eBECAS Homestay

Index

Homestay

Airport transfers

Airport Transfer Reports

The purpose of this documentation is to provide assistance in finding the most suitable homestay placement for a student and scheduling payments to homestay providers for those placements.

The Homestay area of eBECAS is designed to share and update information entered by College staff working in Finance, Admissions, Registrar, Airport Transfers and Homestay. Each staff member can enter and update their data normally, but all staff need to view and be aware of the Homestay information.

Usually the Admissions staff enter in the offer details, which includes the period of the homestay / accommodation, the type of accommodation, and any homestay request notes. The Homestay officer can then view details about offers from the Student offer screen.

There are 2 types of homestay requests, one associated with an offer (which is not neccessarily a definite starter), and the other is associated with enrolment, which is a genuine starter.

Homestay offers

Often the first time homestay staff are made aware of homestay requests is when Offers are made. An offer is not a confirmed genuine starter, but it is important that the Homestay officer is aware of what homestay requests are coming up in the future. The homestay officer can view Offers that include upcoming homestay requests from here: (the search options used are: Accommodation, and search period, for example the period I have used is for the next month from 26 Nov 2007 to 31 Dec 2007)

This information can be used by the Homestay Officer to make contact with the student or agent to clarify the homestay request. Hopefully in discussions, the student / agent may be able to confirm the enrolment, so the homestay officer may be the first in the College to confirm the enrolment and accept the offer. (and make this offer a genuine invoiced starter).

The details of the offer that contains the accommodation / homestay request can be viewed by highlighting the accommodation item, pressing Items - Modify or double clicking the highlighted offer in the line item in the grid.

It is possible to list a "provisional placement" with an offer. We do not recommend entering a placement at the offer stage. This option is only meant as a general indication, to be used with a Lodge or Hotel. There is no searching available for a suitable placement of homestay families for an offer. The facility to search homestay families and make a placement, is only available when the offer is made an enrolment.

While the homestay officer can provisionally allocate the homestay provider at time of offer, payment schedules can only be entered when the offer has been accepted and made an enrolment.

Even still, we have provided the ability to check both unplaced and tentative (offer) homestay requests from the screen 8.2 Homestay - Requests / Placements. This is provided to follow up the request to convert the offer to an enrolment, then make the placement and schedule the payments to the accommodation provider.

From the Homestay Search screen, to list "provision placements" (at the offer stage), I have chosen the start date for the period, with a status of Tentative (Offers).

Homestay Placements

To make a placement and search for appropriate homestay family for a homestay request, the homestay must be associated with an enrolment and have the homestay request details entered. To schedule homestay payments to the homestay provider, there must be a homestay invoice item for the homestay period.

The homestay fees that have been invoiced for this request can be displayed from View - Enrolments, Enrolments - Fees

Search for Homestays waiting placement

Previously we explained that you can display the homestay requests entered with offers. This is provided essentually for marketing purposes, to enable homestay staff to check whether the marketing department is following up homestay requests in offers.

Usually you will be searching for student enrolments (genuine starters) that include homestay requests and changes that are waiting for placement. The menu navigation is main - Homestay - Request/Placements.

To search for new requests you can use starters, or current enrolments that have the status Waiting Placement (Use starters in a period to keep ahead of placements and current as of today for missed placements ** this should never happen **):

You can see the homestay provider is not listed because the student is awaiting placement. To display details of the homestay request, press Option - modify or double click the highlighted homestay request, which will show:

eBECAS enables the Homestay person to allocate students to Homestay Families and find the most suitable and appropriate Homestay providers to fit the student requirements.

This next section assumes you have entered the Homestay Provider details including available beds, and homestay provider categories, that enable you to place the student with an appropriate homestay provider.

There are 2 options relating to placing the student from the Student Details screen Homestay tab. Find Placement and Place.

Pressing Find Placement, Search can list many available families.

Instead of simply looking at a long list of families that have bed, by reviewing the student requirements from the previous Student Details screen 1.1 you can select the homestay family categories and bed description that fit the students requests. Press the three buttons to display the categories and bed categories.

Applying the list and adjusting the filter categories you can locate the families that meet your criteria as an optimum placement.

