This article is the second step in our series on managing overseas trips using deposit payments, preference allocation, and quick charges. For a comprehensive overview, please refer to the first article in the series here. This method can also be adapted for any preference signups where parents are already aware of the dates and don't need a specific date on their calendar.
How to set up a preference container for the Overseas trip options:
- Select the Ignore day of week checkbox. This feature is designed for trips where parents already know the dates so the calendar doesn't matter too much. The trip will default to a Monday.
- Set the Number of Preferences up to a maximum of 5.
- Set the Activity Start and End Dates to the week when the trip will show in the calendar (this date range must include a Monday).
- Set the Sign up Opens and Closes Dates to the period of time that parents have to make their selections.
- If the trips are in the School holidays, don't use Organisation block dates as these dates will be blocked out.
- After the container is created, add in groups for each trip.
- Set the group's Availability but add a Prerequisite that the booker must be in the 'Deposit Paid' group that you have created previously. This stops parents from accessing the container to make selections until after they have paid their deposit.
- Add the cost of the next instalment for the trip that you would like to charge and select the cost type 'Per term/year'. All preference container billing is managed per term.
- If your finance team uses Billing codes, you could use these to group all the charges together by using the same code for each group, including the original deposit group.
- Open the sign up for parents to make selections. Once they have made their selections, follow the usual allocation process to allocate trips to students. With high value trips we recommend reviewing the Student Allocation Overview afterwards and making any manual adjustments you might need, for instance if a student has missed out on the trip they wanted last year and you would like to ensure they got their first choice this year.
- Add any additional information to the Generate Events screen and parents will see this in the confirmation email they receive. For instance, a due date by when the next instalment is due or a notice that all trip allocations are final.
- Due to the setting of the Ignore day of week, these trips will be generated on the first Monday of the activity period. The trip groups will show in Reception | Registers / Events and you can send communications to the trip group if information specific to the trip needs to be sent.
Please note that if you change the location of a group after events have been generated, this will not change the location of those events. You must update the location via Reception | Registers / Events. Kindly refer to the editing section on this article: Editing, Deleting or Cancelling an event.