Suspension / Freeze / Medical / Temporary Hold on Student Enrolment

There may be times where you need to place a Suspension / Freeze / Medical / Temporary hold on a student's enrolment - maybe they broke their arm and can't swim for 6 weeks; maybe they've had something come up meaning they can't get to lessons for a brief period of time; maybe they are away on holiday and want to delay starting for 4 weeks. They want to maintain their current lesson time but place lessons "on hold" for a set period of time. What do you do?

Essentially, this is just marking an attendance/absence as you normally would. But, you need to decide your centre's policies surrounding circumstances such as this. Do you keep the current spot held for the student for a set agreed time? If so, do you credit the lesson value back to the family and maybe charge a suspension fee, or do you only allow a make-up in place of the lessons (possibly exceeding your usual allowable number of make-up lessons)? These decisions will affect your actions in dealing with the situation.

1. Create a "Non-Attendance Reason" in your configuration. 

(Configuration --> Non-Attendance Reasons)

Call it something like "Temp Hold" or "Delay start" or "Medical credit" or "Suspension" or "Temporary Freeze" - whatever terminology works best for your centre (names can be up to 20 characters total including spaces). 

You can have more than one reason to give you the discretion of having different reasons for a hold, or giving a lesson credit or giving a make-up lesson, so you may need to call it "Temp Hold CREDIT" or "Temp Hold MU" to distinguish between them. (For example, a make-up means they will need to pay for the lessons to hold the place so this reason may be better for someone who is going on holiday, whereas a credit after payment may be more applicable for someone who has broken their arm).

It is a good idea to tick the "Notes Required" so you can put in the reason for the absence as it is out of the ordinary.

DO NOT tick the "Show in Customer Portal" reason as you do not want customers to be able to select these reasons themselves - this needs to be something discussed and agreed with you as it is different to the norm. 

Make the display order 100 so it appears at the bottom of your list as this is not a reason you should need to use very often.

2. Mark off your student's attendance with the Non-Attendance reason you have chosen for the situation. Do this for each of the lesson dates individually.

MAKE SURE to change the Effective Date at the bottom of the screen to match the Class Date at the top of the screen, particularly if you are issuing a credit and particularly if the family is on a Direct Debit Agreement.

DO NOT click on the "Credit and Cancel" button next to each attendance. When you use the "Credit and Cancel" function, it will remove (cancel) the enrolment for the dates specified which can result in overbooking as the student's place won't be held.

Tip: You won't be able to see the notes on an absence unless you click on "View All". The notes will also show on the Attendance section of the Class information.

You have now successfully updated an extended absence whilst maintaining the student's class enrolment.

Last updated 22 Jun 2023