Overview
This article describes the setting ‘In Unconnected Transactions Management, make the connection not per arrangement but based on the chronological pay date of installments
located under Financial Settings > General Settings > Transaction Rights & Controls > Transaction Controls.
What This Setting Does
This is an on/off setting that changes how the system connects an unconnected transaction (a payment that is not yet linked to a specific installment) to outstanding installments. Instead of matching the transaction to installments arrangement-by-arrangement, this setting makes the system spread the payment across installments strictly in order of their payment date, potentially across multiple arrangements, until either all available installments are settled or the payment amount runs out.
Where It Is Used
This setting is used on the Unconnected Transactions Management screen, where staff connect previously unconnected payments to a _Student_’s outstanding installments.
- Main Menu > Financial > Transactions > Actions (button) > Unconnected Transactions Management: this screen lists unconnected payments and lets staff connect them to outstanding installments; the connection order follows this setting.
Business Logic / Behavior
- When enabled, the system attempts to link an unconnected transaction to installments across multiple arrangements, in chronological order of payment date, rather than restricting matching to installments within a single arrangement.
- The matching process continues until either all available installments have been closed (fully paid) or the transacted balance being distributed has been reduced to zero.
- When disabled (the default), the connection logic follows the standard per-arrangement matching approach instead of spreading a single transaction across installments from different arrangements based on date order.
- This setting applies specifically within the Billing module of the application.
Example(s)
Example: at Alpha Institute, a _Student_ has two active arrangements: Arrangement A (Tuition) with an outstanding $300 installment due February 1, and Arrangement B (Transport) with an outstanding $150 installment due February 10 and another $150 installment due March 10. The family makes one unconnected payment of $500. With this setting disabled, staff would need to connect the $500 to installments one arrangement at a time. With this setting enabled, Classter applies the payment strictly in date order across both arrangements: $300 clears the February 1 tuition installment first, then $150 clears the February 10 transport installment, leaving $50 applied toward the March 10 transport installment (which still shows $100 outstanding).
When to Use
This setting matters whenever _Students_ can have multiple concurrent arrangements and the institution needs to decide how unconnected payments are matched to outstanding installments across those arrangements.
When to Enable
Enable this setting if your institution wants unconnected payments to be applied to the oldest outstanding installments first, regardless of which arrangement they belong to, which can simplify reconciliation when _Students_ have multiple concurrent arrangements.
When to Disable
Keep this setting disabled if your institution prefers unconnected transactions to be matched to installments within a single arrangement at a time, following the standard per-arrangement connection logic.
Notes
Prerequisites: this setting is only relevant when unconnected transactions exist and there are outstanding installments across one or more arrangements to match them against.
Related settings: Allow direct issuing of unconnected credit transactions, without associated transactions (Allow_Issuing_Unconnected_Credit_Transactions_Without_Transaction_Documents in Financial Settings > General Settings > Transaction Rights & Controls > Transaction Controls); Allow users only to issue refund transactions for unconnected installments (Allow_Users_Only_To_Issue_Refund_Transactions_For_Unconnected_Installments in Financial Settings > General Settings > Transaction Rights & Controls > Transaction Controls); Automatically connect unconnected transactions to unpaid installments (Automatically_Connect_Unconnected_Transactions_To_Unpaid_Installments 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.
