Season Wrap Up

Table of Contents

Wrap Up Introduction

• What is it?
• Understanding Seasons

Walkthrough

• Before you begin
• Step 1: Create a new Season
• Step 2: Begin Wrap Up
• Step 3: Bulk Strategies - Membership Progression
• Step 4: Bulk Strategies - Balances
• Step 5: Bulk Strategies - Inventory Assignments
• Step 6: Individual Progression Plans
• Step 7: Complete Your Wrap Up

Other Considerations

• Leaving and Coming Back to a Wrap Up
• Canceling or Restarting a Wrap Up

Wrap Up Introduction

What is it?

As part of your "end-of-year" process, the Season Wrap Up is the process of progressing members from one season into another. This process will create a "Progression Plan" that determines three things for your members:

1. Their Progression - whether or not they will be continuing their membership in your program next season
2. Their Balance - how you deal with any money owed or credits/overpayments that members still have at the end of the season
3. Their Inventory Assignments - how you deal with any inventory items still assigned to any members

Understanding Seasons

At the core of this wrap-up process is the concept of Seasons. Seasons are similar to school years, but are flexible enough to handle other situations for programs that may want multiple seasons per year, or perhaps don't feel it's necessary to have more than one season. For a more detailed explanation of Seasons, see the the help document here: Seasons.

Program memberships technically belong to seasons, which means that at the beginning of each season, you are creating a new program membership for returning students. For non-returning students, their old program membership will still exist, but a new one will not be created in the new season.

For the other seasonal data such as Financials, Announcement, Events, and Inventory assignments, each new season will begin with a blank slate. However, you will still be able to access information from previous seasons by toggling into those seasons.

Walkthrough

Before you begin

Before you begin your season wrap up, there are a few things we suggest doing:

1. Ensure all of your Program Member information is accurate and up to date for your current season
2. Ensure your program's financial records are current and all student balances are up to date
3. Ensure CutTime is updated with any inventory items that were returned

Step 1: Create a new Season

The first step in completing your wrap up is to make sure your next season is set up to receive the advancing members.

1. Go to your Program Settings page
2. Click "Manage Seasons", where you should see your current season in the table already
3. Click "Create season"
4. Assign a name to your new season (there will be a default prepopulated, which you can change if you'd like) and choose an estimated start date
   1. Note that the estimated start date is simply a data field to help CutTime put your seasons in chronological order. You can wrap up your season before, on, or after this date and it will not affect any functionality.
5. Click "Create season" and see that it populates your table

Step 2: Begin Wrap Up

1. Next to your current season, click "Wrap Up Season"
2. Click "Begin Wrap up!"

Once you begin your wrap up, you will be able to leave the page and come back later without losing progress. No need to do it all in one sitting!

The first phase of the wrap up involves determining some bulk strategies for your members. The strategies you select will apply to all students by default, but don't worry if you have some outliers - you'll be able to edit any individual student's progression plan after you decide your bulk strategies.

Step 3: Bulk Strategies - Membership Progression

From the dropdown, select the "graduation grade" for your program. The graduation grade is the highest grade level you typically see in your program. For a high school this will most likely be 12th grade, for a middle school it might be 7th, 8th, or 9th, etc.

Whatever you select here, CutTime will assume that any program members that are currently in that grade are not returning next season, i.e. they are "graduating". Any program members that are currently below that grade level are assumed to be returning to the program next season and advanced forward one grade level. If you have members below the graduation grade that are not returning, you can manually set that in step 4.

Step 4: Bulk Strategies - Balance Strategies

There are four different circumstances for which you will need to choose a strategy to handle member balances.

1. Advancing students that owe money
2. Graduating students that owe money
3. Advancing students with credits/overpayments
4. Graduating students with credits/overpayments

Note that graduating students do not have an option to carry over balances - since these students will not have a program membership next season, their balances must be zeroed out.

