End-of-Year Overview

Moving from one school year (or season) into the next is a multi-faceted process involving several steps. This help document serves as a directory to help guide you through this process.

Table of Contents

What should I know before I get started?

• Seasons
• Angel Funds

Steps to transition into a new season

• Season Wrap Up - Handling Program Memberships, Inventory Assignments, and Financials
• Handling Groups
• Handling Events
• Handling Users
• Moving Students to New Programs

Season Wrap Up FAQs

• What happens to my data from last season?
• What happens to my Alumni?
• What to members and guardians see after the season wrap up is done?
• If I have members coming into my program from another program, do I need to import their guardians?
• What if I already added some costs for next season?
• Get the End of Year Wrap Up Cheat Sheet

What should I know before I get started?

Seasons

Seasons are CutTime's equivalent to school years, but they offer a bit more flexibility than a traditional school year-based model. Most of what you'll do in this process revolves around Seasons, so it's strongly recommended you familiarize yourself with what they are and how they work before proceeding.

Click here for a full breakdown: Seasons

Angel Funds

An Angel Fund is a mechanism through which you can transfer overpayments/credits between students in your program, which can be particularly useful during your season wrap up process.

Click here for a full breakdown: Angel Funds and Credit Transfers

Steps to transition into a new season

Season Wrap Up - Handling Program Memberships, Inventory Assignments, and Financials

The Season Wrap Up is a dedicated workflow to help you deal with advancing your Members into the new season, decide what to do with outstanding inventory assignments, and decide how to handle any remaining student balances in your current season. We recommend that this be the first step you complete as you transition into your new season.

See the Season Wrap Up help document for a complete walkthrough of this feature: Season Wrap Up

Handling Groups

After you complete your Season Wrap Up, the Groups you created will carry into the next season with a blank slate.

Manually adding students to a group roster

1. Navigate to the Groups page from your sidebar
2. Click the group name to go to the Member selection screen
3. Search for a Member, select a position, and click "Join" to add them to the roster

Cloning a group roster from a previous season

If one of your group has most of the same members as it did in the previous season, you can "clone" last season's roster and add the same members with the same position that they previously had. To do this:

1. Navigate to the Groups page from your sidebar
2. Click the group name to go to the Member selection screen
3. On this screen, click "Clone last season's roster"
4. After your previous season roster has been cloned, you can manually add or remove additional members as necessary

Note that this will only clone member of this group that returned in the new season - graduates/non-returning members will not be cloned since they do not have a membership in the new season.

Handling Events

Events created in the previous season can be duplicated into the new season. This can be useful for those of you that got a head start on creating next season's calendar, but it can also be useful if you haven't created next season's calendar yet.

To duplicate a previous season's events:

1. Navigate to the Events page from your sidebar
2. In the "Past Season Events" table at the bottom of your screen
3. Click the "Duplicate" link next to the event you'd like to duplicate
4. Review the title, date, time, and group assignments for the event (these will be exactly the same as the original event, but you can change them if necessary)
5. Click "Save" to save this event in the new season

Using this duplicate feature will also duplicate any volunteer jobs you created for that event in the previous season. It will not, however, duplicate any volunteer sign-ups for events in the previous season.

Handling Users

As you transition into a new season, you may have new users to add and old users to remove. Even if you don't have any users to add or remove, this would be a great time to review the users in your account and ensure everybody has the proper permissions applied to them.

For more information about adding new users or user permissions, click here: User Management

If you need a user deactivated, please send an email to support@gocuttime.com with the name and email of the user and we will deactivate them for you ASAP.

Moving Students to New Programs

If you have members in your current season that are transferring to a new program, such as 8th graders moving into the high school, you can generate a pre-formatted export file with these members' details that can then be imported into the new program. This approach allows both programs to complete their season wrap up asynchronously - in other words, the middle school doesn't need to wait for the high school to wrap up their season before the middle school can wrap up theirs.

Step 1: Generate the export file

The program sending the students will start by generating the export file:

1. Navigate to Program Settings
2. Click Manage Seasons
3. Next to the Season that contains the members you'd like to export, click "Export Members for Transfer"
4. Select the members you'd like to export and click "Continue"
5. Choose whether to advance grade levels in the export and click "Export results" to download the file

Step 2: Send the file to the program receiving the students

Once you have the file downloaded, email it to the program where those members are transferring.

Step 3: New program imports the file

When the new program is ready to add the students from the file:

1. Make sure you're operating in the correct season (see Seasons for more information)
2. Navigate to Program Settings
3. Click "Import Students"
4. Upload the file and click the "Preview" button
5. Review the data being entered for accurate grade levels, primary positions, etc.
6. Click "Validate and Import" to create memberships for the incoming students

Season Wrap Up FAQs

What happens to my data from last season?

After you complete your season wrap up, your data from the previous season will remain in CutTime for you to go back and reference at any time. Click here for more information on viewing a previous season's data: Navigating Seasons

What happens to my Alumni?

CutTime plans to develop dedicated Alumni functionality later in 2024. For now, when you wrap up your season, your alumni are simply considered members of a previous season that do not have an active membership in your current season. When alumni functionality is developed, students with previous memberships will automatically be added to your alumni list. Rest assured in the meantime that these student records are not being deleted - you can view the Members page in a previous season to reference an old membership at any time.

What do members and guardians see after the season wrap up is done?

When members and guardians log in using magic links, they can open up the "Inactive seasons" dropdown to view previous seasons' details. This will allow them to view their current information in the new season dashboard while also allowing them to go back and access historical data from previous seasons if they'd like.

If I have members coming into my program from another program, do I need to import their guardians?

One benefit of how CutTime handles the student/guardian relationship is that once a guardian is attached to a member, that guardian will automatically "follow" that member into any other program within the same school district. So if you're at a high school and you've got a batch of 8th graders coming in from your feeder, you only need to import the students and the guardians will come along for the ride!

What if I already added some costs for next season?

Similar to with Events, some users may have proactively added some Costs for the new season before wrapping up their current one. Since Payments are not associated directly with Costs, this allows you to choose from two different approaches during this process.

Option 1: Delete costs and re-create them in the new season

This option will have you delete whatever costs you proactively created for next season before completing your season wrap up. Any payments that had been applied to these costs will still be applied to a member's balance even after the cost is deleted, which means that you can re-create these costs in your new season after completing your wrap up and the member balances will reconcile themselves. For example:

Alice Abbott was assigned a $50 Band Fee for the upcoming season before the current season was wrapped up. She already paid this fee, so her balance is now $0.

Deleting the upcoming season band fee will not delete the $50 payment, so Alice's balance will reflect a $50 overpayment.

After wrapping up the current season and carrying over Alice's overpayment, the new season's Band Fee is added and re-assigned to Alice. Her $50 overpayment is automatically applied to this cost and her balance returns to $0.

Pros to this option:

• Cleaner bookkeeping - since the cost is really for the new season, having the cost appear in the new season will make financial reporting more accurate

Cons for this option:

• A bit more effort than simply carrying over balances

Option 2: Carry over balances only

This option will carry over member balances without deleting and re-creating the costs.

Pros for this option:

• Less work during the wrap up
• The cost/payment association is a bit more straightforward

Cons for this option:

• Messier bookkeeping - costs are associated with the wrong seasons
• Can be confusing for members and guardians

CutTime generally recommends option 1 as a best practice, but each program is different and option 2 may be better in certain situations.

Additional Resources