With the release today of ClassJuggler v7.0.2 – which, as always, happens automatically for you (one of the big advantages of using an online service for your class-based business management software) — you, our customers, can expect to see many subtle but helpful changes.

Brand-new features in ClassJuggler

Bounce Back

Bounce Back is a new feature that allows you to navigate away from certain screens in ClassJuggler to do actions related to a given workflow or set of steps and then easily “bounce back” to where you were prior to taking that action.

What it will look like: A new Bounce Back button will appear on those related screens. Clicking the Bounce Back button teleports you all the way back to what you were doing before you started this offshoot action, automatically saving any changes or options/selections you made.

Over time, we will likely add the Bounce Back buttons in many places. Initially, you will see the feature from a Customer Portal order to a customer’s account, or to sending a confirmation statement to the customer, and then return back to the original order.

Batch Payment Processing

Where: Billing > Customer Payments: Batch Payment Processing

We mentioned this in our last release. Now, it will be available to all clients.

What you will see: You’ll see a new batch payment option on the Batch Payment Processing screen, which will give 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, instead of one:

• Process Customers – FULL BALANCES (the original way)
• Process Customers – SELECTED CHARGE ACCOUNTS (the new option)

Clicking the new SELECTED CHARGE ACCOUNTS button takes you to an intermediary screen where you select one or more accounts to include in the batch payment run.

if on this intermediary screen you select to, say, only collect on the charge accounts for “Tuition” and “Competition Fee,” only those types of charges would be paid.

Example: Let’s say, in this scenario, that 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.

Changes and Enhancements

Many existing features in ClassJuggler have been modified or improved. These include:

• • Customer Portal: Customer Policies – Added a second tab to the Customer Policies screen for viewing archived policies.
  • Customer > Maintenance Page 1 – The “auto-balance” feature has been removed.
    Customer > Maintenance Page 2 – The section displaying Policies & Agreements has been modified with tabs to allow viewing of only current or archived policies.
  • Customer > Transactions – Created a quick link to the Pre-Pay Billing screen from the Help and Tips Menu. The current customer will be selected when arriving at the pre-pay billing screen.
  • Student > Maintenance Page 2 – The section displaying Policies & Agreements has been modified with tabs to allow viewing of current or archived policies.
  • Events > Event Template Maintenance – Added more information to the description of policies when they are added to an event.
  • Billing > Auto-Balance Manager – This no-longer-needed feature has been removed.
  • Reports > Customer > Policies and Agreements – Report updated to allow for reporting on both current and archived policies. The policy selector now contains two sections for selecting current or archived policies. The selector also now notes the policy title, who it applies to, if mandatory or optional, and the ID# of the policy.
  • Tools > Customer Portal Orders: Pending Orders – The way orders are processed and reviewed now is much easier to see incoming pending orders by the customer (family) placing the order. This allows you to process an entire order as a unit rather than in bits and pieces as it was done in the past. Other new features on the pending orders includes special customer actions with the new “Bounce Back” feature.
  • Tools > Customer Portal Orders: Historical Orders –  The new Historical Orders screen make it much easier to review historical orders by the customer (family) who placed the order, now showing color-coded statistics about the order and which class requests were approved, wait listed, or canceled. Other new features on historical orders includes special customer actions with the new “Bounce Back” feature.
  • Tools > Customer Portal Orders: Items In Shopping Carts – The presentation of items in shopping carts (not checked out) has also been updated, now linking to a customer record, and shows a selected class as the item.
  • Tools > Web Site Tools > Shopping Cart Manager > Pending Classes > Enroll in Class – We improved the way pending orders are compared for priority when processing an order.
  • Preferences > Policies – The copy of the Policies screen has been improved, and now shows how a policy is used throughout ClassJuggler. The ID of the policy is also displayed for easier identification of a policy.
  • Preferences > Advanced Settings – Removed the option for customer defaults to be auto-balance, as it is no longer needed in the current version.

Several other minor bugs were fixed.

This new version affects all customers using any of the following:

• Swim ClassJuggler
• Cheer ClassJuggler
• ClassJuggler Dojo
• Dance ClassJuggler
• ClassJuggler Fitness
• ClassJuggler K12
• Music ClassJuggler
• ClassJuggler for Franchises

Any questions remaining? Simply contact us and we can answer your questions or walk you through it.

The stats are in; class-based businesses spend on average more than 35 hours a month on administrative tasks related to registering customers, creating student files, signing students up for class, and handling customer payments for fees. This video shows you how to cut those admin costs in half by letting customers do these things all by themselves:

The new Customer Portal from ClassJuggler can change the way you do business, and change the way your customers view you!  Learn more.

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.