Purpose

To produce extract records containing the necessary information for printing Reminder Notices.

SubSystem

Finance

Extract Process

A wide range of data is extracted from relevant Callista database tables. This data, plus some entered by parameter (and data from other Callista tables if required), is the source for the creation of Reminder Notices for students with fees overdue in a given period. It is written in the form of extract records to the generic S_EXTRACT_RECORD table. A single record is written to the S_EXTRACT table to identify a particular run instance of this job for which extract records have been created.

The extract relates only to student debtors. A different statement (FINJ6130) is provided for sponsors undertaking payment of student's fees.

The Extract Table Methodology allows flexibility for the institution to produce customised reminder statements.

Note: For students without sponsorship and with OVERDUE Fees the job only extracts a reminder notice for them once. But subsequent runs of FINJ6121 do not create the same reminder notice extract

For partially sponsored students with OVERDUE Fee amounts (student portion) and whose Sponsorship Fee Amounts are NOT OVERDUE the job extracts reminder notice for these students only once. But subsequent runs of FINJ6121 do not create the same reminder notice extract.

For partially sponsored students with OVERDUE Fees (student portion) and whose Sponsorship Fee Amounts are also OVERDUE the job extracts reminder notice for these students only once. But subsequent runs of FINJ6121 do not create the same reminder notice extract.

For a partially sponsored student whose fees (student portion) are NOT OVERDUE and whose sponsorship fees are OVERDUE the job does not create reminder notices for these student

Extraction Criteria

The basis of extraction is that a debt exists within the Financial Period for a student satisfying the parameter selection criteria.

Extraction is always for a single Financial Period. Further selection can be made by supplying specific parameter values.

Records are only extracted if the Correspondence Category recorded against a Student's Course Attempt (displayed in ENRF3000) includes a Correspondence Type for Reminder Notice which matches the Correspondence Type supplied by parameter for this job.

For example, if the Correspondence Category STANDARD includes a Correspondence Type of REMNDR-SOA, and if REMNDR-SOA is the chosen parameter for this job run, Student Course Attempts with the STANDARD Correspondence Category are extracted.

The relationships between Correspondence Types and Categories are recorded in CORF2200.

Update Process

In a successful extract:

• Source data for Reminder Notices is written to the S_EXTRACT_RECORD table. (Refer to Extract Creation Processes.)
• The last reminder date in the Person Payment Schedule table will either be inserted or updated and, unless the run is a test extraction (set by parameter)
• A Correspondence Item is created for each extract (displayed in CORF2310) and Outgoing Correspondence registered for each applicable student (shown in CORF2311) against the Correspondence Type selected by parameter in this job

For further information, refer to the Correspondence Subsystem.

Reminder Notice Extract Records

Up to fourteen different types of record can be held for each individual Reminder Notice. These records are:

• A header record with the Financial Period and institution details including an Address (record type = HEADER)
• Records for each student due to receive a Reminder Notice. For each student selected, the following are extracted where applicable:
• Personal details (record type = PERSON)
• Addresses (record type = ADDRESSES)
• Opening Balance (record type = OPENING BALANCE)
• Fee Credits (record type = SYSTEM-CREDIT)
• Details of Assessed Courses (record type = ASSESSED-COURSES)
• Unit Set details (record type = UNIT SETS)
• Assessed Liabilities (record type = ASSESSED-LIABILITIES)
• Assessed Units (record type = ASSESSED-UNITS)
• Discipline Bands (Record Type = DISCIPLINE-BAND (Previously HECS))
• Assessment transactions (record type = TRANSACTION-DETAILS)
• External references (record type = EXTERNAL-REFERENCES)
• Fee Encumbrance details (record type = FEE-ENCUMBRANCES)
• Encumbrance effect details (record type = ENCUMBRANCE--EFFECTS)
• Non assessed course details (Record Type = NON-ASSESSED-COURSES)
• Non assessed unit set details (Record Type = NON ASSESS UNIT SETS)
• Non assessed unit details (Record Type = NON-ASSESSED-UNITS)
• Advanced Standing details (Record Type = ADVANCED STANDING)
• Fee Capping Details (record type = FEE-CAP-DETAILS)
• A footer record, giving totals of all records processed (record type = FOOTER)

See view details documentation for more detail.

