Negative Make-up Balances Explained

This article explains how/why a student can have a negative make-up balance or why they may have a make-up balance of 0 when they have been awarded a make-up for a non-attendance.

How does a negative balance happen?

The two most common causes of a negative make-up balance on a student are:

- bulk expiry of manually added make-ups or, more commonly,  

- a change to an attendance.

There may have been an instance where a non-attendance was marked, a make-up was given for this non-attendance, the make-up was booked / used, but then the original attendance was changed back to something that removed the make-up resulting in a lower make-up balance than expected or occasionally a negative make-up balance.

Why is their balance 0 if they were awarded a make-up?

The student would have had a negative make-up balance prior to the awarding of the make-up.

What does a negative balance mean?

Essentially, it means that a student has had X number of extra lessons without payment. If their make-up balance was -1, that means one extra free lesson. 

How do I fix this?

First you need to decide if you want to bring their make-up balance back to 0 (or higher) or if you want to leave it as is to right itself and explain to the family what has happened and why you are not changing it. One could argue that it doesn't need to be fixed. The negative balance is an accurate result of what has happened with their attendances / non-attendances. You can track where they have received the extra lesson and clearly explain this to them. If they did not attend the make-up linked to that original attendance, you may decide to rectify their make-up balance.

If you decide that you do want to bring their make-up balance back to 0, there are two ways to do this.

Option 1

1. Click "View All" on the Attendance section on Student's screen. Find where the error has occurred - this will usually be marked with a bold note "Original Attendance does not allow Makeup". Refer to EXAMPLE below.

2. Click on "Audit Log" next to that prompt to determine the original lesson date. 

3. Go to that original lesson date and change the attendance to something that awards a make-up.

4. Check the make-up balance on the Family screen (refresh the screen if needed). 

You will need to repeat the process for each attendance if the balance was more than -1.

This will correctly fix the balance and it will not revert back to negative unless the same scenario happens again in the future.

NOTE: There may be instances where the original attendance is no longer on the family file due, for example, to an enrolment that was ended had dates changed and that attendance removed (e.g. a credit and cancel). In this case, you may need to go with Option 2. 

Option 2

You can manually add the required number of make-ups back on to the student from the family screen using the green + button.

NOTE: Using this option, if you manually expire make-ups by bulk then make sure that you tick the "Do not expire manually added Make-up credits". If you do not tick the box, the negative balance will return because the original attendance was not changed.

EXAMPLE

Cindy Smith has a make-up balance of -1.

Looking at "View All" in her Attendance, there is a red X with a bold prompt "Original Attendance does not allow Makeup".

If you click on "Audit log" next to this bold prompt, you can trace what happened. The top section under "INSERT" shows the original attendance details. This was the creation of the original attendance record when billing was run or when the student was enrolled into this class (insert date of 27/04/2023). It shows the original class date was 10/05/2023.

Any updates to this attendance show beneath this - when a class is marked as Attended or Non-Attended and any changes to this are shown under UPDATE, followed by the date and time. If there is a Username in the next box, this was completed by a member of staff through the SimplySwim application. If it is blank, the source was through the customer portal by the family.

In this example:

1. On 9/5/23 a staff member marked the student's 10/5/23 lesson with a non-attendance reason that awarded a make-up. This added a make-up to the student.

2. The make-up was then booked through the portal by the family for the 15/5/23. This removed the make-up from the student.

3. The original 10/5/23 attendance was then changed back to "Not recorded/Blank" (null) by a staff member on 9/5/23. This action removed the originally awarded make-up. Because the make-up had already been booked, this created the negative 1 balance.

4. The original attendance was then marked as Attended by a staff member on 11/5/23.  

If we update the Original attendance to something that awards a make-up (you may want to create a Non-Attendance Reason to use in this occasion), you can see that the bold prompt is gone and the original attendance has changed. In this case we created a reason where a note was required for tracking. Again the Audit Log is updated with the latest change. The student make-up balance is now back to 0.

For further information, you can also refer to this article:

Make-up Class Balance / Bookings - Troubleshooting

Last updated: 3 July 2023