Simply adding an extra lesson to the teacher's schedule is covered at Add Additional Lessons. 

This article is about managing the parental permission for giving a student additional lessons beyond what has been billed. 

Overview 

Music Monitor has a function to email parents requesting permission to give extra lessons in the term, and to record their response. 

If you generally bill for all weeks in the term and then adjust later for any cancelled lessons, this is not the function for you. 

But if you bill for fewer weeks than the full term, in anticipation of cancellations, and you want to manage the cases where students have the opportunity to fit in more lessons, this function was built for you. 

Students Approaching Quota

Music Monitor keeps a tally of lessons given and a figure to reconcile against. (See Billing Period and Reconciliation Period for detail.) 

When a student's lesson tally is 2 less than the reconciliation amount, the tally number on the roll will display in orange. 

This is visible to the tutors and to the administrators. 

If the allowable lesson count is exceeded, this number will turn red. 

Email to Seek Permission

When a student is approaching their quota of lessons, you can trigger an email to the family seeking permission for more lessons. 

  • First select the Extra Lessons button

  • Then select the Send email requesting permission button

Once the script is run, the date will be entered in that field, and the Extra Lessons button will display in orange. 

This is not visible to the tutor. 

Record Responses 

When you receive a reply to the email, come back to the roll, select the Extra Lessons button again, and tick the relevant Permission response. 

  • If you tick "Yes", the button will change to green. 
  • If you tick "No", the button will change to red. 

This colour is also visible to the tutor. 

Edit the Email Template

To edit the template, go to Attendance Roll > Settings > View/Edit Email Template 

That opens an editing window like this. 

It will have default sample text similar to the above unless you edit it. 

Note that what you see in this window is a calculation that will produce the content of an email. You can edit the text within the " " signs freely, but take care with elements outside of those signs. 

  • Select the Hints button for a guide to how this window works. 
  • Select the Preview button to see how the text will look in an email. 
  • Contact our support team for help if needed. We can craft this message for you quickly and easily. 

Setting

You may note, in the Settings image above, that there is also a setting for whether lessons are to be reconciled per year or per term (or semester). 

If you set this to "Year", the number used will be the Year column, which totals all lessons given this year. Otherwise, it will use the Term/Sem column, which totals the lessons given in the period the term or semester the roll falls in. 

The image below is taken in August, when the totals for the year are much higher than for the semester. 

The Billed Lessons column displays the No of Lessons (RP) in the relevant Tuition Enrolments record.

It's important that you keep this updated: if you adjust a student's billing to increase or decrease the number of lessons they've paid for, you should increase or decrease this number on their enrolment record accordingly, so that the reconciliation is happening against the correct number. 

Bill the Extra Lessons 

Once extra lessons are approved, you can select "Yes" to allow them to be given, and then at the end of term use the process at Billing Tuition Lesson Adjustments to calculate the extra charges and send them to the Accounts file. 

Alternatively, if permission is given for a specified number of extra lessons but not more, you can do the following: 

  • Open the Tuition Enrolment record 
  • Change the No. Lessons BP to the number of extra lessons allowed 
  • Select the Send to Accounts button to bill for these extra lessons only 
  • Increase the No. Lessons RP entry to include the extra lessons allowed, so the roll will show the student having more lessons available 
  • Under the Extra Lessons button, set the permission to "No" so that it shows no permission to go beyond the new figure. 

Prevent Extra Lessons If Not Permitted 

In general, the colour coding on the rolls that alerts the tutors when a student has completed their allotted lessons and when permission for extra lessons is denied should be enough to prevent additional lessons being delivered. 

If further certainty is required: 

  • After the rolls are generated for the upcoming week, locate the students who should not be given a lesson (by the red colour coding on their lesson tally) and pre-mark their Attendance record with the code you use to represent "No lesson scheduled". 
  • Lock the Attendance record after pre-marking so the tutor cannot change how it is marked.