By double clicking on the family name from the list, you can see the family details screen 8.1, including notes, both public (used in placement letter to student) and private for internal College use.

Family details screen 8.1, Address tab includes street and psstal address, contact details, family homestay rates (optional) and bank account details.

Family details screen 8.1, Members tab includes family member names and details.

Family details screen 8.1, Beds tab includes beds available and bed categories.

Family details screen 8.1, Placements tab includes student placements including bed, student name, stdeunt number and period and family bed unavailability (if entered).

Family details screen 8.1, Diary tab includes any diary entries for the family.

Family details screen 8.1, Payments tab includes any homestay scheduled and made payments, listed for each student, the placement, the amount, date of payment (or scheduled payment), and period the payment is for.

Check each family against the students requirements, contact the family to check if they would like the student placement.

Once you have selected the family and confirmed they want to take the student for the period, place the student with the family by choosing Operations - Place.

We now have placed the homestay family with the student.

Scheduling Payments to a Accommodation Providers for a placement

Often Colleges ask the Homestay staff to schedule payments, or the homestay staff communicates with the Finance staff to update the payment schedule for the family for the placement. If your College has separate hoomestay and finance staff communicating with each other for payment schedules and changes of placements, use the Diary, create a Diary category under Homestay as Changes or Schedule and mark the diary entries "To Do" to communicate these requests. After the change or schedule has been enacted / updated you can remove the "To Do" as the schedule has been entered or the change has been made.

To go to the Schedule Payments, select the options Schedule Payments from the Homestay details.

You can now specify the payment schedule for the homestay provider for this placement. Press New.

Select the Homestay Placement and press Next

This student has several previous enrolments that have been cancelled (and have no money left to pay out). The Nett Column shows how much is available for the Homestay Invoice to schedule payments. Select the Invoice with money left to schedule (the bottom one) then press next.

Different Colleges have different homestay schedule preferences. We have tried to cater for all options with this wizard. The first option is simply a single payment which defaults to the start date of the homestay placement. The next option is schedule a regular number of weeks (1 or more) payment. The third option is to divide the payments into equal periods. To show you how this works, I am scheduling payments every 4 weeks, starting on Thursday 14th February.

In this instance the amount charged by the College to the student is the same as the amount paid to the Homestay provider. Often there is a difference. You can see the dates the payments will be due to be made to the homestay provider (Pay Date) and the amount and period the payemnt is for. Press Next to complete the payment schedule for this placement.

Final confirmation, Press Next, then Finish

The Scheduled payments now look like this:

You will notice no payments have been made. Now over to use these scheduled and due payments for all homestay providers.

Payments due to Accommodation Providers

From the eBECAS Main menu, got to Finance - Schedule Payments. You can schedule payments due for Airport Pickup (Transfers), Agent Commission, Accommodation Payment, Accommodation Placement, and OSHC (Insurance). I will be demonstrating how you can make payments due for homestay to homestay providers.

The screen below is displayed when you select Finance - Schedule Payments. This is the search screen which lists all previous scheduled payments made. To see the Homestay payments made, change the Scheduled Payment Type to Accommodation Payments and press Search.

You can filter to look at payments for period, or select a payment already made to reprint. To look up the homestay payments due for payment press the New button, select the Location, Accommodation Payments option for Payment Schedule and the date the Payments are due on or before. Once a payment has been made, it will not be listed to be paid again.

To make the payments select the payments to make. The selection can be done individually or using the selection options: select all, unselect all and reverse selection. Usually you would select all listed as due. You can export this list to Ms Excel and then press Save and select the posting date. The advantage of exporting the list to Ms Excel is that the payment details include the Bank account numbers and amounts, so can be sent to a Bank for payment.

You will also find the Student and accommodation provider have been updated with the details of the payment made.

Changing a homestay placement for a student

If a student is placed with a homestay family, and the student wishes to change homestay, there are several steps to the process:

remove the student placement with the family as of the change-over day,
remove future scheduled payments for the old placement,
allocate the new student placement and
schedule payments to the new homestay provider.

