This article is the second step in our series of how to manage Overseas Trips using deposit payments, preference allocation and quick charges. For a full overview see the first article in the series here. You can adapt this method for any preference signups where parents already know the date and don't need a solid date in their calendar.
Next, set up a preference container for the Overseas trip options:
- Select the Ignore day of week button. This feature has been 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 & 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 (after which you will allocate places).
- If the trips are in the School holidays, don't use Organisation block dates as these dates will be blocked out.
Next add 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.
- Now parents will make their selections. Once they have made their selections, follow the usual allocation process to allocate trips to students. With such high value trips we recommend reviewing the Student Allocation Overview tab afterwards and making any manual adjustments you might need, for instance if a student has missed out on the activities 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.
- Because the Ignore day of week flag has been set, the trips will be generated on the first Monday of the activity period. The groups can be seen here in the registers and communications can now be sent 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 created, this will not change the location of those events. This must be completed as well but the location can be bulk changed for all future events at once.
Please read the Editing part of this article for more information about how to do this: Editing, Deleting or Cancelling an event