One of the nice things about using ClassJuggler software to simplify the business of running your business is that you never need to download software updates – it’s all online, and all upgrades happen automatically. We periodically upgrade the product to add new features or enhance old ones. Here’s a quick summary of…
Key product improvements from our November 9 update
First, you’ll see a new privilege has been set up for the new Database Maintenance tool.
Second, in the menu path Billing > Customer Payments, you’ll now see a new item: Batch Payment Processing. We’ve added a new batch payment option that gives you much greater control over what types of transactions you will collect payments for when processing batch payments. There are now two batch action buttons:
- Process Customers – FULL BALANCES (the original way)
- Process Customers – SELECTED CHARGE ACCOUNTS (the new option)
Clicking the new button takes you to a secondary screen where you will select one or more accounts that will be included in the batch payment run.
For example, if you select to only collect on the charge accounts for “Tuition” and “Competition Fee,” only those types of charges get paid.
Let’s say a customer has a balance due of $400.00. This includes $100 in tuition, $40 for registration fees, $60 for merchandise, and $200 for competition fees. After running the batch payment collection, this customer’s credit card would only be billed for $300: the $100 in tuition and $200 in competitions fees on their account. The remaining charges on their account would stay unpaid.
Another new item: Tools > Database Maintenance. This new tool allows an administrator at your school to perform a variety of database maintenance tasks. This tool will develop over time to offer additional maintenance features as those capabilities are identified. The first two features are:
- Student Measurements Reset
- Customer Balance Re-Calculator
The measurements tool allows an administrator to reset all student measurements so that they can be entered fresh.
The Customer Balance Re-Calculator tool allows an administrator to verify and re-calculate all customer balances in order to fix any balances in error (rare, but it can happen).
More Changes and Enhancements
Home Base – We’ve added two new alerts to the Action Center: Customer Portal migration alert (temporary alert to assist with migration notifications), and Customer Portal Fixed Registration End Date alert (which will tell you if your fixed end date is in error or expired).
Customer Portal – We made minor improvements to wording in field labels and help screens to clarify information.
Customer Portal > Billing > Make a Payment – Customers can now provide their own payment descriptions. A default description will appear but can be edited by the customer.
Customer > Customer Transactions – Credit and debit payments now have more simplified details, showing:
- What credit or debit card, how the card info was captured (on-file, manual entry, or swiped)
- If the payment came from the Customer Portal
- Transaction ID from the gateway.
Customer Portal payments now also have a second description always coded “Customer online card payment” for ease of identification.
Class > Attendance > Manage Regular Attendance – The attendance system is smarter now. For example:
- If a class has not yet started, it will select the first class date as the attendance date instead of selecting the current day and time.
- Manage attendance now checks to make sure you do not attempt to add attendance entries before the class begin date and time or after the class end date and time. This also works when adding special attendance entries like Try-Outs (Drop-In) and Make-Ups.
- We’ve expanded the class date selector to show up to 24 weeks of classes surrounding the current date (up from 12).
Student > View Attendance – Expanded the initial period viewed from 1 month to 12 months. You can also now view up to three years at a time of special attendance entries.
Billing > Customer Payments: Manual – Clicking on a customer row with a future balance now only populates the current balance due in the amount field instead of the current + future balance amounts. This is to help prevent payments being made against future transactions which causes the display and calculations for a customer account to display incorrect information.
Billing > Customer Payments: Batch – We removed the option to collect balances based on future balances. This was causing balances to be displayed incorrectly, based on how the payments were applied. A change to how payments are made against future transactions will be made in a later upcoming release.
Tools > Customer Portal Manager – We added edits for the Sign In Page address and social media links to ensure the URL is a valid web address.
Help and Links Menu – This is an ongoing project, with this current release having the following edits:
- Updated the online help menu to display all text in green to follow the interface coloring standards for help.
- Restyled the help menu to be smoother for high resolution retina displays.
- Began process of replacing help menus on all screens with new version.
We hope you enjoy the new enhancements! If you have questions about any of these, please feel free to contact us, and we can walk you through the relevant new processes.
ClassJuggler 