Remove Student placement

There are 2 options, either the student should have never been placed with the homestay, and the student has not stayed with the family, then you use the option to Remove Placement, If the student has been placed originally with a family for 10 weeks, and on the end of week 4, the student wishes to be placed with an alternative homestay family, the the placemnt needs to be modified.

We modify the placement to be 4 weeks.

Now go to the homestay scheduled payments (select the option Scheduled Payments from the drop down), and remove the unpaid schedules for the corresponding period. From:

To, by deleting each line entry:

We now go back to the original Placements screen (select Placements from the drop down). Enter a new Homestay request corresponding to the 6 weeks remaining in the original 10 weeks homestay. Make sure you make the in (start) date the date the student moves out of the old placement.

There will now be 2 placements, the old one and the new waiting for placement.

We now need to make a new placement. After the new placement is made, the homestays will look like this.

Moving to the Scheduled payments, we now need to schedule the payments to the new family. The original payments schedules look like this.

We need to now schedule the payments for the new placement. Press New, select the new family.

The invoice is displayed and listed with it are the payment amount already paid, and if there are any payments remaining to be scheduled, and the remaining amount of the invoice that can be used to schedule a payment.

The options for scheding payments for the new placement is dsiplayed. I am selecting every 2 weeks starting on Thursday 27th, 2007.

Press next the payments are listed.

Press next where the confirmation dialogue is displayed, then press Finish.

The payments schedules have now been updated for the new placement.

Please review the above screens as it illustrates how we are scheduling what is paid to the homestay provider. The student is invoiced $200 per week, but the family is paid $180 per week. This means what is scheduled to be paid to the homestay provider is $360 every 2 weeks. For the scheduled payments for 6 weeks therefore the scheduled total is $3 x $360 = $1080.

Scheduled payments can also be seen from the Enrolment Fees screen (screen 1.3) View Schedule Payments.

Airport Transfers

Airport request is generally entered as an offer. The fees can be entered into the fee area. (eBECAS main - Utilities - Fees). Each fee has specified whether the fee is including tax or not and what tax rate.

Often Colleges do not have immediate transfer information or flight arrival details. If you do not have immediate arrval details, then I suggest that the offer items (course start date and homestay request start date) are looked at to estimate the approximate arrival date. This will then act as a flag to follow up on getting the transfer details from the student or agent.

Once an offer is upgraded to an enrolment, the airport transfer details are placed with the student details. You can have multiple transfers, both pickup and return. Transfers are grouped together for the student to show transfer details separate from the enrolment, and grouped together irrespective of what enrolment the invoice for the transfer is billed.

The staff member that handles airport transfers for the College should always preview what transfers are coming up and be ready to arrange the transfer for the student or forward the request information to the external transfer company.

As well as arranging transfers, the staff member should view airport transfers entered for offers and enrolments without details. An offer is a request for pricing only, but the staff member needs to be prepared, and if the transfer request is should be arriving shortly, and has not been confirmed or accepted, should directly contact the student or agent to see if the offer should be accepted, and the transfer details confirmed.

To search the offers with homestay requests, go to the Offer Search (eBECAS Main - Offers) select the upcoming period you want to check before the student arrives. Select the Airport date range. Usually a search would be for a status of Request, that need to be confirmed.

These are the requests that have been entered as an offer, that still has not been confirmed. Follow these offers up. When the Airport Transfers are enrolments, to search the Airport Transfers, go to eBecas Main - Airport Transfers.

Airport Transfers can also be search for by Status. The status options are: Request, Confirmed, Completed and Cancelled. This enables staff using the Airport Transfer area of eBecas to use the status to keep trace of the requests (entry of details), compared to the confirmed with the student, agent and Airport Transfer company or homestay doing the pickup / drop off. When the transfer is confirmed the details can be updated.

The search screen now would look like this:

Airport Transfer Reports

The reports are designed to be used to provide Airport Transfer details including optionally homestay notes and Homestay placement details. The report can be exported to Ms Excel, so can be used to print large signs when used with Ms Word. The report options are:

And report output:

There is also a report that lists Airport Transfer as offers. Go to eBECAS Reports - Airport Transfers - Offered Transfers.