Overview
This article explains the setting “Enable Agreed Discounts On Student Level” (“Financial Settings > General Financial Settings > Reductions, Discounts and Loans tab > Agreed Discounts section – Enable_Agreed_Discounts_On_Student_Level”). This setting is the master switch for the “Agreed Discounts” feature: it decides whether staff can record an individually negotiated discount directly on a Student’s profile, and whether such discounts are automatically carried into that Student’s financial arrangements (contracts).
This setting works closely together with the “Logical Order of the Applied Agreed Discounts” setting, which only has an effect once Agreed Discounts have been enabled here.
What This Setting Does
This is a simple on/off (Yes/No) setting. When it is switched On:
- A dedicated “Agreed Discounts” option becomes available on a Student’s financial information, allowing authorized staff to record one or more discounts directly against that specific Student (with a value, an optional validity period, an active/inactive flag, and an optional comment).
- Staff can also add or remove the same Agreed Discount for several Students at once, using a bulk action from the Students list.
- Any Agreed Discount recorded for a Student, provided it is active and within its validity period, is automatically added to every new financial arrangement created for that Student, without staff needing to re-enter it manually.
When it is switched Off:
- The “Agreed Discounts” option, the related bulk action, and the Agreed Discounts history report are hidden and unavailable throughout the application.
- Any Agreed Discounts already recorded for Students are no longer applied to new arrangements and are no longer displayed. Assumption: the underlying records themselves are not deleted when the setting is turned off, so they become active again if the setting is switched back on.
Where It Is Used
This setting is found under:
- Financial Settings > General Financial Settings > Reductions, Discounts and Loans tab > Agreed Discounts section.
Once enabled, it affects the following areas of the application:
- Student profile – Financial section: an “Agreed Discounts” button opens a window where staff can add, edit or remove the discounts agreed for that Student.
- Students list: a bulk “Add/Remove Agreed Discounts” action lets staff apply or withdraw the same Agreed Discount across multiple selected Students at once.
- Agreed Discounts Log: a dedicated report listing the history of changes made to Agreed Discounts; this report is unavailable while the setting is off.
- Admission / Online Enrollment area: when a returning Student re-applies, the system can flag that the Student previously had an Agreed Discount, so staff and parents are aware of it; this flag is only shown while the setting is on.
- Financial arrangement (contract) creation: the moment a new arrangement is created for a Student, whether at admission, re-registration, or ad-hoc creation, is where an existing Agreed Discount actually gets applied. This is described in more detail in Business Logic / Behavior below.
Business Logic / Behavior
- Every time a new financial arrangement is created for a Student, the system checks whether that Student has any Agreed Discounts recorded, and includes the applicable ones automatically, without any extra action from staff.
- An Agreed Discount is only inherited into a new arrangement if it is marked Active and, when a validity period (start and/or end date) has been set on it, the arrangement’s creation date falls within that period. Agreed Discounts that are inactive or outside their validity period are skipped automatically.
- If an Agreed Discount does not specify its own value, the standard value defined for that type of discount is used instead.
- Whether an Agreed Discount takes priority over a matching automatically calculated discount (for example a sibling discount), or the other way around, is decided by the related setting “Logical Order of the Applied Agreed Discounts” (see Related Settings below).
- If the arrangement being created is affected by a scholarship exception that specifically disables discount handling, Agreed Discounts are not applied to that arrangement, even while this setting is on and the Student has Agreed Discounts recorded.
- Assumption: turning this setting off does not delete previously recorded Agreed Discounts – it only stops them from being shown to staff and from being applied to new arrangements, until the setting is switched on again.
Business rules that can be inferred from this behavior:
- Agreed Discounts belong to the Student, not to a single arrangement; the same discount keeps being carried into every new arrangement created for that Student until it is removed, deactivated, or its validity period ends.
- This setting only controls whether the feature exists and is applied; who is allowed to actually add, edit or remove Agreed Discounts for a Student can be restricted separately through staff permissions.
- Agreed Discounts are always based on an existing discount type/reason already configured in the system; this setting does not let staff invent a new kind of discount on the fly.
