Overview
This article describes the setting ‘Automatically connect unconnected transactions to unpaid installments’ (Setting ID: Automatically_Connect_Unconnected_Transactions_To_Unpaid_Installments), located under Financial Settings > General Settings > Transaction Rights & Controls > Outstanding Installments Payment.
What This Setting Does
This is a dropdown (single-select) setting that controls the scope of an automatic background process that connects existing unconnected transactions to unpaid installments. Rather than requiring staff to manually match every unconnected payment, Classter periodically scans for unconnected transactions and unpaid installments and links them automatically, based on the option chosen in this setting.
Where It Is Used
This setting does not have its own screen. It drives an automatic background process that runs on its own schedule to connect open, unconnected transactions to existing unpaid installments, so staff do not need to open any screen for the matching itself to happen.
- The related unconnected transactions can still be viewed and worked with manually from Main Menu > Financial > Transactions, using the ‘Unconnected Transactions Management’ option in the Actions menu of that screen.
Business Logic / Behavior
- This setting offers a choice of options controlling the scope of academic periods considered by the automatic connection process: no automatic connection, connection limited to the default/current period, or connection across all periods.
- When set to disable automatic connection, unconnected transactions are not automatically matched to unpaid installments by this background process; they would need to be connected manually or through another mechanism.
- When set to limit to the default period, the automatic process only attempts to connect unconnected transactions to unpaid installments within the current/default academic period.
- When set to cover all periods, the automatic process attempts to connect unconnected transactions to unpaid installments across all academic periods, not just the current one.
- According to the setting’s description, this automatic matching process runs asynchronously in the background approximately every few hours, rather than instantly whenever a transaction becomes unconnected.
Example(s)
Example: at Alpha Institute, 35 payments totaling $9,400 were recorded during a busy 3-day enrollment period without being linked to specific installments, some relating to unpaid installments from the previous academic period. Rather than having staff manually reconcile each one, the finance administrator sets this option to ‘all periods’, so that every 4 hours the system automatically scans and connects these 35 unconnected payments to unpaid installments across all periods, including the older ones, significantly reducing manual reconciliation work. If the administrator had instead chosen ‘default period only’, only the payments matching unpaid installments in the current academic period would be connected automatically, leaving the older ones for manual review.
When to Use
Use this setting to decide how aggressively Classter should automatically clean up unconnected transactions by matching them to unpaid installments in the background. Choose the option that disables automatic connection if your institution prefers full manual control over how unconnected transactions are matched. Choose the option limited to the default period if you want automatic matching but only within the current academic period, for example to avoid unexpectedly affecting older periods’ balances. Choose the option covering all periods if your institution wants the broadest automatic reconciliation, including installments from past academic periods.
Notes
Prerequisites: there must be unconnected transactions and unpaid installments present for this automatic process to have any effect; this setting applies within the Billing module.
Related settings: Enable auto-connection of unpaid installments during issuing an unconnected payment receipt (Enable_Auto_Connection_Of_Outstanding_Installments_During_Issuing_An_Unconnected_Payment_Receipt in Financial Settings > General Settings > Transaction Rights & Controls > Outstanding Installments Payment); In Unconnected Transactions Management, make the connection not per arrangement but based on the chronological pay date of installments (In_Unconnected_Transactions_Management_make_the_connection_not_per_arrangement_but_based_on_the_chronological_pay_date_of_installments in Financial Settings > General Settings > Transaction Rights & Controls > Transaction Controls); Outstanding installments from previous periods will be paid first (Pliromi_Aneksofliton_Doseon_Apo_Alles_Periodous_Me_Imerominia in Financial Settings > General Settings > Transaction Rights & Controls > Outstanding Installments Payment).
This setting behaves the same regardless of whether Higher Education Mode (Enable Configuration for Higher Education/Xrisi_parametropoihshs_kolegiou) is enabled or disabled.
