Overview
Music Monitor allows you to bill for lessons in advance for a standard number of lessons. It also allows you to bill in arrears for only the lessons given, based on your Attendance records.
This process searches in your Attendance records and creates billing lines from the data in them. It is quick and easy but relies on the data being accurate.
Settings
You don't need to enable any settings to use this feature.
Note that Music Monitor allows you to use Attendance Codes that mark the student as absent but still count the lesson towards billing. The script in this billing process uses the Billing Count field, not the Attendance Count field. If your business process calls for that, see Set Up Attendance Codes for guidance.
Check Data Before Billing
The main part of this process is checking your data. Once you're happy with the data you're using, the billing is very quick.
Attendance Records Missed Last Time
You may have records that were left out of the billing last time you ran it. This could be because:
They weren’t marked when the billing was done.
They had inconsistent data in School Term.
Following this process carefully minimises that, but it's a good idea to check for gaps.
Go to Common Tasks > Roll-marking TUITION > Search for and view records.
On the search screen, enter a date range in Week Commencing (use the date range for the previous billing period) and enter "=" in Date Billed.
Select Continue, then check the displayed records.
If any records have a billing amount, they were missed in the previous billing run. In that case your process will probably be to run the Bill Tuition In Arrears steps (below) for that earlier period to create the missed billing lines first, and then come back to the current period.
Unmarked Roll Records
Roll records that are not marked do not calculate a Billing Count and therefore do not calculate a billing amount.
Go to Common Tasks > Roll-marking TUITION > Search for and view records.
On the search screen, enter a date range in the Week Commencing (use the date range for this billing period) and enter "=" in Attendance Code.
Select Continue, then check the displayed records.
Ideally, all unmarked records should be marked before continuing with the process. Any records marked after billing in arrears will not be included and may cause issues later.
Data in the School Term Field
The billing process looks for Attendance records based on the Term and Year information you enter. If the rolls were set up with incorrect Term information, they will not come up in the search, so the billing amounts calculated will be wrong.
Go to Common Tasks > Roll-marking TUITION > Search for and view records.
On the search screen, enter the date range for the billing period in Week Commencing
Select Continue.
Go to Scripts > Troubleshooting > Show All Fields (Attendance).
Check that all records have the same data in School Term (e.g. ‘Term 1’). If any are different, change them manually or do a replace in the entire group of records.
Bill Tuition in Arrears
Once you have checked your data, this is the process to create the billing lines.
Go to Common Tasks > Billing > Send Lessons Given to Accounts File.
Enter the search criteria to find the Attendance records you need to bill.
Usually, this will be Term/Semester and Year.
However, if billing can also be conducted for a different period using Week Commencing, a specific teacher using Staff ID, or a specific program using Lesson Type or Ensemble Name.
It can be helpful to enter "=" in Date Billed in order to exclude any attendance records that have already been billed.
The Billing Summary layout will display the lessons eligible to be billed, summarised by enrolment, along with their total value. The Total is the sum of the billing amount listed on the individual attendance records.
Selecting Attendance Record will display all attendance records in a non-summarised layout.
The Date Range of the displayed records will display regardless of the search criteria. If the search was made for a specific term, the dates should reflect the start and end dates of the term.
Where a student has received lessons of two different Lesson Types, the lessons will be displayed in two lines formatted without a gap between them (as with the student 'Bach Soon' in the image above).
A yellow highlight in Total indicates that the Lesson Count multiplied by Amount does not equal the Total (as with the student 'Anna Yu' in the image above). This indicates that there has been a change of lesson fee during the billing period, or that there was an error in the lesson fee listed on the enrolment for part of the billing period. The attendance records will likely need to be corrected.
Once the figures have been checked and approved, select the green Send to Accounts button to create billing lines in Student Accounts file. The script will omit any attendance records with a date in Date Billed or with '$0' as the Total. It will then enter the current date in Date Billed. (This means the script cannot double bill for a lesson, even if this process is run twice for the same time period.)
The imported line items will then be displayed for review. If there is an error, you can manually edit or delete a line item, or even safely delete the found set and start the process again.
Process for special funding arrangements
If you have special funding arrangements such as bursaries or scholarships to process, this will need to be done with attention to the lessons given. For more information see Bill Tuition Discounts in Arrears.