The first tab in the discount edit view is the value tab. This is where you define the way the discount is calculated.

The name of the discount will appear on the website, on invoices and in finance reports so it is important to choose a name that clearly identifies the discount.

A discount which is available via online enrolment means students enrolling using your onCourse website have access to this discount. If it is un-ticked, only students who are enrolled via the office, in Quick Enrol have access to the discount. You may have chosen to stop a concession card type being added online, but can make the discount still available online for existing students with the concession type on record.

A discount percent allows you to define a percentage amount that will be taken off the class enrolment fee. A discount dollar lets you fix a dollar amount that will be taken off the class enrolment fee (note, the classes attached to the discount may have a variety of fees, so a discount dollar will be better for some classes than others). Override fee lets you set a new fee for all the classes linked to the discount.

At this point, you can also select if the discount will have any minimum or maximum caps or rounding applied to the nearest dollar, 50 cents or 10 cents.

Setting a valid to or from date is optional. Many types of discounts don't require a date until you decide to retire the discount by editing it to set a date in the past.

The default forecast take-up can be set here, or set individually in the classes you have linked the discount to. This is a prediction that will assist you in your income budgeting, based on the percentage of students you expect to utilise this discount for each class, and therefore the potential cost of providing this discount to your business.

The public description field contains any additional information you wish to provide to potential students about who and how this discount can be accessed and is displayed on the website.

The second tab on the discount edit window allows you to define who can access the discount.

Some types of discount may be available to anyone, meaning any person who enrols will automatically have the discount applied. They may also have to supply a promotional code, or enrol within a fixed period of time, depending on what you set on the first tab.

More often, discounts are restricted to people who meet certain criteria. A discount may require the student to meet multiple criteria. For example, in the Senior's Discount window below, the student needs to provide both a Senior's Card and a date of birth that shows they are over 60. For this to work effectively, you would need to ensure that the date of birth field was set to mandatory for website enrolments, otherwise clients just providing the details of their seniors card would not be sufficient to access the discount.

To link concessions or memberships to the discount record, they need to already be set up in your onCourse records. See the concessions and memberships chapter for more information about how to create a concession or membership.

After defining the students, you can also select if you want this discount shown in advertising. By default, discounts will show on the website as part of the class advertising details. In some instances you may wish to hide the discount from advertising, but still allow people to access the discount online, for example, when providing an internal staff discount.

The classes tab of the discount window is where you define which classes can access this discount. Click on the + to access the options. You can add by course, by individual class or all current and pending classes.

Once you have added classes, you can also use the garbage icon to delete classes from the list. The delete option works on one class at a time.

You can assign all current and pending classes to the discount multiple times - it will not create duplicate records. During the class roll over process, it will also select the option to apply all existing discounts to the new class record by default.

If the student and their chosen class meet the requirements of the discount, it will be applied by default on enrolment. If the student is eligible for multiple discount types, the discount that provides the lowest cost to the student will be applied.

During the enrolment process, discounts that require a promotional code can be entered on the payment screen. Again, any eligible classes will have their fee reduced.

Before saving and confirming the enrolment, you can check the discounts that have been applied by hovering over the notification icon next to the class fee.

You can also manually adjust a discount as necessary by replacing the discount amount in the enrolment window.

During the enrolment process, if a student supplies a promotional code this needs to be entered in the payment panel, in the field labelled 'Promotional code'.

Any applicable classes and students in the enrolment process will have their enrolment fee's updated to meet the promotional code conditions.

If a student holds a valid membership, is related to a contact with a membership where discounts apply or purchases a membership during the enrolment process, the best applicable discount will automatically apply.

For example, if you have created a discount policy for members and friends to access two different class prices - members with a 30% discount and friends of members with a 10% discount, members who are friends with other members will always be given the higher of the two discounts.

Memberships can be purchased during the Quick Enrol process, with these memberships providing discount benefits immediately.

To purchase a membership, select the + Add button from the top left hand corner of the Quick Enrol window and select the option 'membership'. Look up the membership by name and make any changes as necessary to the membership start date, end date and cost. Continue with the enrolment process as usual.

In the example below, the student is purchasing a Computer Club membership which provides them with unlimited access to any computer classes at the college for six months. They have also selected three applicable computer classes to enrol in, so their enrolment fees have been discounted to $0.

If a student already has a membership purchased, you can see the details of that membership in their contact record general tab. This is also the tab that loads by default when you add a contact to the Quick Enrol process.

If your discount policy so allows, and a student is related to a contact who holds a membership, you will not see a membership recorded in the relation's record. You can see the details of their relationships, however.

For example, memberships are often sold to corporate partners. In onCourse, these contacts are 'companies', and companies can not enrol in classes as they are not real people. Employees of companies can enrol, so you may like to set up the discount policy so the discount applies to member and their employees.

If an employee of the membership enrols, and the relationship is noted in their contact record (you can add this during the enrolment process) the membership discount will automatically apply.

If you need to provide an 'on the fly' discount to an enrolment fee during the enrolment process, there is the ability to enter a manual discount in the discount window on the enrolment tab. This discount will be visible in the class budget, recorded in the class income and linked to the enrolment, so if the enrolment is cancelled and the payer credited, the credit will be less the amount of the discount provided.

We do not recommend using the 'Other charge' option to provide a discount. An 'other charge' is not linked to a class or enrolment and will not be automatically credited if the enrolment is cancelled and credited. The 'other charge' option is designed to add, on the fly additional line items to the invoice like a phone booking charge.

