General

Lookup Name (45 characters)
Alpha Search Name - can be the company name, but can also be the name by which the agent is more commonly known.
Eg. Agencia de Viajes (in Madrid) - known as "ADV Madrid".

Name (45 characters)
Formal name, used for addressing and invoicing.

Address
Enter as appropriate, using town/city/country as indicated.

Tel/Fax/Email
20 characters each for Tel/Fax. Email will take all email addresses.
Fax and email are used by the system (fax/email) interface to Outlook.

Mobile Number
Enter in format CCnnnnnnnnnnn, where CC is the country code for the mobile, excluding "00" or "+", eg. for UK 44.
Drop the leading zero, eg. 07836574341, becomes 447836574341.
The mobile number may be used in conjunction with the text messaging option within Class.

Send SMS
Tick if mobile may be used for contact.

Code
System allows code input (for enrolment processing) instead of the agent search.
Note: Code is not forced to be unique, but it is advisable to make it so.

Direct Agent
Select if the agent is to be used for booking direct students.
Any number of direct agents may be used, although for many schools only 1 will exist.

Surname/Forename/Addressee/Position
Main contact - generally used for correspondence.
Name field 45 characters, addressee field 45 characters, position 20 characters.

Country
Agent's country (used in statistics, eg. agents by country). Normally the country from where most students are enrolled.

Status
Only "Active" agents are available during enrolment processing.
All other options, except "Prospective" are used to indicate inactive.

Visited/Reviewed
Date and reference boxes.

User Defined Fields
Field headings are set in System Settings, and can be mandatory.
Analysis 1-6 are used for character values (1-30 characters)
Analysis 7-8 are used for numeric values +/1 9,999,999 (whole numbers only)
Analysis 9-10 are date fields

Text Messaging

When sent, a confirmation is displayed, as well as charges.
The "sent" message means the message has been received by the network provider, eg. Orange, Vodafone etc, not necessarily the mobile phone user.
 

Print Gross and Net Invoice (Memo and Invoice)
If set, the agent will automatically receive 2 documents - "Gross" and Net invoice or proforma.
The "Gross" invoice is called a "Memo" document, so as not to be confused with the accounting (net) invoice.

Days Before/After Arrival to Print Invoice
Number of days before (minus), or after arrival, the invoice is to be printed.
This will default to the value set in the General Settings, but may be changed.
If the Ledger is in use, it is recommended that this is set to zero:

Invoicing Rules

Always Credit and Re-Invoice
If set, once an invoice has been produced, changes are reflected by crediting out the invoice in full, then re-invoicing.
If not set, the system will invoice (or credit) the change.
Eg. Change from Course A (£300) to Course B (£250)
A credit issued for £50.
The Credit Re-invoice option would credit £300 and invoice £250. 
 
Print Credit Notes
If unticked, credit notes are not printed. However they are created and may be reprinted from a student's enrolment documents, or the batch invoice reprint. It is suggested that this is generally left unticked.
There is a file utility to set this flag for all agents (either way) if required.

Charge Booking (Enrolment) Fees
If set, the agent is charged enrolment fees* (Booking fees)
This must be set if the "Gross" (invoice to the student) needs to show the fee.

(*If the agent is NOT to be charged the fee, add the Price Item in the pricing tab at 100% discount/commission. This will allows the agent invoice to show the fee less 100% discount, and reminds the agent that he is getting something for nothing! The "Gross" invoice provided to the student will show the correct enrolment/registration fees).

Note: The registration fee above is set up as a Sundry Price Item and attached to the school - see below:

Gross Agent (Reserve Commission)
Agents can be invoiced "Gross" and a commission reserved, for future remittance.

Example (Gross Agent):
Gross Course: £100
Net: £100 (charged)
(Commission 15%)
Commission reserved £15 (paid later)

Example (Net Agent):
Course: £100
Discount/Commission 15%
Net £85 (charged)

The agents' commission is paid via Agent Commission Payments:

Student Collection

Default will automatically appear in a student's enrolment, for this agent.
Set if the agent requests payments to be made by the student. This is only a "label" and can be included in the reports. (Used in all Class Aged Debt Reports)
The debt is still considered to be the agent's, and appears as such in the agent account.

On Student Arrival, Default Invoicing To
This may be set to student, agent or "none".
"None" will force the user to decide whether the agent or the student is responsible for extensions.

Price List
Many agent records will use the Master Price list (adjusted by a % discount/commission) and no special price list will be shown.
If a price list is selected, items in it will take precedence over the percentage discount/commission when prices are calculated.

Additional Master Price Lists can be created, particularly useful if say, the EURO price is different in each European country.
It is best to give consideration to the structure and number of price lists before setting up the agents.

See Price Lists for details of how to create individual price lists for agents.

Tax Reference
Spare reference field.

Options
Before entering any financial details, you are advised to preset the defaults in the company settings (Maintenance/Settings > General Settings > Company > Company):

Pricing
Allows date-controlled entries for pricing groups and individual price items (discounts/commissions) to be established.

