Money a family owes
How a balance appears, where each side sees it, what the system chases on its own, and what it will never chase.
Written for school owners and admins
A balance is not stored anywhere. It is worked out each time a screen asks for it: the price of the thing, minus every payment against it that has settled — paid or waived, nothing else. Only three things carry one: a subscription's term price, a spot held on a priced event, and a shop item taken on account. A payment link that was created but never paid through counts for nothing.
Where it shows up
“Payments needing attention” splits the work into “Failed & overdue”, “Open · no pay date” and “Upcoming cash to collect”, and each row opens the tools for that one debt. On a student, the same balances sit behind “View breakdown”, each with its own “Collect”. A frozen subscription is the odd one out: it still counts toward “Outstanding balances” but is deliberately kept out of the worklist, so that tile can be bigger than everything you can see to act on.
The family's own “Payments” page shows one line per child, taken from that child's active subscription, or a pending one if there is no active. Nothing else reaches it: a shop item on account or an unpaid event spot never appears, and “Pay now” cannot pay for it. A child whose subscription has ended reads “No active subscription — the school desk can set one up.” while your own list still says the family owes.
What gets chased
Two nightly jobs chase money, and both look only at subscriptions. One covers subscriptions paid in installments: one message as an installment falls due, one more once it has passed, each sent once. The other covers subscriptions with no installments — silent for the first week, then at most three messages, seven days apart, each carrying a freshly minted payment link for the balance at that moment. An ended subscription is chased on that same three-message budget.
Settling it
- Open the debt from either side: “Collect payment” on a worklist row, or “Collect” on the student's breakdown.
- Opened from either of those, the dialog is already fixed on that one debt and never asks you to pick. You choose a target only when you start from “New payment” instead, and there “No open balances — sell a product or use Other.” means nothing live is owed and the only remaining choice is “Other (not linked to anything)”, which pays nothing down.
- Set the amount. A subscription on installments offers its next one or “Full open balance”, and anything above the balance disables the button.
- Choose “Method”. It opens on “Cash”, so pressing straight through records the money as taken in cash. “External terminal” under “Card” logs a card payment the system never charged.
- With installments, say whether the money reduces the next payment due or comes off the end, then confirm.
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