First of all, why can it be a problem? Here are a few important differences from the other KI curricula for which YV is currently optimised. They all stem from the fact that ABC is structured in 4 week units:
- Signing up continuing students every month can be a burden
- There is no set session start and end if you run an ongoing program where students join and drop at will
- Long sessions with multiple months show the entire cost, and may cause "sticker shock"
- Classes at Daycares are usually restricted to children attending the daycare
We have some plans to change the way sessions and pricing are handled to make this much simpler, but these will not be available until after YourVirtuoso 2.0, so here is one option we came up with to handle a daycare ABC program with rolling monthly enrollment:
- Set up a new session for the classes starting when your program starts and ending at some logical point in the distant future such as the end of the school year. DO NOT ACTIVATE this session so that will not appear on your website.
- Set up the ABC classes in this session picking all the units that you will teach over this extended period. If you charge $50 per month, split as $15 materials and $35 tuition, set the materials packages to $15 incl tax (if you do it in the curriculum, you wont have to do it for each class you add), and set the tuition to be $35 * the number of units you will teach over this period (e.g if your session was 9 months long, set the tuition to $315). Set up a pricing plan to take $50 deposit and spread the balance over the session in monthly payments. Test enroll someone to check that it sets the monthly fees to $50, and adjust dates to make it work if not. You can activate these classes (not the session).
- In your currently active session (eg Fall 07) set up an ABC class for the unit you are about to start with the appropriate start and end dates etc. Price it at $35, materials $15. Activate it and it will appear online for parents to register in. Market to/through the daycare asking parents to sign up online for this class and store their credit cards, and let them know they will stay enrolled until they advise you they want to drop.
- When the enrollment period for this months class is over, mark it completed, remove the students from this class (creating a credit) and add them to the ongoing class. Make a payment to apply their $50 credit to the first (deposit) on the ongoing class.
- You now have these students all set for the rest of the year. If they drop out, modify their tuition (was $315) to what they actually took, and modify the materials that they will not be getting to $0 (ideally set up a dummy "no materials" package for this curriculum so your materials report counts them correctly)
- For new students, add a class(es) in your current session every month for the current unit, and set the class size to be the spaces you have left. At the end of the enrollment period, move them to the ongoing class as before, but adjust tuition and materials to reflect their late start in the session.
As I said, we are working on simplifying this process! In the mean time do you have a better way of handling it anyone?
Gerry
