The Book Bag : Configuration

Tips from a Troubleshooter: Using Billing Cycles to Go Back to the Future

Sean Long — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 14:25:00 GMT

Once upon a time, end of year procedures involved copying your products and billing items. The Copy utility was great, it had a lot of cool features, and it would make your life a lot easier if it was correctly used. Think of it as the DeLorean of processes. It has stainless steel body work, beautiful gull-wing doors, and an attitude to match!

Like the DeLorean, the Copy utility had problems getting anywhere efficiently, and sometimes you had to pop the hood and take a good hard look at the whatsit. So we created a new way to handle your end of year procedures: The Billing Cycle.

The Billing Cycle is the Back to the Future version of the Copy utility. You load up the Mr. Fusion, hit 88 miles an hour, and you're done!

Billing Cycles are basically a way to keep track of your dates. They define a cycle of billing in the database. This could be your fiscal year or any other period of time you need to count as a cycle (one customer I spoke to copies billing items each semester).

For example, to set up your fiscal year as a billing cycle, go to Configuration, Billing Cycles, and set it up so that 2009-2010 has a start date of 07/01/2009 and an end date of 06/30/2010.

The beauty of the Billing Cycle is that you can associate 3 things with it:

Application Restrictions
Products and Billing Items
Bill Codes

This way, when you copy your Billing Cycle from 2009-2010 to 2011-2012, you copy all of those items. Thus, you've gone Back to go to the Future!

The only additional work left is adjusting fee amounts and repairing the Flux Capacitor.

Have a creative way you've used Billing Cycles? I'd love to hear it! Leave a comment below!

Tips from a Troubleshooter: Generate Transactions Automatically

Sean Long — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 18:55:00 GMT

In Customer Support, I've learned once June rolls around, we start seeing more questions around one specific process - Generating Transactions Automatically. Here's a break down of the Generate Transactions Automatically screen:

This screen is divided into two main sections: The criteria and the Billing Schedule section. The criteria establish when you are generating transactions and what sort of transactions you are generating. In the Generate drop-down, there are several choices: Automatic Billing Schedules and Scheduled Charges/Credits, Automatic Billing Schedules Only, and Scheduled Charges/Credits Only. It's important to understand them.

Automatic Billing Schedules are sets of transactions that will appear on the Activity tab during the next year. A good example of this schedule type is a Tuition Payment Plan, when a parent might want to spread out payments over a long period of time. Scheduled Charges/Credits Only tells the system to read from the established Billing Schedules.

The bottom section is only available when you create Automatic Billing Schedules, as it simply defines what the Billing Schedule item, including the schedule's Transaction Date, and whether or not items without bill codes should be included.

Here are some troubleshooting tips:

Filters, they're your friends - Generate Transactions Automatically is a massive process. Whether you are generating transactions for the entire year in July or month-to-month, filter them into manageable groups. Use grade levels (if you're student-centric) or portions of the alphabet. This keeps the processing time short, and you'll be able to catch mistakes easier because you're not looking at large groups of records.
Pre-Generate first -It's very tempting to skip this if you're confident, but personally, I'd take a few extra minutes reviewing a Pre-Generation report rather than spend hours correcting records.
Know your options - If you're running Generate Transactions Automatically at the beginning of the fiscal year for all records and transactions, include Automatic Billing Schedules. If these schedules are already on the records, why make the system work harder (and longer) than it needs to? Run it for Scheduled Charges/Credits only and you'll save some processing time!
Save parameters - Once you invest the time in setting up the perfect monthly Generate Transactions Automatically parameter, save it! You can't select it again in Student Billing Processing, but you can select it any other way (for instance, through Administration > Generate Transactions Automatically).
Receive an exception? Check Knowledgebase - If you get an exception or other message you don't understand while running this process, search Knowledgebase. There are numerous solutions, including How To Troubleshoot Generate Transactions Automatically, so check it out!

I hope these tips help! Have any tips to share regarding this? Leave a comment or post on our Forums!

New In 7.78: The Duplicate Phone Type Exception Report

Katie Infinger — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 13:59:00 GMT

Scenario: You're in version 7.77, cleaning up phone type table entries in preparation for integrating with The Raiser's Edge. After meeting with the Development Office folks, you decide to keep Cell as the phone type to describe mobile numbers. While you're scoping out the Phone Types table, you notice three entries, Cell #, Cell, and Cell phone. No worries, you can just use the Table Cleanup to combine the Cell # and Cell phone entries. Suddenly you receive the error, "Cell # could not be replaced because it would result in duplicate rows."

Oh, snap! Your day just got interesting. You're up for the investigation to find those pesky records preventing your school from proceeding with integration plans. Go, go, gadget query! Because phone numbers are linked to addresses, you must create queries for every address, and on top of that, there are multiple table entries to clean up, so you find yourself running variations of the same query. You can use the Ask operator to prevent query build-up but eventually, you wind up with a pile of queries, no results, and no mystery resolution.

Those days are over! In version 7.78, an exception report is automatically created when a phone type table entry cannot be deleted or replaced. The exception report lists the records causing the exception so you can easily fix the phone numbers and get those duplicate phone types out of your database! Wowsers! Want to learn about all the new features in version 7.78? Check out The Education Edge 7.78 Update Guide.

Hide and Seek with Fields

Katie Infinger — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 17:48:00 GMT

After playing numerous games of hide and seek with my nieces and nephews over the holidays, I realized you can play this game in your Education Edge database. If fields are hidden on records, you can find them without looking behind the sofa or in a cupboard. You can also hide any unused fields to declutter your records' tabs. So cover your eyes, count to ten, and get ready to hide (and seek) unused fields!

In Configuration, click fields and highlight the appropriate record type or section on the record.
To hide the fields, mark the Hidden checkbox beside the field. Note that checkboxes highlighted in yellow can't be marked.
In Records, open the record to the tab where the field used to be and is no longer there.

Ready or not, here I come! To find the field, unmark the Hidden checkbox beside the field.

Other fun things you can do on the Configuration, Fields screen

Mark the Required checkbox to ensure the field must contain an entry before the record is saved.
Rename fields on records by entering a new name in the Display as column. Renaming a field changes the name in all areas of the program.
Make fields into lookup fields by marking the Lookup checkbox. Lookup fields allow users to select from values you enter which standardizes data entry and increases database consistency.