Example
Sunrise Academy decides to start offering individually negotiated pricing to a small number of families, instead of relying only on standard automatic discounts. The finance officer enables “Enable Agreed Discounts On Student Level”.
A family enrolling their child, Sample Student A, negotiates a fixed discount with the school as part of a special agreement. The finance officer opens Sample Student A’s profile, opens the Agreed Discounts option, and records a discount of 50 currency units per month, with no end date, so that it keeps applying automatically in future periods as well.
A few days later, when a new financial arrangement (the enrollment contract) is created for Sample Student A, the 50 currency-unit discount is automatically included in that arrangement – the finance officer does not need to add it again by hand.
For another Student, Sample Student B, the school agrees to a discount that should only apply for the current academic year. The finance officer records the same type of Agreed Discount but sets an end date matching the last day of the current academic period. When a new arrangement is later created for Sample Student B after that end date has passed, the Agreed Discount is no longer included automatically, since it has expired; if the family and the school agree to continue the discount, staff must record a new Agreed Discount for the following period.
If “Enable Agreed Discounts On Student Level” is switched off at any point, neither Sample Student A’s nor Sample Student B’s Agreed Discount records are shown or applied to any new arrangement, even though the records themselves remain stored in the system.
When to Use
When to Enable:
- The institution regularly negotiates individual pricing agreements with specific families or Students (for example special arrangements, negotiated hardship discounts, or one-off agreements) that need to be remembered and consistently re-applied without manual re-entry every time a new arrangement is created.
- The institution wants a clear, separate record of these individually agreed discounts, distinct from generic automatic discounts such as sibling or pricing-category discounts.
- Students are re-registered period after period, and agreed pricing should automatically continue to apply on future arrangements without staff needing to remember and re-enter it.
When to Disable:
- The institution relies only on standard, rule-based discounts (for example sibling discounts, price-list discounts, or voucher-based discounts) and does not negotiate individual one-off agreements with specific Students.
- The institution prefers that every discount on a new arrangement be entered manually and reviewed by staff each time, without any automatic carry-over from previous agreements.
- Simplicity is preferred, and staff should not be presented with a feature that is not part of the institution’s pricing policy.
Notes
Prerequisites:
- At least one discount type/reason must already be configured under “Financial Settings > Discount and Loan Types” before an Agreed Discount can be recorded for a Student, since every Agreed Discount is based on an existing discount type.
- Depending on staff permissions, not every user role may be allowed to view or edit Agreed Discounts; confirm that the relevant finance or admissions staff have the appropriate access before relying on this feature.
Higher Education vs K-12 Mode:
- This setting behaves the same way whether the institution operates in Higher Education Mode or in standard (K-12) Mode. No difference in behavior was found between the two modes for this setting.
Related Settings:
- Logical Order of the Applied Agreed Discounts (“Financial Settings > General Financial Settings > Reductions, Discounts and Loans tab > Agreed Discounts section – Logical_Order_Of_The_Applied_Agreed_Discounts”) – only relevant once this setting is on; it decides whether an Agreed Discount takes priority over a matching automatically calculated discount, or the other way around.
- Give Dynamic Pledge Amount Vouchers For Every Agreed Discount Having Start Date Later Of Academic Period’s End Date (“Financial Settings > General Financial Settings > Reductions, Discounts and Loans tab > Vouchers section – Give_Dinamic_Pledge_Ammount_Vouchers_For_Every_Agreed_Discount_Having_Start_Date_Later_Of_Academic_Periods_End_Date”) – controls whether an Agreed Discount scheduled to start after the current academic period ends is instead issued to the family as a voucher in the meantime.
- Voucher Type For Pledge Discounts (“Financial Settings > General Financial Settings > Reductions, Discounts and Loans tab > Vouchers section – Voucher_Type_For_Pledge_Discounts”) – defines which voucher type is used when the setting above issues a pledge voucher for a future-dated Agreed Discount.
Default Value: The default value of this setting is Off (disabled).