Here is an explanation of the strategy options for students who owe money:

• Carry balance into next season
  • This option will take the member's current balance and assign that as their starting balance to begin next season. CutTime will continue to consider this an open balance until the amount is covered next season.
• Cover balance using the Angel Fund
  • The Angel Fund is a feature that allows you to track money that's been earmarked for student accounts but not applied to a specific student. Often the Angel Fund is populated by graduating students that have credits left over, but it can also be populated manually in the case of donations or scholarships. See a full rundown of Angel Funds here: Angel Funds and Credit Transfers
• Forgive the remaining balance
  • This option takes any amount still owed by a student and zeroes it out, essentially writing it off as a "loss" for the program. If your program has an optional fee structure where fair share fees are encouraged but not required, this option will allow members to begin next season with a clean slate.
• Do nothing
  • This option will allow you to handle each member who owes money on a case-by-case basis in step 6.

Here is an explanation of the strategy options for students with credits/overpayments:

• Carry balance into next season
  • This option will take the member's current balance and assign that as their starting balance to begin next season. This balance will automatically be applied to any costs created in the new season.
• Add funds to Angel Fund
  • This option will take any credits/overpayments and donate them to the Angel Fund, which can then be used to assist other members in paying down their balances. We see this most often with graduating students who do not have younger siblings. See a full rundown of Angel Funds here: Angel Funds and Credit Transfers
• Delete the remaining balance
  • This option will zero out the credits/overpayments for a student and leave them with a blank slate to begin the new season. Choosing this option essentially donates these credits back to the program by removing the earmark for student accounts and returning the amount back to your program's general fund.
• Do nothing
  • This option will allow you to handle each member with credits/overpaymnets on a case-by-case basis in step 6.

Step 5: Bulk Strategies - Inventory Assignments

If any of your members still have inventory items assigned to them, such as instruments, attire, or music library items, you will need to decide whether to continue these assignments in the new season or end the assignments. Like with balances, there are strategies both for returning members and non-returning members.

Here is an explanation of the strategy options for inventory assignments:

• Carry assignments into next season
  • This option will take any active inventory assignments and essentially "refresh" them in the new season. You might choose this option if you have summer instrument assignments already created for your members.
• End active assignments
  • This will essentially mark all active inventory assignments as "returned". If this option is selected, a new inventory assignment will need to be created manually in the new season.
• Do nothing
  • This option will allow you to handle each member with inventory assignments on a case-by-case basis in step 6.

Step 6: Individual Progression Plans

With your bulk strategies determined, the next step is to select your new season and review individual progression plans.

In the table labeled "Summary of progression plans for your members", you will see a list of all your current program members and the three strategies you determined for each. Members that do not require action will appear as green, while members that require action (which may be the case if you chose "do nothing" for any of the bulk strategies) will appear as red.

To make changes for any specific member, you can click that member's row in the table to open their individual progression plan. From here, you will be able to choose or adjust this member's strategies and save their progression plan. Note that even if a member's row is green, you can still adjust their progression plan (such as for students below graduation level that you know will not be returning).

Step 7: Complete Wrap Up

With all of your progression plans in place, the final step is to complete your wrap up. Make sure you have a new season selected in your dropdown at the top of the page, and when you're ready, click the "Complete Season" button at the bottom of your page.

With your wrap up completed, you will be redirected back to your Program Dashboard, which will now be your dashboard for the new season. You should see the name of the new season now appear under your program name on the top left side of your screen. Additionally, navigating back to your Seasons page will show you that the new season has been selected as the new "default season" (see Navigating Seasons for more information).

Other Considerations

Leaving and Coming Back to a Wrap Up

The Season Wrap Up is flexible in that it does not all need to be completed in one sitting. At any point during the wrap up workflow, you can go to a different page, close the tab, or log out altogether and return to continue your wrap up process at a later time. To do this, you simply need to go back to the Seasons page and click the "Wrap Up Season" link to go back to where you left off.

Canceling or Restarting a Wrap Up

As you go through your wrap up, you may end up needing to cancel and restart the process. This may be the case if you select the wrong option in the bulk strategies phase and continue, or perhaps you may realize you forgot to add some payments, etc. From any part of the wrap up process, you can click "Cancel" at the bottom of your screen to delete your progress and begin again.