and how to use it to charge tuition fees to students in bulk from the TRANSACTIONS>CLASS TUITION CHARGES screen.

What is the Class Tuition Charges Task?
How the Filters Work
Running Class Tuition Charges
Record Keeping

What is the Class Tuition Charges Task?

The Class Tuition Charges task (previously called Global Tuition Charges) will allow you to preview and post (process) outstanding charges for all students with enrollments tied to a specific billing schedule at one time. This task must be run separately for each billing schedule you offer on a regular basis.

NOTE: Accounts with multiple locations will need to run this task separately for each location.

How the Filters Work

Billing Schedules and Student Active Dates

The combination of the Billing Schedule and Student Active options chosen in the filters for this task will determine which class enrollments get billed.

The Billing Schedule is selected at the time of enrollment and is determined by either the default settings on the class or a billing schedule override on the enrollment itself.

The Student Active option allows you to choose a single date, date range or a month to locate any enrollments which take place during the billing period that the class tuition charges are being created for. This option should always match the dates you are billing for. This allows the software to prorate the enrollments for the correct time frame.

For example, if you are billing for a six-week session that starts January 1, 2021 and ends on February 11, 2021, you would select "Within the Range Of" from the Student active drop down and enter those dates as the date range below. This way, if January 1st was a blackout date that needed to be discounted from tuition, iClassPro would see that date is included in this billing and prorate any enrollments which would normally meet on that date accordingly.

NOTE: If you are billing for session-based/rolling session-based enrollments and there is a gap between the end of one session and the start of the next, the system will bill for any dates within the gap as if it were a monthly enrollment. To prevent potential billing issues caused by this scenario, it is recommended that you add dates to your blackout schedule to account for the date gap.

For more information about creating Blackout Schedules, see our "How Do I Create a Blackout Schedule?" document.

Early Bird Discounts

Early Bird Discounts are a method that can be used to temporarily discount all eligible class tuition charges that are being created to encourage early payment. Customers which pay their class tuition prior to the Early Bird Cutoff Date will retain the dollar or percentage discount that has been designated in the early bird portion of the special discounts area of any discount schedule attached to their enrollment.

The defined "Early Bird Cutoff Date" cannot be AFTER the specified Due Date of the charge.

Once the Early Bird Cutoff Date arrives, the class tuitions will revert to their normal price automatically.

For more information about Early Bird Discounts, see our "What is an Early Bird Discount?" document.

Override Tax Rate

Enabling the "Override Tax Set on Program and Class" option will allow you to choose a specific tax rate to assign to all of the tuition charges being created. Note that selecting a tax rate here will override any tax rate that is already assigned to the Program attached to the Class itself. However, tax will NOT be calculated or added to the tuition cost if the Class itself is designated as "Tax Exempt".

Please refer to the following documents regarding how to attach a Tax Rate to a Program or Class (or to set a class as non-taxable):

Preventing Duplicate Charges

The Class Tuition Charges task also allows you to prevent duplicate charges from being created if the student has already been billed with the selected charge category for their active enrollments within the selected date range (determined by the Student Active filter). The Prevent Duplicate Charges option is highly recommended and enabled by default.

If a customer has a class tuition charge for a given enrollment on their ledger that uses the charge category selected for the Class Tuition Charges and the charge has a charge date within the length of time selected in the "Within the Past" filter, the charge will be seen as a duplicate and deselected in the Class Tuition Charges preview so that it will not be processed.

The options for the "within the past" filter are as follows:

All by Enrollment and Charge Category - This option will search the family's ledger for any charges created with that charge category and tied specifically to the active enrollments at any point in the past. (This option is recommended if using unique charge categories every year, such as "January 2020 Tuition", "January 2021 Tuition", etc.)
All by Charge Category Only - Searches the entire family ledger history and all enrollments for that family using that charge category. Meaning the charge category may be used on an unrelated charge, but will still not be replicated. (This option is best used for one-time use charge categories.)
1 Year - Searches for charges in family ledgers for the last 365 days using the specified charge category that are connected to the active enrollments during this billing period. (Similar to the default option, but imposes a one year window for the charge date. If a charge exists, but is more than a year old, the system will deem the student eligible to be charged again.)
6 Months - Searches the last six months of charges using the specified charge category that are connected to the active enrollments during this billing period. (This is the default option. Recommended for Monthly billing, especially if using the same charge categories every year, such as "01 January Tuition", "02 February Tuition", etc.)
1 Month - Searches family ledgers for the last 30 days for any charges using the charge category specified in your preview, which is connected to active enrollments during this billing period.

When calculating discounts, the system will only consider class enrollments linked to the same location. This means that if one or more students in the family are taking classes at multiple locations, discounts are not calculated based on enrollments at other locations.

Running Class Tuition Charges

Follow the instructions below to place charges on customer accounts for the desired billing schedules.

Note: If your business runs multiple locations out of one account, the location selected at the top of the screen will dictate which location is being billed for.

Navigate to the Transactions page.
On the left side of the page, select Class Tuition Charges.
Select a Charge Category to label the charge that will be created.
Select the Billing Schedule to create charges for.
In the Student Active filter, select the type of dates to use and then enter the appropriate date, month or custom date range according to the fields provided.
- If "In Month Of" or "Within the Range Of" are selected, if a tuition override is active on the first day of the specified date range, then it will be used for the entire billing period.
- If "As Of Date" is selected, a tuition override will only be used if it is active on the selected date.
Enter a Charge Date to indicate when the fee is being assessed.
- NOTE: While it is possible to future-date charges in iClassPro, we do not recommend doing this as it makes tracking the payment in financial reports more difficult.
Enter a Due Date to indicate to the customer when payment is due for the charges.
(Optional) To reward customers for early payment, you may select to Allow Early Bird Discounts and then enter the Early Bird Cutoff Date.
(Optional) To add tax on top of class tuition prices, check Charge Tax and select the Tax Rate.
(Recommended) Leave Prevent Duplicate Charges checked and select an appropriate option for the "Within the Past" drop down.
Click Preview. The preview will generate in your background tasks for safe keeping but should open automatically if you do not navigate away from the page.
At the top of the preview, is a Filter Summary. Click Show to review all filters from the previous page.
Review the charges that have been calculated for errors. The preview will list all enrollments the system found that match your filters.
- Enrollments with a box highlighted in blue will be billed.
- If the system detects duplicate charges, these entries will be automatically deselected and noted in orange.
- Any tuition amounts totaling $0 will also be automatically deselected.
- If the system encounters any issues with calculating a tuition price based on a tuition schedule, this will be noted in orange.
- If you have questions about how the system determined a particular tuition price, expanding the entry will reveal the calculations used, including any discounts/proration.
- NOTE: If you make any corrections to classes, tuitions, or enrollments based on the preview, you must run a new preview for the changes to take effect. Processing the original preview will still place the originally calculated charges on the family ledger.
When you are ready, click Process to post the charges to customer accounts.

Posting the charges can take some time. You can review the progress of the task in your background task.

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 tuition charges. You may need to make manual corrections to these entries.