We wrote some time back about our Standard Charges feature. Here’s the original article:

https://blog.quickschools.com/2013/08/28/standard-charges-for-discounts/

We think it’s worth noting again on the philosophy behind the QuickSchools implementation of Standard Charges, and how schools can customize how students are charged periodically based on specific conditions for the student.

What is a Standard Charge?

A standard charge is basically the ability to apply a specific charge en masse to a group of students. This includes charges as well as credits and discounts.

Standard charges are most applicable in situations where you have different charges for students with siblings, or students of staff, or students with parents from the military, etc. Basically, if there’s ever a case to provide a discount based on some condition, you could use our “Standard Charge” feature to facilitate charge of fees to that student.

How to Create and Customize a Standard Charge?

To create a standard charge, go to the “Standard Charges” sub-menu (under the main “Fees Tracking” menu). From there, click on “Add Standard Charge”. You can then create items (or a fee structure) to the standard charge.

Customization of the Standard Charge is done when you “Apply” the charge. When you click “Apply”, there is an option to “Preview & Customize”:

Using this feature, you can further refine how charges are applied to specific students. You can remove charges from the original Standard Charge, as well as create new charges specific to a student:

We usually recommend creating custom transactions to denote a discount, as opposed to deleting the original transaction, and creating a new one.

How to Apply a Standard Charge?

Once you’re satisfied with how the customizations for a standard charge, you can then freely apply the charge as often as you like. The thing to note here is that your customization is saved in the system for future use.

Tips / Philosophy

The philosophy behind the Standard Charges lies within the customization. Basically, there are just so many ways for a school to apply a discount / fee. So instead of building rules behind each scenario, we’ve instead allowed schools to very granularly edit how individual students get charged via the Standard Charges customization.

We recommend having one Standard Charge for just your charges which can remain the same all year round. And then create a second Standard Charge specifically for discounts being applied. That way, you can very easily review what discounts are current, and make changes over time. You can also describe the reasons for the discounts (i.e. sibling discount, military discount, staff discount, etc).

The important thing to note is that the customization is done once at the beginning, and you can re-apply the standard charge as necessary. If the circumstances or situation changes for a particular student, you can always go back to the Standard Charge and edit the customization to reflect the latest rules / conditions around application of fees and discounts.

If you need help with Standard Charge, please feel free to chat in.