eBECAS Admissions

Index

The purpose of this documentation is to provide assistance in the entry of students, offers and enrolment details into eBECAS.

Entering a student

While you can enter a student, please ALWAYS check first the student has not already been entered, as the student may already have studied at your College before. You can enter a student without allocating a course of study.

1. With eBECAS open, go to the Main screen, Students option.

Entering Student Details

Under the main window section you click on student. This will open the student search window 1.0 (pictured above). Notice the new option is only available on the search screen, to remind you to search if the student has already been entered. A student must only be entered once even if the student undertakes multiple courses, even at different campuses. After you have checked the student has not already been entered, press the new button on the on the Student search screen 1.0 options. The following screen is displayed:

A new student number is automatically generated, you can change this number if required. You need to fill in the gender and date of birth. Both the gender and DOB are "drop downs" which means while you can type the name of the gender, you can also choose the option from the list, or with the DOB enter the date or select it from a calendar. To enter the student name there is a button to the far right with 3 dots on it. Click on the and it will bring up a new window which will allow you to specify title (Mr.,Ms.,Dr.,Miss.,Mrs.,Sir), First name, Middle name (or Nick name), and Last name.

A student has several fields grouped as Other, you can specify the student's citizenship (country), student type - local meaning student is not on a visa and is a full-time resident of the country the College is situated, or student type - overseas meaning student is on a visa to study or visit. Mother tongue this is the natural speaking language of the student. This is used in the creation and placement of students in classes and homestay placement.

A student has the option to have up to 10 custom fields. (To define the custom fields for all students go to Utilities - Setup - Student). These are text fields, and you can see in this example above, 2 fields are used, one for the Australian Government Confirmation of Enrolment number and the other as the student's passport number. All Custom fields are alpha numeric text fields. The first 5 fields are searchable from the student search screen 1.0.

A student can also have Marketing - Pathway fields specified. If your College wishes to keep track of where the student wishes or plans to go to after studying the current course this enables you to specify the Institution, Course and Course level (qualification).

The notes area enables you to enter details about the student that need to be communicated with other staff. An example of the type of information, that could be entered here is: family relationships with other students, or agents, any disabilities or considerations. Often this area is also used to send to the homestay placement family the student's likes and dislikes and preferences and interests.

Save the data entered (not necessary but always a good option) When you move to another tab you will need to press the modify option to enter new data, and save when you finalise entry.

Entering Student Address details

Press the Address tab on the Student details page.

We provide the option to store local and other address. For overseas students the other address should be their overseas address. The student's country of citizenship is automatically filled in, but can be changed if appropriate (this was done purely to assist speed of data entry and it was considered to be more often that not the same country). Please note you do not need to manually enter the student's homestay placement address as all homestay addresses are stored with the homestay family separately.

Photo Load

Press the load button to specify the image to enter in the database. make sure the image is sized appropriately first. ideally the image should be a passport sized image.

Student Contact details

Contact details, family relatives or friends can be entered into this area. The visual equivalent of card files are used.

Student Diary

The diary is an area to collect all information that has been exchanged with the student. We provide the facility to categorize the diary entry. Example categories may be warnings, homestay, fees, behaviour and any category you can think of, you can enter. The diary entry automatically uses the create date, but the date can be changed and used as a reminder in the future, or what has happened in the past. A summary and detailed text can be entered. While the details are entered for the student here, you can display all diary entries for a period for all students from the Diary section of eBECAS (main - Diary). This enables staff to view Diary entries both by the student and in a period. This is particularly handy when using category filters for homestay staff and the DOS.

Homestay and Airport transfers should only be entered via an Offer or an Enrolment. This so the homestay and airport transfer payments are scheduled to the homestay provider and transfer arrangement.

Visas

A student can have one or many visas. The visa type, visa number, arrival and expiry dates can be entered for the student. The visa can span multiple enrolments.

What is an Offer?

The admissions process has two parts Offers and Enrolments. Offers are the means to flexibly enter details about potential student services requested by agents and students. An Offer is a quote for the supply of services. An offer can include one or more line items with fees relating to one or more Courses, Transfers, Accommodation, Accommodation Placement, Course Materials and Enrolment fees. An Offer is completely flexible and does not impact Financials or Classing. An Offer's line items can be changed and or deleted.

