FAQ - How should we track student memberships from year to year?
For high schools that want to track student memberships beyond the current year, we recommend creating a Custom Field for Student Membership. It should be set to Admin Only and be a Check Box with the Options: Freshman, Sophomore, Junior, and Senior.
At the end of each year, before students are promoted by the system to the next grade level, you can do a mass update for each class to check off which students were members. (People / Student List / Filter by Grade / Update Checked button / Update the list)
This is helpful for schools that award scholarships to student members and need to track which year students (or parents) were members.
FAQ - What is a good way to keep track of our Alumni?
To cut down on manual entry and to keep track of your students from year to year, we recommend the following:
- Add "Alumni" as a choice to your "Student Grade Level Choices" field (People / Configuration / Student Form.) This way you can promote students transitioning out of your school to Alumni during the Year End grade promotion step.
- Add a Custom Field for "Alumni Year." A Membership Toolkit Team Member will have to do this for you. Just submit a ticket to our Help Desk with your request. Once the field is set up, you can edit it and enter graduation years for the upcoming classes of students.
- When you Promote Students using the Year End tool, you can promote the "graduating" students to Alumni and also set the graduation year for each grade level.
This will allow you to filter by your Alumni by the grade they will graduate high school in the event you offer scholarships or invite them back for a reception the year they graduate.
FAQ - Should we clear out all of our previous data?
No. We do not recommend that you destroy data.
Instead, we recommend you complete our Year End Transitioning tasks to keep your site and your data up-to-date. We also have a handy
Year End Checklist to help.
FAQ - What is the best process for getting the new year started?
As the end of the school year approaches,there are several steps you should consider to prepare for the upcoming year. Below is a sample timeline (for a middle school) for closing out the current year and preparing for the next:
June 2nd (Last Day of School) - Last day to place "Pre-Orders" for forms that are open such as:
- Membership 2017-2018
- PE Uniforms
- School Supplies
- Volunteer Opportunities 2017-2018
June 3rd - July 7th
- Complete Year End Checklist.
- Update Website Content Pages. You will want to update your home page letting users know when you will be ready for them to take care of their Back to School needs.
- Update Forms for next year. We recommend setting all forms that you will be using for Back to School to Test Mode. In Test Mode, only you and other Admins can see them from the Open Forms page. All forms should be set to either draft, test, or archived if you do not want users to be able to see them and fill them out over the summer during the closing of your books and reconciliation.
June 30th - Close Books
July 7th - Books are ready to be handed off to Reconciliation Committee.
July 18th - Reconciliation Completed
July 20th - 22nd - "Launch" Sales for the new year.
- Online Forms for 2017-2018 are set to Active.
- Update your home page to let users know 2017-2018 sales have begun.
August 7th - Last day to "Pre-Order" items.
- These are items you plan to have available for pick up in the "Express Line" during the school's Schedule Pick Up times.
August 10th - Schedule Pick-Up
- Express Line Pick Up for everyone that pre-ordered.
- Onsite Sales for Spirit Wear and any remaining (extra) School Supplies.
- Online sales should be suspended and online forms should be deactivated during onsite sales.
- Following the Onsite event, inventory should be taken and adjusted within the Catalog so Online Sales can start back up on August 11th.
FAQ - Why did my system dates roll over a day early?
When setting your dates for the system rollovers to occur, it is important to keep this information in mind:
12 am is technically the next day. So if yesterday was 6/29 - it was 6/29 all the way up to 11:59 pm. At 12 am (midnight) the "date" becomes 6/30. 12 am is the very first minute of the new day. So, if on the user's contact record it says info must be verified on 6/30 at 12 am, that is actually the exact moment at midnight when the date changes over to be 6/30.