One of my favourite pieces of wisdom goes something like this …. The way through the complex situation is always the answer to a simple question …. finding that question often the real issue.
We have been wrestling with an issue recently here at JWGecko around handling multiple prices for a single product in VETtrak. The background to this is that many RTOs are partially funded, or rather their training events are partially funded by government agencies. There is funding for the unemployed, for those recently made redundant and for different types of traineeships and apprenticeships. The answer came easily when we consulted our colleagues at OzSoft – James and Gordon.
The image below shows what the price type screen looks like in VETtrak. A price type is a type of price and allows the administration to set up a rate card for a training event. In this example the Book Keeping Course has four possible prices; the full price for a walk-up of $550, a member price of $110, a student price of $165 and unemployed students train for free. The two rows of ticks show that the price types are available on this occurrence and that they are also available on the Internet.
As you can see VETtrak handles multiple price types without difficulty, you create an extra ‘price type’ for each discount from the full price based on a criteria. RTOs probably has an addendum to their normal paper enrolment form that includes details relating to each price type or discount that justifies and documents the discount.
How do we handle this online? And … how do we communicate the price type justification via the API into VETtrak?
The Enrolment Form: The very first thing to consider is how to explain the rationale for the discount in the enrolment form and then how do we justify it?
The best way is to use plain and simple English:
There are four prices for this training event based on the answers to the question:
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1 Are you unemployed? yes/no Please provide your concession card number and bring it to the training event. [text box]
2 Are you a student? yes/no Please provide your student card number and bring it to the training event.[text box]
3 Are you a member? yes/no Please provide your membership number [validated against a member database in real time.[text box]
* It is possible for JWGecko to interact with external systems to validate data during the enrolment process. In these more complex interactions with other databases there may also be a requirement for a Custom API and or a VETtrak extension to store and process the data where this is outside the normal data storage regime within VETtrak or the standard enrolment API.
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These questions above and their answers define the price and the justification for it online and once given the applicaiton selects the appropriate price and the new student may progress to the payment stage with the correct pricing information.
The Discount Evidence in VETtrak: The OzSoft and JWGecko development teams have come up with an innovative [and free] way to record the enrolment price type informational in VETtrak. There is a little used field within a students enrolment called “Description” [see below] and in this field we can write the data the enrolment form and the student rely upon for the discount. In the coming months we will be using this field to record all sorts of information including automatically produced receipts, PCRN numbers, Drivers Licences etc.
The image above shows the whole of the screen to put the Description field in content however the image below highlights the section in detail.
Using the VETtrak Enrolment Description field is a simple and elegant solution allowing text information to be passed from the enrolment form, through the API to VETtrak to provide the justification & evidential data for relevant discounts – great work team!