To become and enrolment, you simply accept an offer, all details are transferred without re-entry. Once a Offer is accepted and becomes and enrolment, the original offer cannot be changed. The newly created enrolment integrates with classing and financials. Once an enrolment, the student is waiting for placement into Class/es and the invoiced fees becomes a debtor in Financials.

Offers can be searched and displayed in period by Offer dates, Course start dates, Accommodation start dates and Transfer dates. Searching Offers by period (especially course and accommodation dates) is a very powerful tool for use by the College Marketing department for follow ups.

Reports can be run to see the conversion rate by Agent, Country, Course, and User (staff processing offer).

You cannot by-pass the offer process and enter and enrolment directly. Only with an enrolment are students scheduled as starting on a particular date, and students can be assigned to classes, fees listed as outstanding and invoices raised, and payments received.

Conversely, an offer does NOT appear on starters lists, nor are students with offers assigned to classes, nor are fees listed as outstanding nor are invoices raised.

The benefit of first entering a offer is for marketing to follow up the potential enrolment by start date, offer entry date or homestay start date, without distorting the financials and having the fee details listed as a debt.

Students with Offers can have diary entries and act as a CRM (contact relationship management) system. A contact type Offer can be entered to schedule follow ups.

An offer is where there is no guarantee of the student coming. An offer enables the marketing and sales department to follow up inquires. Offers have the status Preparing, Offer made, Accepted, Declined and Withdrawn.

When adding a new offer always check if the student has already been entered and has already received and offer or studied at the College previously, by searching for the student first.

Once student details have been entered, we can enter an offer which can include course/s, homestay, insurance, airport transfer, and other miscellaneous fees.

From the Student Details screen, you can press the button to view Offers or Enrolments. Go to view Offers.

An Offer is a package services (which may include one or more courses) that conatins one or more line items. Everything about an offer is flexible.

Pressing the button Offers - New - displays the Offer detail form

The offer generated for the student, uses today's date as the offer date, and automatically generates and offer number. The status Preparing is automatically assigned to the new Offer. If the student offer is being sent to an agent, and commission is being paid to the agent, please specify the agent for the offer.

The status of an offer helps identify how far along the process until the offer is accepted and made an enrolment.

We have hard coded several Offer statuses, which we suggest can be used to help you identify the stage the offer is at.

Offer status:

Preparing - when you have not completed entering the offer line item details, and you need to return to complete the offer details.

Offer Made - when the offer has been completed and sent to the student and or agent, and are waiting for feedback for acceptance.

Declined - when the student or agent declines or cancels the offer. The offer will not end up as an enrolment.

Withdrawn - when the College withdraws the offer to the student or agent (or the offer lapses after no feedback or acceptance from the student or agent).

After the agent has been specified the Offer looks like this:

Entering line items to a New Offer

Press the New button under the Items panel on the left. A screen with a list of item types will appear, highlight you select from Course, Insurance, Accommodation, Accommodation Arrangement, Airport Transfer and Other.

Course item entry

To specify the course, click on the button with the three dots to the right of the Course name field.

Press the search button on the Course selection form, with or without fields filled in and filters applied to display the list of courses and prices.

The course details are now partially filled in.

Because the course is specified as weekly, you need to enter the length of the course and the start date. The end date is calculated from the length of the course and any holidasys in the period as specified for the faculty.

The end date is calculated (and takes into account any faculty holidays), and the weekly rate is used and multiplied by the number of weeks to calculate the tuition amount (gross). As we specified the agent, the default commission rate is used to calculate the commission amount for the course. If the agent has other commission rates entered, you can view and choose them by selecting the drop down beside the selected rate, or you can override the calculated rate and specify a custom rate. You can also change the Description to be exactly what you want to appear. Press the ok button to enter the Course line item for the offer.

Insurance Item entry

To add an Insurance offer item, press the New button under the Items, and select Insurance.

With the Insurance item offer screen displayed, display and select the insurance fee item by pressing the button with the 3 dots. Make your insurance selection. The form is updated with:

If an insurance provider has been added to eBECAS, you can also specify it here. The benefit of doing that is when scheduled payments are used to make payments for insurance, the payments are grouped by insurance provider.

You can specify the period that Insurance policy covers, and adjust the offer line item description. Press ok to enter the insurance line item.

