Make-up credits explained

Encore Studio keeps track of make-up credits for you, so there is never an argument about how many a family has left or when they run out. How many they get, and how long each lasts, are your settings — not fixed rules.

Your two settings

Both live under Settings → Scheduling and apply to every student in your studio.

Make-up credits per student, per quarter — how many credits cancellations can earn:

• A number (1 to 99) — each student can earn that many per calendar quarter. New studios start at one.

• Unlimited — every qualifying cancellation earns a credit. The family portal stops showing a remaining count, because there is nothing to count down.

• Zero — cancellations never earn a credit, and the make-up card disappears from the family portal. You can still give a credit by hand, or for a closure.

Make-up credits are valid for (days) — how long a new credit can be used for: 30 days to start with, anywhere from 1 to 366. A credit lasts until the end of the day that many days after it was issued, in your studio's timezone — a credit issued any time on October 1 with 30 days is good through October 31.

Change either whenever you like; it applies from the moment you save. Credits a student already holds are never taken away, and keep the expiry date they were given.

How a credit is earned

A credit is earned when a lesson is cancelled by the family:

• the family cancels from their portal, outside your cancellation cutoff; or

• you or a teacher cancel it on the family's behalf and choose Client cancelled.

Either way, it counts against the student's allowance for the quarter the lesson fell in, and once they reach that allowance, further cancellations in the same quarter earn nothing.

A lesson marked Teacher cancelled or Studio cancelled always gives the student one make-up credit, whatever your allowance, even when it is 0. It does not count against the allowance either, so the family's own cancellations that quarter still earn theirs.

The allowance check and the credit are one database statement, so two cancellations arriving at the same instant cannot both slip past the limit. When the system cannot be certain granting is safe, it does not grant: an under-granted credit is a question you can answer, an over-granted one is a policy you did not choose.

The cancellation cutoff

Settings → Scheduling also holds your cancellation cutoff — 24 hours by default. A family cancelling outside the cutoff succeeds on their own and earns the credit. Inside it, self-service cancellation is refused and they have to contact you. You can also switch family self-service cancellation off entirely and handle every change yourself.

Closures

When you close the studio for a day — a snow day, a break — you choose per closure whether to Grant make-up credits: one for each lesson it cancels. Leave it off for a holiday you published in advance. Closure credits never count against the quarterly allowance, and deleting the closure takes back any it granted that are still unused.

Adding, removing and re-dating credits by hand

Each student's page has a Make-up credits card listing every credit they hold, where it came from, and when it expires. From there you can:

• Add credit — one more credit, on top of anything earned. It does not count against the quarterly allowance. Leave the expiry blank to use your usual number of days.

• Change expiry — give a credit a later (or earlier) last day.

• Remove — take a credit away. It stays on record as removed rather than disappearing.

Each of these asks for a Note saying why. The note is required, and shown in Reports next to your name, so the history of every credit explains itself. These need the People section if a manager is doing them.

Booking the make-up

Press Use credit on the student's Make-up credits card. Choose which enrollment it is Make-up for, the Teacher (their usual one to start with), the Date and Start time, then Book make-up. The lesson is the length of their regular one, and the scheduler checks it like any other lesson.

• It uses the credit that expires soonest, so nothing lapses that did not have to.

• The make-up has to take place on or before the day the credit expires. Pick a later date and you are told the credit's last day — book earlier, or change the credit's expiry first.

• Booking needs the Scheduling section; a manager without it sees the credits but not the button.

If a family cancels a make-up lesson themselves, the credit that paid for it is handed back rather than a new one granted — so a rescheduled make-up never costs them a slot of their allowance.

When credits expire

A credit not used by its last day expires. It is no longer bookable from the moment the day ends, and is marked expired overnight. Credits never roll over beyond their date.

Seeing what has been issued

The Reports page carries a make-up panel — Earned, Redeemed, Expired unused, Removed and Bookable now — and the standard report Make-up credits outstanding lists the credits families still hold with the date each one expires. Under Admin → Students, the Make-up credits column shows each student's count and their next expiry. Every credit is recorded, including under an unlimited allowance.

For teachers

A teacher sees their students' credits on each student's page in the teacher portal. When a teacher cancels a lesson, the cancel step says what your studio's allowance is, so they know whether choosing Client cancelled will earn the family a credit. Choosing Teacher cancelled always gives the student one.

For families

• Your portal's Calendar shows your Make-ups ready to book — the credits you hold now — and how many more can be earned this quarter. A Make-up credits to use card lists each credit with the date to use it by.

• Cancel an upcoming lesson from the Calendar, where your studio allows it, outside their cutoff.

• Ask your studio to book the make-up — credits do not book themselves, and the lesson has to happen on or before the date shown.

• If your studio has set an unlimited allowance you will not see a remaining count — there is no limit to count down to.