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What are Alternating Schedules?
Alternating Schedules can be used when a child attends different schedules throughout the year.
For example, say a child attends your center 5 days a week throughout the year, but attends only 2 days a week during the holiday period. You can set up an alternating schedule for this child to reflect their attendance during these periods without needing to change their booking manually.
Or maybe a child attends your center 3 days a week on odd weeks, but 4 days a week on even weeks. You can set up both weeks as alternating schedules so you don't need to schedule a new plan every week.
If you'd like to use Alternating Schedules at your center, get in touch with the Famly Customer Team via the in-app chat or reach out to support@famly.co - they'll enable this feature for you.
Step 1: Create the Billing Profiles
Billing Profile 1: School Days
Go to Settings → Finances → Pricing → Fundamentals
Click on Add attendance schedule
Create an attendance schedule with specific dates and name it School Days (this is just an example, you can name the attendance schedule anything you like!)
Select Specific dates and select all school days in the academic year. Make sure you're highlighting school days in purple, and leaving school holidays blank
Click Create
Billing Profile 2: School Holidays
Create a second attendance schedule and name it School Holidays
Select Specific dates
This time, when entering the dates, highlight school holidays in purple and leave school days blank. You're essentially creating an opposite pattern to the schedule above.
Click Create
Next, link these attendance schedules to the new Billing profiles. To do so:
Navigate back to the Fundamentals tab in Billing Profiles
In the Invoicing profiles click on Add billing profile
Select the School Days attendance schedule
In the Billing cycle dropdown, choose Actuals
Click Create
Repeat this process to create a new Billing profile for the School Holidays attendance schedule, too
Now you're ready to add the schedules to a child's booking plan!
Step 2: Add the schedules to a child's plan
Billing Profile 1: School Days
In this example, we're going to create alternating schedules for a child that attends the center 5 days a week during school days and 2 days a week during school holidays.
Go to the child's profile and select the Billing tab
Next to Plans, click Create new plan
From the drop-down, select the attendance schedule you named School Days
Next, add the child's billing - in our example, that would mean adding 5 full day sessions
After adding the billing pattern, click the + Add billing pattern button in the bottom left corner of the plan. It'll look something like this:
*Note: If you don't see the option to '+ Add booking pattern' click the pencil icon to edit the settings and click the Override button. It should now appear.
Billing Profile 2: School Holidays
It's time for you to add this child's attendance during the school holidays.
Select the attendance schedule you named School Holidays from the drop-down menu in the new section
Add the child's booking pattern - in our example case, this would be 2 full day sessions.
Click Save
Once both schedules have been added, your alternating schedule should look something like this, with School Days on the left and School Holidays on the right
Now, when you're ready to bill this child's bill payers, their bill will show the attendance that child is expected to have based on the dates entered in the attendance schedules. This means they will automatically be charged 5 full days during school days and 2 days during school holidays, without you needing to schedule a change in their booking.