If you wish, discount rates and fees can be displayed inline with the class fee on the website. When users hover over the discounted fee, they can see who is eligible to apply for it. Discounts which calculate to the same fee will be displayed once, with a dual label on the website. E.g. if both seniors and students are eligible for a 10% discount, and have separate discount policies set up, the website will show one fee and the hover will show both discount names. This makes the class fee display neater, especially for colleges who have a large variety of discount policies.

When a student is completing the enrolment process, by default they will be charged the full fee. If you allow the entry of the concession card details via the website, they can then select the option during enrolment to select a concession card type and enter the appropriate details you require.

While concession card numbers and validity can't be checked by the website enrolment process, all students must confirm that their claim to access the concession is valid and that their details may be checked. You should ensure your enrolment policy and procedures includes information about how additional charges will be levied if students can not produce their concession card on request.

Promotional codes are applied differently on the website to discounts that relate to concessions. Firstly, you need to ensure that your website design includes a specification for the location of the 'My discounts' option. This panel allows students to enter a promotional code that will then be applied to all eligible classes across your website during their browsing of your programs.

Once a student has entered a valid promotional code, classes they view will show the full fee crossed out and the fee that applies during the promotion displayed instead. During enrolment, this discounted fee will be automatically applied.

Promotional codes, gift certificates or voucher codes can also be added during the payment process. Codes added at this time will also apply the discount to any applicable students and classes in the enrolment selection.

If a student holds a membership which entitles them to a discount, or is related to a member which entitles them to a discount, this discount will be automatically applied during the online enrolment process.

Relationships can not be added during the online enrolment process, so for the discount to apply, the relationship already needs to have been recorded in the student's onCourse record.

When you view the general tab of a class record, you can see in the Budget Summary, all available class fees. These are the fees that are payable for students meeting any of the discount requirements.

In each discount you create, you can define a 'Default forecast take-up'. What this means, is that across all the classes this discount applies to, you expect, say, 5% of all students to use this discount on enrolment.

You can further refine this forecast on a class by class basis in the class budget. Double click on the discount line in the budget and setting a new forecast of your choice.

Based on your enrolment maximum, projected and actual, all three columns will update, with the actual column showing you also the percentage of student's enrolled using the discount.

Using the garbage icon, you can delete discounts from classes in the budget. This will prevent future students from enrolling and accessing this discount. It will not remove the discount given to existing students.

When the discount line has been deleted from the budget you will not see the total value of the discounts given itemised. Any budget printed report will still contain the detail of how many of these discounts you have given, and the class total incomes will still be correct. If you add the discount back, via the discount classes window, the discount and value of any discounts applied will be visible again.

In the onCourse chart of accounts, a default account called 'Discounts Given' is used to record all the discount costs.

When a student enrols, the diagram below demonstrates how the income and discounts are posted against the chart of accounts, for an example $300 enrolment with a $100 discount.

Item 1: When the student enrols, the income component of the enrolment fee (in this example $200) is posted to the liability account. It will be transferred to the allocated income account when the class delivery commences. See the accounting chapter for more information about how and when income transfers occur.

Item 2: Prior to the invoice being paid, the amount owing is credited to the trade debtor account.

Item 3: The value of the discount is posted to the chosen income account directly. This income doesn't get posted via the liability accounts.

Item 4: Discount value is charged as a Cost of Sale to the Discounts Given account.

Item 5: When the payment for the invoice is taken (whether this is at the time of enrolment, or later down the track), the cheque account is credited the payment amount, and the amount paid debited from the Trade debtor account. There may be multiple payments for an invoice, for example a costly class which is paid off over time.

Item 6: When the class commences, the rest of the class income is 'earned', and transferred from the liability account to the income account. Now the income account includes both the discount and enrolment fee components e.g. $300.

GST is an Australian Goods and Services Tax, currently set to a flat rate of 10% for all applications of the tax. GST often doesn't apply to enrolments in vocational classes, but does apply for enrolments in leisure classes. When GST applies to a class, it is important to understand that any discount applied to the class fee will cause the GST to be recalculated.

The reason behind this is that GST must be 10% of the product cost you charge to the customer. If the ex GST cost of the product sold drops from $300 to $200 due to a discount, then the GST charged must also drop from $30 to $20.

If you have discount policies that apply to groups of classes, including both GST inc and GST ex fees, you will notice that the resulting fee payable by the student is different, even if a fixed discount amount is given.

To put it another way, if you have a GST free class costing $300 which has a $100 discount, the student will be charged a straight $200. A $100 reduction in the fees payable by the student has been applied.

However, if you have a GST inclusive class costing $300 which has a $100 discount, the student will end up paying a GST inclusive fee of $190. The student has been given an effective discount of $110, instead of $100. Why do students paying GST now get a 'better' discount? Beacuse they are now liable to pay less GST.

In a class fee of $300 incl GST, $272.73 is the fee income. The remaining $27.27 is not your income - it is GST you are collecting on behalf of the government and holding only until the time you reimburse it to them. In onCourse, GST is always posted to a liability account, never to your income account. onCourse budgets always exclude GST from any profitability calculations.

As the $100 discount is actually being given on a $272.73 class fee, reducing it to $172.73, the GST now must be recalculated on the new fee. The GST of $17.27 (instead of the previous GST of $27.27 on the undiscounted fee) now brings the total fee payable back to $190.

Obviously, the different end values of the discounts are most obvious when comparing the same GST exclusive and GST inclusive total fees side by side. If, instead like in the first example, your GST inclusive class of $300 was a total cost of $330, while your GST free class was just $300, the $100 discount would result in total fees of $220 and $200 respectively. The GST paying student still pays 10% more for their class than the GST free student does, instead of the unexpected 5% less when the discounted GST inc/GST free classes have the same starting fee.