Frequently Asked Questions Index:

Windows Features

Q. Why is the screen title bar a different colour sometimes?
A. It depends what mode you are in. There are three modes, add, view and edit. By default most screens place you in view mode, this has a pale yellow bar. In add and edit mode the bar changes to pale green. This is to give you a visual representation of what you are doing.

Q. Can I change the name of the field labels that appear on the screen?
A. The only screen labels that can be changed are those for the user codes. Do this by accessing the Maintenance / User code option and selecting the appropriate field.

Q. Can I use my existing stationery?
A. In most cases all reports including statements and receipts will print on plain A4 paper assuming a laser printer is used. If it is important to use existing stock, changes can be made to the print routines at the schools expense.

Q. How do I do a global change on a field for a number of records?
A. A useful feature in SAS2000 is the ability to apply a change to a field over a number of records at the same time. For example you may wish to increase the Year value for a number of students by following these steps:

1. In the student details section, type in the value of the year level you want to change and then press the Find button. This will give you a record set containing only the students belonging to that year level.
2. Go into edit mode.
3. Change the value of the Year field to the new value.
4. Right click on the Year field and select Global Exchange and then confirm to apply this new value to all records in the current record set.

Note: Once you confirm the global exchange it cannot be undone so make sure you are dealing with just the records you wish to change and not all records in the database.

People

Q. Why are there several MediCare numbers?
A. It is possible for students to have their own MediCare number which is different to the family number.

People/Student

Q. On the Student tab what is the difference between the Last Year field and Level At Previous School?
A. The Level At Previous School field records the basic information of a student that has come from another school. This is handy when establishing the academic level of the student. The Last Year is recorded to indicate the progress of the student at your school. Both fields form part of a historical record.

Q. What is the difference between a Form and a Class?
A. The Class field is an abbreviation of the Form. This allows the Class (abbreviation) to be used on many lists and reports.

Q. What is the House field?
A. Many of the larger schools arrange their students into competitive groups for sport activities. House usually implies a 'sporting house'.

Q. What is the Home Group field?
A. Many schools (mainly secondary) allocate students to home groups. A home group is a collection of students not related to classes, levels or houses. They are commonly used for roll marking and after the roll is marked the students break into their classes. Another name seen is 'mentor group'.

Q. What is the Operation field on the student medical tab?
A. It records any significant operations that the school needs to know about. The 'operation' field is a user code field with all its inherent properties.

Q. What is the best value to record in the Anaesthetic field on the student medical tab?
A. A tricky field to clarify but experience suggests a response from the residential guardian to indicate 'yes' the student can have an anaesthetic or 'no' they cannot. If there is no response from the residential guardian the entry should be blank or a value of 'unknown'. An incorrect answer does have certain implications. The Anaesthetic field is a user code field with all its inherent properties.

Q. How do I delete a student?
A. It all depends on the outcome desired. If you need to delete all reference to that family and students and contacts do it from the family area. But if, for what ever reason, you only need to delete the student, delete the student from the Student tab (without archiving) To delete a contact delete the contact from the Contact tab. Basically to remove all reference to a family structure do it from the Family tab. There is a prompt associated with each step asking you to confirm your intentions.

Q. Not all students seem to have an address, why?
A. If there is no address displayed for a student the address of the first residential guardian is assumed. However if there is an address displayed for the student it may indicate the student is living away from home. Note: For those that have converted their data from the CTSAS system there will be a separate address for the student.

Q. Why is there a Last Level and Last Class field?
A. Both are historical records that indicate the progress of the student at your school.

Q. How do I arrange the students in order when moving through student by student?
A. Any sort can be set up provided the selection is displayed in table view first. Sort the table using the Sort button and then, returning to the data screen and using the Next button, scroll through the list in the sorted order. Sorting can be done on any of the table views.

Q. Where can I record Conveyance Allowance for a student?
A. Use the Allowance user code to set up and record the conveyance allowance applicable to a student. Also use this field to record other assistance or allowance fields for the student.

Q. If the student lives one week with mum and one week with dad who is the residential guardian?
A. Both mum and dad need to be marked as the residential guardian.

People/Family

Q. What is the Surname field for on the Family tab?
A. A family surname is used to help rope together all the linked students and contacts into a family structure regardless of the relationships.

