Day-to-Day Operations

The counter: money in, charges out, and an account that always says what it owes.

Required Access

Cashier — Cashier

Topping up a POS card also needs Cashier POS Credits.

Finding an account

Every page in the module carries an account search box. It finds a financial account by its number, its name, or the name of a student on it — the last of those is usually the fastest, since a parent at the window gives you a child’s name.

The accounts list itself opens on Current: accounts with someone here this year. That is nearly always the right population.

The account page

An account opens on its Payments tab, and the header carries what you need before speaking to anyone: what it owes, whether anything is past due, where its contract stands, and any POS card balances.

Five tabs:

Tab	What is there
Payments	The ledger — every charge and payment, what is open, what is past due and by how long.
Payment Contract	This year’s contract: fees, discounts, schedule, signatures.
Journal	A notes timeline for the account.
POS	Card balance and store history. Shown with POS Credits access.
Profile	The account itself — code, name, type, status, and the people on it.

The Journal is staff notes, not accounting journal entries

It is where you record a conversation about a payment arrangement, not where accounting entries live. Those are in the Accounting module.

Reading the ledger

The ledger tabs are Open, Paid, All and History.

Two totals sit above them and they answer different questions. Due now is what the account is expected to have paid by today. Total owed is everything still outstanding, including installments not yet due. A family on a ten-month plan in September owes the year but is due one month of it.

The ledger is not limited to one school year

It shows the selected year plus everything still open in any other year. An unpaid installment from two years ago belongs on the screen that answers “what does this family owe”, so it is there — flagged as a prior year. Settled charges from other years are not on the ledger; they are on History.

History is the full record: every settled charge in every school year, this one included, newest first. A charge that is still open is not on it — that is what Open is for. To find every charge that included one particular fee, choose it in the Fee filter: the table then adds a column named for that fee showing only its share of each charge, and Amount becomes Total.

A Total row at the bottom of every ledger tab adds up the rows on screen, so it follows any filter or search you apply. On Open and All it also totals Balance — with nothing filtered, on Open that is the same figure as Total owed. On Payments it totals Amount and Credit.

Past-due charges carry a badge that escalates with age — 1–30 days, 31–60, 61–90, over 90 — the same boundaries the Outstanding Accounts report uses.

Receiving a payment

Receive Payment asks two independent questions: which charges this settles, and how much arrived and how.

The oldest open charge is ticked by default, since a family at the window is usually paying the installment that came due rather than the year. Tick more, or untick everything.

Then record what was handed over. A receipt carries a list of payment methods, not one — a family paying half in cash and half by card is a single receipt, not two. Each method has its own currency and its own reference field, relabelled to suit: check number, confirmation number, card voucher, payroll period. Cash has none.

Before you save, the window names the outcome:

Pays in full	The amount equals the selected charges.
Partial	Less than the total. Applied to the oldest charges first; the rest stays owing.
Credit	More than is owed. The difference is held as a credit on the account.
Prepayment	Nothing is owed at all. The whole amount becomes a credit.

Ticking nothing is an instruction, not a mistake

A receipt that settles no charge sits on the account as a credit until somebody decides what it is for. Clear the whole list and that is exactly what happens — the outcome line says so before you save. You can also set part aside as a credit and apply the rest.

Foreign currency is converted by the server at the rate on file for the payment date, and that rate is stored on the receipt. A later correction to the exchange table cannot restate a receipt a family is already holding. With no rate on file the receipt is refused rather than guessed — enter it under Accounting ▸ Currencies first.

Adding a charge

New Charge raises a charge outside the payment contract. The header carries a date and a description; each line bills one person for one fee.

The same dialog can sign a family up for an open registration — a mass charge whose author allows the front desk to add people. The price, wording and revenue account are already decided; you are only saying who. Signups are staged alongside the charge lines and committed by the same Save, so siblings can be decided as one act and Cancel really cancels.

Signing up and paying in one go

If the family is paying now, start from Receive Payment instead — the registration can be added there and settled on the same receipt.

Credits

An unapplied credit sits in the Available Credits panel until somebody places it.

Apply Credit puts it against one open charge. The amount defaults to everything that can go — the smaller of the credit and what the charge owes — so the ordinary case is one click. Typing a smaller number holds the rest back, which is what you want when the money is meant for next month’s installment or another child’s fee. Both consequences are named under the field before you commit: what stays on the credit, and what the charge still owes.

Transfer balance moves money between a student’s POS card and the financial account, in either direction. Each source is named with what it holds, because an account can carry a shared wallet, a wallet per student, and unapplied account credit at the same time, and they are not interchangeable — a child’s card balance was put there for that child.

A card balance below zero is shown as overdrawn rather than as empty. It is money the school is owed, and you cannot draw from it.

Money coming card-to-account settles the charges you tick, oldest first. Untick everything and it lands as a credit instead.

POS deposits

POS Deposit tops up a card from the account page. Choose whose balance it goes on, then say how it is being paid for:

• Paying for it now — the card is topped up and a receipt is issued. The account is left owing nothing.
• Charge it to the account — the card is topped up and the charge stays open. The account holder is emailed about it.

This needs Cashier POS Credits, not the cashier ladder: handing out spendable balance is a different act from receiving a payment.

Undoing things

Void receipt reverses a receipt in full: everything it paid goes back to owing, and any credit it left is removed. The receipt itself stays on the account marked void, so the receipt book still accounts for every number. A reason is recorded with it.

Some older receipts cannot be voided

Voiding needs a receipt that is a single identifiable object. Receipts imported from the legacy system were grouped by number, date and account — which is not an identity, since the same number appears on more than one date. Those rows offer no void action rather than a hopeful one.

Deleting a charge is possible only for a charge raised by hand, while nothing has been paid against it and it is not locked. Installments belong to the payment contract and are managed from its tab.

This is what you use to waive a late fee: an automatic late fee is its own charge, so dropping one is a single deliberate act rather than an edit to an installment the family has already been billed for.