Run Details

Method

This job can only be run in batch mode, through the Job Control & Scheduling Subsystem.

Note: The report can only be generated in immediate mode using the Log Creation Date parameter which permits Exception Reports produced from previous runs of this job to be reproduced.

The Date and Time of extract is stored with the extracted records.

It is appropriate to start running this job sometime after student fees become overdue in accordance with the accepted procedure for your institution.

Data is usually processed by the institution's custom built statement creation/printing job. Data can be viewed in the S_EXTRACT and S_EXTRACT_RECORD tables, or in a more useable form in the views ACC_STMNT_EXTRACT_V and ACC_STMNT_RECORD_V, using an ad-hoc query tool.

This job is accessed from the main menu.

The Reminder Notice Extract block contains:

Parameters Tab

• Request Person ID

Select either ...

• Log Creation Date

Or a combination of the following parameters ...

• Correspondence Type
• Financial Period
• Fee Assessment Period
• Fee Type
• Fee Category
• Course Code
• Person ID

  Buttons

  • Find Course
  • Find Person

More Tab

• Person ID Group
• Institution
• Address Type
• Date of Issue
• Comment
• Days Overdue
• Days Since Last Reminder
• Exclude Sponsor Debt check box
• Include Previously Reminded check box
• Test Extraction

  Button

  • Calendar Lookup

Rules/Notes:

In the Record Type ASSESSED LIABILITIES, the fields ‘Last Transaction Date’, ‘Last Effective Assessment Date’, ‘Last Notification Date’, ‘Retained Debt Amount’ and ‘Manual Entry’ will only take into account units which are overdue.

For example, if a student has the following debt:

The Reminder Notice will report it as follows:

Required Parameters

Select a value for Correspondence Type (see Extraction Criteria and Update Process) from the list of values (LOV) displaying the types mapped to this job. Select also an active Financial Period.

Select an Institution Code and Address Type, used to retrieve the required institution address for printing on the Reminder Notice. (Note that the LOV shows only Closed Address Types. This is in line with the recommendation that once established, institution addresses should be closed to prevent their display in general LOVs.)

Setting the Exclude Sponsor Debt check box to Y will extract students where they have a personal liability.  This will apply when they are not sponsored at all or when they are partially sponsored and the student's portion is overdue.

Setting the Include Previously Reminded check box to Y will report the total overdue debt status at each instance a new debt becomes overdue.

These parameters have a default value of % indicating that all data values relevant to the parameter should be processed.

To further limit the students whose records should be extracted and/or the relevant debts for which a Reminder Notice is to be issued, a specific value may be specified for any or all of the following:

• The Fee Assessment period - will extract only students assessed in this Fee Period
• The Fee Type (e.g. Student Contribution Amount, general service fee) - will only select students with this Fee Type, and produce statements only for this fee
• The Fee Category - will extract students who have been assessed under this category
• The course - will only select students in this course, and produce statements only for this course
• The Person ID to produce a statement for a single student
  OR
  The Person ID Group to target only students identified as within the group. Note that users who create Person ID Groups Control ID Group security, and the list of values (LOV) will only present groups to which you have been granted access
• The date of issue is recorded against the Outgoing Correspondence records
• The days overdue - will only extract students where the number of days since the PPS Due Date is equal to or exceeds this number.  If the figure is zero or NULL all overdue debt will be included. If the Fee Type is managed at the Unit level, only the individual units that meet the specified criteria will be extracted
• The days since last reminder - is used for managing the frequency of producing reminder notices for overdue debts  It will select students whose number of days since the last reminder exceeds or is equal to the days specified here.  If there is a value of NULL and the last reminder date in the Person Payment Schedule has a NULL value then this debt will be included. If the Fee Type is managed at the Unit level, only the individual units that meet the specified criteria will be extracted

Other parameters:

• The comment is included in the extract header record (record 1) for printing on statements, if required. It is also recorded against the Correspondence Item

  NOTE: Please do not include special characters in the text - these will be incorrectly interpreted by the extract process.

• Setting the Test Extraction check box to Y allows for extract records to be created without registering a Correspondence Item or Outgoing Correspondence records.

Rules/Notes:

Exception Report

This report displays any exceptions encountered during the extract process.