Q. What is the Mail To field on the Family tab?
A. The Mail To box is a formal address name for the family e.g. Mr G & Mrs J Thomas. There is no address shown here as it picks up the address from the residential guardian.

Q. What is the Boys / Girls field for?
A. Boys / Girls is intended to record the number of siblings in the family. There maybe 4 siblings in the family but only 1 at your school. These fields will tell you that.

Q. What is the Ambulance field meant to indicate?
A. The intention of the field is really to indicate whether the family has ambulance cover.

Q. Why are only some names bold in the family list?
A. These bold entries indicate the residential guardians and are consistent with the screen display.

People/Contacts

Q. What phone numbers are available and for whom?
A. Within the People area, each contact will have a field to enter a home, business, fax, mobile, pager, e-mail, web and other phone numbers. All appear on the Contact tab and can be ordered by dragging and dropping. This ensures that the most common phone number appears without using the drop down list.

Q. What addresses can be saved for a contact?
A. A Residential, Mail and Account To address are saved, with the Residential address as the default.

Q. Why is there a comma after the suburb in the address?
A. The comma forms an important part of the formatting for the address, without it the results would not be as consistent.

Q. Why will the Post Code field accept characters as well as numbers?
A. The post code field will allow both characters and numbers so overseas addresses can be allowed for.

Q. Can I arrange the contacts in any order?
A. Yes the contacts can be arranged in a specific order but we would always advise that the residential guardian(s) be placed at the top of the list. To arrange the contacts simply drag and drop them into the order you require. Do this from Student / Family tab.

Q. When is the contact account number allocated?
A. The account number is assigned when the contact detail is saved and is unique to each contact. This account number becomes an important method for finding a contact.

Q. What is the Payment tab under Contacts for?
A. The Payment tab is to add / view / edit a contact's payment details and will hold the Account To name and the payment frequency indicating how often the fee payer has elected to pay their account.

People/Enrolments

Q. How do I complete the Family information from the Enrolment tab?
A. It is not possible to include all the family information via the Enrolment tab. Any remaining information that is required at the time of enrolling needs to be added via the normal Family tab after accepting the Enrolment information. This is intentional to save time and completion of the family data would be concluded once the enrolment becomes a student.

Q. Why is there a Commencement Year field and a Commencement Date field?
A. It is possible to use either field but generally not both. Either nominate the date the enrolment will be a student or nominate the year that the enrolment will become a student. e.g. a family contacts the school saying they are moving to Ballarat some time in 2000 and wish to enroll their child at your school. In this case the commencement year is filled in with '2000' and the commencement date left blank. When the student arrives and is enrolled the system will prompt for a date. Or, if a family enrolls a child to start next year, fill in the commencement date (29/01/2000 for example) and leave the commencement year blank.

The enrolment screen now has have an area to display the enrolment's address.

Q. How do I enter the details for an enrolment for an existing family and contacts?
A. Both the family and contact area have a binocular view search lookup which will enable the family and contacts to be selected from the displayed list.

Most of the student fields are now available on enrolments.

Q. What is the correct way to handle an enrolment?
A. There is no single correct way to handle an enrolment but there are two basic methods. All detail can be entered from the Enrolment tab and this allows existing family and contact information to be used. The other method is to enter the data from the Student tab and then link the student to the family and contacts. Both methods have advantages and disadvantages.

Fees & Receipts

Q. Why have fee flags for the students, family and enrolments?
A. Fee flags are associated with each section (student, family and enrolment) to allow a fee or fees to be generated for each group separately. The fee can apply to many or one within each group and give extra flexibility in the fee generation process. The fee flags are user code fields with all their inherent properties.

Q. How can fees be generated for different families at different times?
A. This is a good example of the fee flag which can be set up in conjunction with fee transactions that can be linked to each fee flag. Typically there would be fee flags to indicate monthly, term, half yearly and yearly account preferences. Then, in the student fee area, set up a monthly fee transaction made that links to the monthly fee flag and so on. Care then needs to be taken to generate the correct fee.

Q. How do I find out how much a contact owes?
A. First find the contact and then look at their Account tab. Each line item can be expanded to provide full details.

Q. Is it possible to generate fees at different intervals?
A. Generating at different intervals is OK but each school needs to plan out its fees for the year and set up each fee as appropriate for the period.

