Create a Pricing Period for a Smart Fee

Smart Fees allow you to streamline the process of invoicing a student for their enrolment into a course. Pricing Periods allow you to set a period of time that fees are active. In this article, we will go over the process of creating a Pricing Period and attaching it to a Smart Fee.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• How Do Pricing Periods Work?
• Creating the Pricing Period
• Assigning the Pricing Period to a Smart Fee
• Seeing the Pricing Period in Action
• Rolling Smart Fees Into a New Pricing Period
  
  

How Do Pricing Periods Work?

On every Smart Fee, there are Start and End Date fields that can be used to determine a time period in which the fee can be used. If the current date is outside of this time period, the Smart Fee will not be useable. 

Pricing Periods streamline this by having an external item contain the two dates. You can assign the Pricing Period to a Smart Fee and the dates used in the Pricing Period will be inherited by the Smart Fee.

This can be useful for setting a lifespan for certain Smart Fees in your system and having a centralised place to edit the dates. 

Creating the Pricing Period

Pricing Periods for Smart Fees live in the Reference Data in your system. From the menu bar, go to Administration → Lookups → Reference Data. 

This will bring up the Reference Data entities in your system, find the Smart Fees Pricing Period item and click on it.

To add a new Pricing Period, click on the Plus button. 

• External ID: The Pricing Period can have an External ID to help with identification
• Name: The name for the Pricing Period, it will be displayed on any Smart Fees that the Pricing Period is attached to. 
• Colour: Colour for the Pricing Period tag displayed on Smart Fees when it has been applied.
• Approved Status: Status for the Pricing Period, having this set to Approved will allow the Pricing Period to be attached to a Smart Fee.
• Effective From: This can be thought of as the Start Date for the Pricing Period
• Effective To: This can be thought of as the End Date for the Pricing Period
• Min Enrolment Start: If a date is set here, Smart Fees with this Pricing Period applied will only display for enrolments after the date.
• Max Enrolment Start: If a date is set here, Smart Fees with this Pricing Period applied will only display for enrolments before the date.

Once you have entered the details for the Pricing Period, click on the Save button. 

Assigning the Pricing Period to a Smart Fee

Now that you have a Pricing Period, it can be assigned to a Smart Fee. Go to Administration → Finance → Smart Fees Library.

Click on the Smart Fee that you would like to change and click on the Edit button.

The Pricing Period can be assigned in the Pricing Period field, this will automatically apply the Effective From and Effective To dates on that Smart Fee. 

Seeing the Pricing Period in Action

Now that you've assigned the Pricing Period to a Smart Fee, it should only be available when the current date falls between the dates set on the Pricing Period.

For example, applying a Pricing Period effective within the year of 2023 to a Smart Fee will ensure that it can only be applied to enrolments processed during that year.

This Smart Fee has the 2023 Pricing Period applied. The Start and End dates have been inherited from the Pricing Period, as indicated by the purple text and circle.

As a result, the Smart Fee will only be available on enrolments made during the year 2023. 

Rolling Smart Fees Into a New Pricing Period

Smart Fees can be rolled over annually to maintain pricing consistency for the next year. Follow the steps below to create a new Pricing Period and copy the existing fees into it:

Access the Smart Fee Pricing Periods section by navigating to Administration → Lookups → Reference Data → Smart Fee Pricing Periods.

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Click on the Add button to create a new Pricing Period for the upcoming year

Make sure the Approved Status is set to New, otherwise you will not be able to select it as an option when copying the fees.

Go to Administration → Finance → Smart Fees Library to access the Smart Fees Library.

In the Smart Fees Library, select the fees that you want to copy over to the new Pricing Period. You can do this by clicking on the Bulk Actions button and selecting checkboxes next to the respective fees.

Click on the dropdown menu and choose the Copy option.

Select the newly created Pricing Period from the list of available options. Click on the Perform Bulk Copy button to copy over all the fees into the new Pricing Period.

After copying the fees, you have the option to make any necessary changes to the fees within the new Pricing Period. This allows you to adjust fees as needed before the new period is released.

Once you have made the desired edits and reviewed the fees, set the Approved Status of the new Pricing Period to Approved.

By setting the Approved Status to Approved, you are releasing the Smart Fees for the upcoming year, and they will be applied accordingly to enrolments in that year.