Accommodation Arrangement item entry

To add an Accommodation Arrangement offer item, press the New button under the Items, and select Accommodation Arrangement.

With the Accommodation Arrangement item offer screen 1.62 displayed, display and select the Accommodation Arrangement fee item by pressing the button with the 3 dots. Make your Accommodation Arrangement fee selection. The form is updated with:

If an accommodation arrangement provider has been added to eBECAS, you can also specify it here. The benefit of doing that is when scheduled payments are used to make payments for accommodation arrangement, the payments are grouped by accommodation arrangement provider.

Press ok to add the Accommodation Arrangement line item.

Accommodation / Homestay item entry

To add an Accommodation offer item, press the New button under the Items, and select Accommodation.

With the Accommodation item offer screen 1.62 displayed, display and select the Accommodation fee item by pressing the button with the 3 dots. Make your Accommodation fee selection. The form is updated.

Usually a homestay provider is not specified in the offer, as a booking (or placement) with a homestay provider or family can only be made when the offer has been converted to an enrolment, and there is an invoice that payments to the family can be scheduled against. An accommodation provider can be specified, but it should only ever be used as an indication or example of the accommodation providers / homestays available only for an offer.

Specify the number of weeks and days (notice the daily rate to be independent of the weekly rate), and the placement

Press ok to add the accommodation line item to the offer.

Airport Transfer item entry

To add an Airport Transfer offer item, press the New button under the Items, and select Airport Transfer.

With the offer screen 1.62 displayed, display and select the Airport Transfer fee item by pressing the button with the 3 dots. Make your Airport Transfer fee selection. The form is updated.

You can specify a provider of this service for scheduled payments. Enter the Date, time and flight number. Enter the pickup by details, and where the student is coming from and going to.

Press enter to add the Airport Transfer line item to the offer.

Other fee item entry

To add an Other offer item, press the New button under the Items, and select Other.

With the offer screen 1.62 displayed, display and select the Other fee item by pressing the button with the 3 dots. Make your Other fee selection. The form is updated.

The Offer list of items now looks like this:

You are now ready to print or generate the offer to email to the student and / or agent.

How do I print or email an Offer?

in eBECAS we use Microsoft Word templates to merge the details into a document that College branding and is tailored and styled by your College. Many templates can be preformatted for use and registered. Please refer to the setup area of these manuals for creating and registering Templates.

To use a Template select the left panel option Word Merge under Print. The following screen is displayed:

Select the template you want to use, and then press the Merge button. Microsoft Word will be called and the data extracted out of the database for the student offer, and loaded into the template.

Templates can have your College letterhead and images imbedded in the document.

The best way to email the agent or student and attach the offer is by using Adobe PDF or Cute PDF (free), and print to those output options which create the PDF file. You can also create an email from the student diary and attach the document within Microsoft Outlook.

Once the Offer is sent to the agent and or student, change the offer status to OFFER MADE. Make sure the Offer is in Modify mode, then change the status by selecting the option Offer Made from the drop down, then save the Offer.

Creating an Enrolment by accepting an Offer

Accepting an offer creates an enrolment. Offers should only be accepted once you know details are final. Colleges generally accept offers when students or agent pay or have absolute confirmation and visa details.

While it is up to your college when you accept an offer, Equator IT does not recommend you accept and offer until the agent confirms or the student arrives or pays. Offers are a means to generate an "Invoice" that can change and the offer process is designed to be flexible. When an offer is accepted and generates an enrolment the invoice is posted to financials and is less flexible because financial changes require an audit trail.

Accepting an Offer Go to the Offer details screen 1.61

On the left panel under Actions press the button Accept Offer.

A window will appear confirming that you do want to accept the student offer, and that enrolment/s and invoice/s will be generated. Click the yes button to confirm.

The enrolment will be generated and details will now be found under the Enrolment search window. An invoice has been generated. Fees can now be receipted and banking reconciled against the invoice. The Offer status now shows Accepted.

Enrolments

A student enrolment is a course of study. If an offer contained multiple courses, then multiple enrolments are generated. If multiple enrolments are being undertaken by the student, then the enrolments can be grouped to calculate overall attendance and start and end dates. Refer to the Grouping Enrolments section later in this manual for more details.

The main Student enrolment summary list page is:

A student can have multiple enrolments listed (course of study). It is important to make sure that all enrolments are listed for the student, even if the course was several years ago.

