IN THIS ARTICLE:
Learn about Charge Categories, how iClassPro uses them to record financial information, and how to create/edit them.

• What is a Charge Category?
• Creating a Charge Category
• Editing an Existing Charge Category
• Accounting Considerations

What is a Charge Category?

Charge Categories are used to describe charges that you create and post to a client’s ledger. Since the Charge Category will appear as part of the charge title on the account statement, family ledger, and the Customer Portal ledger view online, Charge Categories must be created before any ledger charges can be created.

Charge Categories are also used to detect duplicate charges when mass billing for class tuition through the Class Tuition Charges task. (See Accounting Considerations below for more information.)

Creating a Charge Category

Charge categories can be as general (June Tuition, Winter Tuition, Anniversary/Registration Fee, Pro Shop, Team Fee, etc) or as detailed (2018 June Rec Tuition, Winter 2018 Team Tuition, 2018 Anniversary/Registration Fee, Pro Shop Apparel, 2018 Team Meet Fee, etc) as needed for your accounting practices.

1. Navigate to SETTINGS>SETUP>GENERAL SETTINGS>CHARGE CATEGORIES.
2. Click on the Add New Charge Category button.
3. Enter a Title for the new charge category (e.g., Reg. Fee, Proshop, Uniforms, etc.). It’s good practice to create a unique charge category for each distinct billing period or non-tuition fee. This will allow for more detailed reports.
   
4. Enter an Expiration Date if desired. This date is used to prevent old Charge Categories from showing up in the list for new charges after a specific date while keeping a record for reports.

Editing an Existing Charge Category

To edit an existing Charge Category, click on the pencil/edit icon next to the Charge Category and make any necessary changes.  Be sure to click Save when you are finished.

Charge Categories should only be edited to correct a typographical error or add an Expiration Date, and should never be deleted if you are still generating reports based on them. Because Charge Categories are associated with financial information, editing an old Charge Category will associate all past financial records with the new Charge Category name. Deleting a charge category will completely remove that charge category as a filter option when generating financial reports (although the charges themselves will still appear on the report if no Charge Category filter is used).

Accounting Considerations

When running financial reports, income will be split out first by the program and then into the Charge Categories used within that program. The Charge Category is the most descriptive item in financial reports.

Charge Categories are also used when billing class tuition to prevent duplicate charges. For this reason, it is important to come up with a naming structure for the Charge Categories which will be used for tuition tracking and it is vital that employees are trained to always use the appropriate charge category for the billing cycle/period when issuing charges manually from ledgers.

To prevent duplicate charges when billing from the Class Tuition Charges feature, it will review a customer's ledger for charges related to active enrollments within a specific time frame. If a charge is found on the ledger within that time frame with the same Charge Category being used for the class tuition charges task, the enrollment will be skipped when issuing charges and display an error message reading "Duplicate Charge Detected" in the Class Tuition Charges preview.