This Exception Report is produced:

• As part of FINJ6121 if errors with data are encountered
• Individually to produce a report from a previous run log
• At any time deemed necessary for whatever reason

Refer to the Job Control and Scheduling Subsystem for details of scheduling and running batch and online jobs

Note: If exceptions are recorded for more than one person then the System creates a new person_id group containing student_id's of records with data errors. This person_id group is recorded against the Correspondence Item.

Where appropriate, the Unit Code is appended to the end of an error message. This only occurs when an error message is in the context of a unit. For example, when processing Record Types ASSESSED UNITS or TRANSACTION DETAILS, where the Fee Type is managed at the Unit Level.

Log Creation Date

Permits exception reports produced from previous runs of this job to be reproduced. No further report parameters are required when this parameter is specified. This is a log created by a previous run for FINJ6121

Producing Reminder Notices

The extract data supplied is envisaged as sufficiently comprehensive to meet the varied needs of different institutions. institutions will be responsible for the programming tasks involved in extracting data and producing Reminder Notices from the records stored in the extract table, S_EXTRACT_RECORD via the ACC_STMNT_RECORD_V view. These statements can thus be tailored to an individual institution's formatting and content requirements.

Some matters for consideration are:

• Whether to use a subset of the data, or to extract additional information from any other Callista table for use in a statement
• The totalling of Assessment transactions (where a fee is paid in instalments)
• The calculation of totals and balances across Fee Types
• The sort sequence that will be most useful for totalling purposes and printing layouts.

The following rules apply specifically to the Reminder Notice Extract:

• If the Fee Type is managed at the UNIT level, only units where the Payment Due Date for the unit matches the criteria specified in the 'Days Overdue' parameter value will be included in the extract
• If the Fee Type is managed at the UNIT level, the Last Reminder Date in Person Payment Schedule will only be set for units that are being included in the extract
• If the Fee Type is managed at the UNIT level, the value in the 'Days Since Last Reminder' parameter will target the last reminder date for units
• If the Fee Type is managed at the UNIT level, the 'Include Previously Reminded' check box will target units that already have a last reminder date set
• If the Fee Type is managed at the COURSE level, all existing logic will remain unchanged.

About Assessment Transactions (TRANSACTION DETAILS records):

• The Transaction Category in the Assessment Transactions record has a value of either DEBT or PAYMENT
• For DEBT records, the Transaction Type is always ASSESSMENT, and the Transaction Amount field holds the proportion of the Aggregate Assessed amount due at the Transaction Date (an individual record in the Person Payment Schedule - displayed in FINF3800). The tax amount is held in a separate field, and is not included in the Transaction Amount
• For PAYMENT records, the Transaction Type is either PAYMENT or DISCOUNT. For a payment record, the Transaction Amount shows individual payment transactions (not an aggregate, and not including the tax paid on the transaction). For a discount record, the Transaction Amount represents the discount (other than tax discount) earned on the actual amount paid
• Where a student is studying more than one course concurrently, an Institution Fee (for example, a general service fee) for the student will have ASSESSMENT transaction records with an identical amount shown against each course. This represents a single liability, to be charged only once
• An Assessed Transaction amount is shown for a Student Contribution Amount even where the student Course Attempt has a DEFERRED Student Status (Government option 110 or 201) as at the Census Date
• For records with an ASSESSMENT Transaction Type, the data in the Discount Percentage, Discount Amount, Discount Minimum payment and tax discount available fields represents the conditions under which a discount applies, as given in the Person Payment Schedule. These fields are blank for other than ASSESSMENT records
• Currency and exchange rate information for PAYMENT records is as at the time of receipt of the payment.

Fee Cap details are also extracted, but not shown on the Reminder Notice. For example:

Cap minimum and maximum - These are the Fee Type Group fee cap minimum and maximum charges if a record is found that matches the student course and unit attributes. Otherwise the Fee Type Group Calendar Instance minimum/maximum charges (see next point, below) are extracted.

Overall Minimum and Maximum Assessments - These are the Fee Type Group Calendar Instance minimum and maximum charges.
Note: The Overall Minimum and Maximum Assessment Amounts are derived at the time of creating the extract, using the same derivation process that the Fee Assessment uses.