* Helpful Hint * You can choose what grid items are displayed and the grid item column widths for each user, the choose is stored on each workstation and re-used the next time the user logs in to use that workstation. To adjust the column widths, on the top of the grid, click the vertical bar and while holding the mouse button down adjust the column width. You can also change the column order by selecting the column and dragging the column to the new location and dropping the column in it's new location. Right mouse click on the top grid columns to add new columns (field chooser) and remove columns. You can click on a column to sort by that column. These features are available for every grid in eBECAS.

To display the details about the Enrolment, double click the enrolment, or click Modify. The Enrolment Details form 1.3 is displayed.

Enrolment details

In the screen shot above you can see the main Enrolment details screen.

Enrolment number: While not generally used by eBECAS users, the enrolment number is a good and unique number to communicate with Equator IT if there are any issues associated with an enrolment that you want assistance with.

Progress status: The weekly task updates this field to display the current week of the student's course.

If this is not upto date, you can 1. press the enrolment re-calculate button under Details on left panel, which will re-calculate your current week and re-calculate the enrolment attendance 2. Re-calculate all Student weeks and attendance (Main - Utilities - Tasks - Re-calculate All student week and attendance) or 3. Make sure the server is scheduled to automatically calculate the week and attendance automatically (Refer manual How Do I - Maintenance - Scheduled Database operations)

Length: This field displays the length of the course enrolment in weeks, or semesters.

Start and Finish date: The start date is entered and can be changed, but the end date is calculated from the start date, length of course, and any faculty and / or student holidays.

Arrived: This flag is in student reports to check that students have arrived. If the flag is not updated as arrived, the current attendance is not changed from 0%

Course: The selected course the student is studying

Location: eBECAS supports multi-location / campus Colleges, this is the location the course is delivered

Agent: The agent the student came from. Agents usually are paid a commission on the course cost, so is where the commission while be paid.

Booking date, who, when: eBECAS keeps records when and who booked the enrollment.

Attendance current and overall: To understand the difference between the Current and Overall attendance percentage calculation, it is best to use an example - If a student is undertaking a 10 week course and was absent for the whole second week, then as of the end of week 2 the current attendance is 50% (attended first week, absent second week), and the overall attendance is 90% (absent one week out of 10).

The calculation is based on the total hours of study for the enrolment - calculated from the course the student is studying number of hours per week (Main - Utilities - Courses - Course details screen 3.1 ) times the number of weeks, which is the base total number of hours the student should be in attendance. The hours absent are totalled for the enrolment, and the attendance is calculated from these figures.

Health Insurance: Policy number and end date for the insurance policy covering the enrolment.

Enrolment detail tabs

Notes: Free text details about the student enrolment

History: All changes effecting the enrolment are stored, including initial start date, end date, week length. Enrolments history stores both what was originally scheduled to be studied and changes that subsequently take place.

When enrolment changes are made, the history of the changes can be viewed from the Enrolment Details screen 1.3 under the History tab:

Leave: Leave can be taken by the student on a weekly basis, where the option to extend the course is available for the leave taken.

Enrolment Changes - Change start date, cancel, shorten and extend

Changes are made from Enrolment Details screen 1.3 - Extension/Changes. When the option is selected, the screen below is displayed:

The Options are:

a. Extension - Used when a student wishes to increase the period of study in the same enrolment doing the same course with the same agent. The start date displayed is the following Monday after the existing end date. You can enter the number of weeks for the extension, and the end date is displayed.

If you select the Invoice additional Tuition option, you can either manually enter the Tuition value, or calculate the cost. After pressing the calculate button, you will see:

If there is agent commission the option is available to apply agent commission.

b. Shorten - Used when a student wishes to decrease or shorten the period of study for the enrolment (but not cancel altogether)

c. Postpone - Used when a student cannot start the enrolment on the original date and wishes to delay the start date. This also automatically delays the classes and appearance of the student on the roll for Language classes.

By pressing the down arrow on the date entry, a calender is displayed.

d. Cancellation - Used when the student enrolment needs to be cancelled and has not begun the course enrolment

Be aware classing and financial reports are based on enrolments so make sure that you update the fees correctly when you alter an existing enrolment. For example you may need to write-off or transfer fees after shortening or cancelling an enrolment.