Overview

Fees for most billable activities in Music Monitor are recorded in the Fees file. When you create a new activity record (such as an enrolment), you assign it a fee from the list you have prepared. Music Monitor looks up the amount to be charged by referring to current amounts listed in the Fees file.

Records in the Fees file need to be assigned a Fee Category. Tuition fees must be assigned the category "Tuition" so that they will appear as an option when you're setting up a Tuition enrolment. Ensemble fees must be assigned the category "Ensembles/Classes". It also determines which page they appear on when viewing the Fees file (described in more detail below).

You can also assign an Account Category, which is a label for use in reporting. The categories are set in the Account Codes file. You can also give the records in this file other attributes to help in budgeting and reporting. 

Account Codes

These codes help you categorise your accounts lines for reporting.

To manage these codes to go Home > Setup Files > Account Codes

The Account Codes file looks like this.

  • Category - This field is essential. There are some pre-set ones such as "Ensembles" and "Tuition", and you can create others as you choose.
  • Account Code / Cost Centre - Optional field. You can use this field to link these Categories to Cost Centres in the Budgets module. See Manage Budgets for guidance.
  • GL Code - Optional field. This allows you, for example, to assign the same GL codes that you use in your accounting system, so that when line items are exported they already have their respective GL codes attached.
    • Few reports include this field, so we generally recommend that you only use it if you're already using the Account Code field for another code and need this additional code as well.
  • GST Tag - If you set this to "Yes", any line item that has this Category will have GST added at the time of billing.
  • Late Fee Tag - If you set this to "Yes", any line item that has this Category will be picked up in Late Fee calculations you perform on the invoice it is connected to.
  • Early Discount Tag - If you set this to "Yes", any line item that has this Category will be picked up in Early Bird Discount calculations you perform on the invoice it is connected to.
  • See Early Bird & Late Fee Setup for guidance on these.

Fees

The Fees table is found at Home > Setup Files > Fees.

Private Tuition Fees

The file opens on the Private Tuition Fees tab, which displays all the fee records that have "Tuition" as their Category.

The fields in this file:

  • Fee Category - This must be set to "Tuition" in order that this fee type appears in this list and in the options when setting up a new Tuition enrolment. 
  • Lesson Type - This is the name that you will choose from when assigning this fee to a Tuition enrolment. 
  • Lesson Length - In the format hh:mm, this tells the schedule and calendar what booking length to allow for this lesson. 
  • Lesson Fee - The cost you are charging per lesson. This field is the place to enter your fee amount.
    • This displays as a dollar figure, but you should just enter a number.
    • You can use many decimal places, if needed, to ensure that it gives the correct total when multiplied by the number of lessons per Billing Period. 
  • No of Lessons per BP - How many lessons you charge for each time you bill. If you bill each term, this is the expected standard number of lessons per term. 
  • No of Lessons per RP - Music Monitor has a reconciliation process that calculates how many lessons were given (or billable) in comparison with how many were billed. 
    • If you reconcile every billing period, the two numbers should be equal. 
    • If you reconcile every year, this should be the standard expected number of lessons per year. 
    • See Billing Period and Reconciliation Period for more guidance.
  • Additional charges - If you charge an additional fee per term for every enrolment (of this lesson type, anyway), for example a cost for a book or other resource, enter it here. 
  • Total Fee - The lesson fee, multiplied by the No. of Lessons BP, plus any Additional Charges.
    • This is a calculation, you cannot enter this figure directly.
  • Staff Pay Per Lesson (per student) - The Staff Load Per Lesson multiplied by the Hourly Rate.
    • This is a calculation, you cannot enter this figure directly.
  • Staff Pay Total - The Staff Pay Per Lesson multiplied by the No of Lessons per BP.
    • This is a calculation, you cannot enter this figure directly.
  • Staff Load Per Lesson (per student) - In the format hh:mm, the amount of time the teacher will be paid for this lesson. 
    • NOTE: In a shared lesson, this amount will be paid for EACH STUDENT, so it needs to be set so that for all students combined it adds up to the Lesson Length.
    • For example, 3 students sharing a 45-minute lesson would have 00:15 entered in this field, so that all 3 combined add up to 00:45. 
    • You therefore need separate Lesson Types set up depending on how many students are sharing the lesson.
  • Hourly Rate - The pay per hour for this teaching. 
    • This displays as a dollar figure, but you should just enter a number. 
  • Account Category - As described in the section above. 