Agent Currency
Select as appropriate. 
After entry of the first enrolment, this field cannot be changed. If an agent operates "multi-currency", then multiple agents must be set up (Use Agent Copy option).

Student Currency
If items of an enrolment are invoiced to the student, which currency applies?

Gross (Memo) Currency
The Gross (Memo) invoice currency. The invoice passed to the student by the agent.

Price List
Select the price list for this agent.
Normally this is the "Master" (Gross) price list, but could be a special one, eg. Eastern European, where the "Gross" prices have been reduced to suit market conditions.

Adding a Default Rate
Add as required. In the absence of an entry, zero will be assumed.

Category - Tuition, Accommodation, Transfers or Sundry

Price Group Type - General, Group or Item

To set these up, see:

General: this is a useful way of collecting together a range of price items and discounting them in the same way. For example, all long term General English price items could be grouped and called "Long Courses", all Business Courses could be grouped and called "Business Courses".
Each group would attract different rates of discount/commission.
Item: allows specific items to be discounted/commissioned or priced separately:

Booking From Date
The date applies to the "entered" date to the system, not the start date of the item.
A single entry would apply a commission rate for all entries.
Eg.
1/1/2012 = 20%

Multiple entries in the table could be used to provide incentives for early bookings.
Eg.
1/1/2012 = 25%
1/6/2012 = 20%
1/9/2012 = 25%

Discount/Commission Rate
Enter discount/commission to be applied. Normally both values are the same.

If a net value is required then:
Click on the "Load Price" button.
This will display the "Week 1" value.
Input the net amount that you want to charge into the "Net Value" box and click on "Calc 5%".
This will display the percentage discount/commission in the "Discount %" box.
To move this value to both the "Discount Rate" and "Commission Rate" boxes, click on the "Select" box.

Promotions

Agent - Invoice Layouts

If the Class ledger is NOT in use, Receipt/Statement text fields may not be available.

Finance Document Layouts
Word template documents to be used by the system.
Templates are held in the Documents/Finance Documents section.

Finance Texts
Text lines (5 line x 90 characters), which appear at the bottom of each invoice, proforma etc.
See settings:

 
Tip:
Paste bank details/terms etc into invoice template.
For many schools, the bank details can be directly entered onto the invoice template. This is generally more presentable than using the 5 text lines mentioned above.

Addresses

Statement/Other Address
Either address may be selected as the Invoice Address, instead of the "General" address (see "Addressing" at the bottom of the screen).
If Statement Address is not blank, the system will use this address as the statement address, instead of the "General" address.

Addressing
Set Correspondence Language, if applicable.
Only used if multiple correspondence language Word templates are to be set up, eg. documents in Spanish, French, German etc.
For 'Direct' Agents, the default language is not used as this is determined by the (same) setting on the student record.
Set the default addresses for documents and invoices.

Send By
Printer/Fax/Email - fax is not advised unless a Windows compatible fax system is in use.

Email format
Rich text is the default, but if the agent advises that the email cannot be read, then try one of the other formats or use PDF.
There is an option to change the email formats of all agent records.
See:

Preferences
Preferences are 20 character values (set up in Settings).
Any number may be attached to an agent.
Agents with preferences can be selected using Quick Reports, and output to Excel or merged with a Word letter/email.

Students

All student bookings are automatically shown against the agent.
Lines in blue indicate a direct booking with commission set for the agent.

Double-click on any line to display the student's enrolment.

Statistics

Statistics are dynamically calculated based on today's date and assume a start year of 1st January.
Both of these dates may be changed as required.
Tuition only is the default value.

The selection defaults to "Commission Agent".
Direct bookings, where a commission agent is shown, will be listed against the agent.
If Main Agent is selected, then the bookings above would be attributed to the "Direct Agent".

The results can be presented in any currency by selecting a different currency and an appropriate exchange rate.

An Excel summary can be displayed or detailed by double-clicking on the required line (Tick "Create Excel Charts" to include charts).

General Information
Date excludes provisional bookings, but includes cancelled bookings.
Cancelled bookings will net out (in terms of weeks) but when shown in "Booking Stats" are shown as "+" (against date created) and "-" (against cancelled date).
Eg.
12/4/12 + 12 weeks (created)
14/6/12 - 12 weeks (cancelled)

Production stats will net to zero in the same period.

General information on statistical value:

The key values Class will only accurately report on is:

Student Weeks and Values
These 2 variables have a clear meaning and definition, and will in the main not change even if admin procedures differ from school to school.

Student counts and Enrolment counts
These variables can be misleading and confusing depending on how Class is operated.
Results can vary depending on time ranges, selection criteria, and the impact of cancellations.
For this reason, these 2 values are not recommended for statistical reporting.

Student count
We acknowledge that there is a general interest in "how many students" (defined as the number of unique student ID's in the period being reported on).
The only place where student counts should be used is the "Agent Stats" tab and the "All School Stats".

Enrolment count
If required, can be obtained from the "Statistics Generator" (Enrolment Bookings)

Other places where "counts", "numbers" etc indicated are purely computer counts and may not necessarily reconcile with any other figures.
Future releases on Class will have the captions changed to "count".