Q. What is the code for in Bill Items?
A. It is an abbreviation used to identify a bill item, e.g. MAINT, REFUND and so on.

Q. What does the 'apply fee for each match' check box do?
A. If you use any of the fee flags you can match the fee to specific families. It really allows specific fees to be charged to specific families, those that have the fee flag set to certain values. Checking the box means that fee is matched to each family.

Q. Can I set up fees without allocating a General Ledger account number?
A. Entering valid account numbers is a requirement to accept the fee set up.

Q. How do I credit the EMA payment to the appropriate person?
A. There are several ways to credit the appropriate person. An EMA payment can be created in the Bill Items section and each person that is meant to receive the payment accessed from the Bills area. A second method would be to set up an EMA Payment fee in the student fee set up and flag those students that receive the payment. Attach the fee to the fee flag and select the appropriate fee flag.

Q. How do I refund part of the fees when a student leaves?
A. A refund Bill Item should be set up and applied to the fee payer via the Fee / Bills option. Editing the item will change the amount to be refunded.

Q. Who can be flagged as the fee payer?
A. Any contact can be flagged to pay fees and at present the fees are divided on a % basis.

Q. Is it possible for a contact to have a credit balance?
A. Yes. Any receipt or bill item will adjust the balance and, if this places the contact in credit, then a credit balance will be generated.

Q. How do I type a message on a statement?
A. There is a global message area for statements where the text is entered when accessing the statement print option.

Q. Is there a fees trial balance print available?
A. The Aged Trial Balance is one of the Fees menu options. Several selections are possible and periods will need to be defined in the Maintenance / Preference tab.

Q. How do I bill certain students with a specific fee?
A. Depending on the circumstances the use of the student user fields should allow for the automatic billing of students. A checkbox field could be created and labeled 'biology fee' and then linked to the fees generation.

Why does the Bank Deposit Slip not print the Bank Account Details?
A. The Bank Account General Ledger codes do not have any additional information entered (i.e.: bank, branch, account number etc.). To enter this additional information, go to the General Ledger Menu and run the Bank Account List program. Select the appropriate account that your receipts are going to and then select the 'Additional Information' button. Enter the account details and save. Bank Deposits for this account will now print correctly

Q. What do I need to fill in when an account is paid by credit card?
A. Credit card details consist of the card holder's name, the 16 digit card number, the expiry date in a mm/yy format and an authorisation number if applicable. The authorisation number is given by the credit card bank indicating the payment is accepted. It is usually obtained when the amount being paid is over the house limit.

Q. How is a payment allocated when receipting?
A. Allocation of payment will automatically pay the oldest bill item first. Manual allocation is possible if required.

Q. How do I choose the correct contact when receipting or billing?
A. Both the receipting and billing screen allow for selection of the contact in a number of ways. The correct fee payer is chosen using the binocular view of the student or contact and then selecting from the list. Sufficient data is displayed to verify the selection.

Q. When is a Bank Deposit Slip printed?
A. Printing the deposit slip is at the discretion of the school. All slips are retained and can be reprinted at any later stage.

Q. How do I receipt moneys not associated with a fee payer?
A.In receipts there are two options; the first is for a debtor receipt which is linked to the fee payer (contact); and the second is to sundry which allows miscellaneous money to be receipted. The amount and details will appear on the bank deposit slip.

User Codes

Q. What default value is best for the User Code fields?
A. All User Code fields should have an unknown value and this should be the default. Our experience in all cases has found that a not known value or a blank value is preferable. This allows for incomplete data to be searched for and corrected at a later date. Many schools are required to provide census statistics and assuming incorrect values can inflate or distort the real figures.

Q. When do the User Code field defaults work?
A. When in add mode on any of the tabs, defaults that have been set automatically appear in the relevant fields. All User Code fields can have default values.

Q. How can user codes that have removed be reinstated?
A. Reinstating any user code needs to be done from the Maintenance User Code option. All user codes have been arranged in a logical association with some codes more school related than student related and so on.

Q. Why can't I get to the edit items box when I right click on the user code field ?
A. Access to the user code edit items screen may be restricted for certain fields or users on the system.

Q. How do I globally update a user code for an entire selection?
A.A message appears and the change can be applied to all of the selection.

For more information about SAS2000 please contact us at info@humanedge.biz or call 1300 550 765.