Ensemble Fees

The file opens on the Private Tuition Fees tab, and you can then select Ensemble Fees from the black top bar.

The fields are as above, except that: 

  • Fee Category must be set to "Ensembles/Classes".
  • Session Fee is used in place of Lesson Fee.

Discounts

The file opens on the Private Tuition Fees tab, and you can then select Discounts from the black top bar.

The fields are:

  • Fee Category - This must be set to "Discount".
  • Discount Description - The name you will look for when choosing the discount for an enrolment.
  • Discount Type - Choose an option.
    • Percentage: The discount will be calculated as a percentage of the total enrolment fee that it applies to.
    • Fixed: The discount will be a set amount in dollars, regardless of the value of the enrolment fee it applies to.
  • Amount OR % - Enter a number here.
    • If you have selected a percentage discount, this number will be the percentage applied.
    • If you have selected a fixed discount, this number will be the dollar value applied.
  • Account Category - as described above.

Instrument Hire

The file opens on the Private Tuition Fees tab, and you can then select Instrument Hire from the black top bar.

The fields are:

  • Fee Category - This must be set to "Instrument Hire".
  • Hire Description - The name you will look for when allocating a fee to a hire record.
    • You can include free hire (i.e. loan) options here too, if you want to record these in the same system.
  • Amount - The hire fee you will bill the student, each time you bill (see the next field below).
  • Note - This is usually used to note for yourself whether this is a per-term fee or a per-year fee, etc.
    • The text in this note will be picked up in a mail merge Hire Agreement Letter, so you can merge it directly into a sentence in the letter, e.g. "The cost for this hire will be $30.00 per term".
    • This field does not automate anything to do with billing. You still need to bill the correct hires at the correct times.
  • Account Category - as described above.

Miscellaneous

This is where you record fees for any other items that you wish to be able to bill for ad hoc as they come up.

The file opens on the Private Tuition Fees tab, and you can then select Miscellaneous from the black top bar.

The fields are:

  • Fee Category - This must be set to "Miscellaneous".
  • Account Category - As described above.
    • When you wish to apply a miscellaneous charge to one or more students, the first field you will need to choose is this category field, so it's best to set up and use a smallish number of clearly named categories to list these fees under.
  • Description 1 - This is the text that will show on the line item charged to the student.
    • In applying the fee, once you have selected a Category, this field will give you options of all the records that have that category assigned.
  • Description 2 - You may have multiple different fees with the same Description 1, differentiated by the entry in Description 2.
  • Amount - This will display as a dollar figure, but you should enter a number.

Other Fees

The other options you can see in this file are Excursion Fees and Workshop Fees. These fees are not stored in this separate file but are written directly in the Excursion or Workshop records themselves, so the buttons from this page take you to the respective files to set up a new record.

For guidance, see:

Relookup

One important thing to be aware of is that in Music Monitor, most records that are created using data in other files do so by reading what is currently listed and writing that value as a new record in the other file. This means:

When you update fees, it does not automatically update the places where those fees have been applied.

It's good that it doesn't happen automatically, because it means you can update your fees for the subsequent year without affecting the records for this year that you have in place.

When you want to push the update to all your current records, you need to use the Relookup button that is found on the Tuition, Ensemble, and Instrument Hire fee pages.

This button runs a script that looks up the fee by name (Lesson Type, Fee Description, or Hire Description in the respective lists) in all the current student activity (enrolment or hire) records and applies the values in the other fields to entries that have that name.

There is a separate script behind each of the three buttons, so you can run the Relookup on tuition fees without affecting the ensemble fees, for example.

Note that the number of lessons or sessions is also updated when you run this script. If you have some records set up with non-standard values in those fields, they will be over-written with the default values. This is helpful if you run it at the start of the year, because everyone will generally need to be reset to the default value anyway. But if you're running it at another time, you need to take care to note down and later re-correct the ones that should not be the standard value.