ARTICLE: Setting up the Accommodation Manager
Overview
Schools are looking at ways to maximize the boarding resources they have available to them in order to provide a service to parents that wish for their children to reside at school either full-time or on a more flexible basis.
A requirement to manage both the resources available to boarding in terms of full-time boarders, their beds, and rooms but also to manage the availability of beds for non-boarders and provide a mechanism to manage bookings, fees, and allocation of students into boarding.
Solution
Reach has built a module that can help the school manage the beds they have, their occupancy, and booking by external parties such as parents.
Requirements
You will need to decide who can perform the following operations:
- Create an accommodation booking.
- Approve an accommodation booking request.
- Check a student into their booked accommodation and check them out.
If you are planning to use the fees element of Accommodation Manager then you will also need the email address of the bursary or finance office where you would like approved bookings to be sent, along with the cost of the booking and any pre-paid balance.
Permissions
Accommodation Manager is an additional module to the core Reach platform and is activated by your Reach representative. Once activated you will need to make it available to those users or groups of users you wish to use it, this is done by logging in as an administrator navigating to Main Menu > System Configuration > View System Configuration > Infinity.
Select the base security of the role you want to operate Accommodation Manager, typically ‘Staff’. Grant the role the following permissions: MM_VIS_DASHBOARDS_ACCOMMODATION (under the Dashboards heading) and ACCOMMODATION_APPLICANT, ACCOMMODATION_CREATE_BOOKING, and MM_VIS_ACCOMMODATION_CHECKPOINT (under the Accommodation heading).
You can grant permission to an individual instead of a role by changing the Accessibility settings on a user profile in People Management. For more information on Infinity settings, check out this guide
Configuration
Navigate to Main Menu > System Configuration > View System Configuration > Accommodation General
There are a number of considerations that need to be explored when setting up the Accommodation Manager and how the school wants it to operate.
Check-in and Out Windows
You can set when in the day a student can check-in and check-out of boarding, this restriction (if placed) will stop the student from Checking-in or out, outside of the times set in the configuration. A member of staff can override these settings and can check a student in or out at any time.
Student Roles
Within Reach, all users are assigned into a role that governs how that user interacts with the platform and what permissions they inherit. Most students that are full-time boarders will be assigned the ‘boarder’ role within Reach and this means that they will be included in all boarding-specific operations such as sign-in/sign-out, boarding-specific roll calls, etc. All other students that are not full-time boarding may be assigned the ‘Day Student’ role. When a student checks in to their booking their role will change so that they assume the characteristics of a full-time boarder, when they check-out they will return to their previous role, for example, a day student.
Non-Boarding House
Schools may have different Academic and Boarding Houses, when non-boarding students check-in, they will inherit the boarding house that their booking places them, this is so that they then appear in the roll calls for that boarding house. When they check out, if the student did not have a house assigned to them as a day student, the system can place them in the house that is set in the configuration.
Wings
Some schools require an additional level above the standard Boarding House>Floor>Room>Bed configuration when creating their boarding resources, so there is the option to include Wings in the boarding resource so that it can be set as Boarding House>Wing>Floor>Room>Bed
Adopt Room
When a student checks in to a booking they will be allocated into a bed in a room, there is the option to then populate the student profile with the room that they are allocated into during their booking. Once they check out they will revert to their previous room or a blank entry.
Fees
Navigate to Main Menu > System Configuration > View System Configuration > Communications. A cost per bed per night can be set when creating the boarding resources (see next section) so that when that bed is booked a cost can be associated with it. This cost can be sent to the finance office or bursar for billing and record purposes, the email address to which all approved bookings are to be sent is set in the Communications section of the System Configuration.
Booking Rejections
Navigate to Main Menu > System Configuration > View System Configuration > Communications. If a booking is rejected by the school, the member of staff that is rejecting it must include an explanation as to why the booking was refused. This explanation is then sent to the parent via a rejection email but all rejection emails can also be sent to a school email address for record purposes.
Pre-paid allocations
Navigate to Main Menu > People Management > View Contacts. If the school offers a pre-paid option where parents can pay upfront for a number of nights, this can be entered against a student account, and then each time a booking is approved the number of nights is subtracted from the balance. The allocation for each booking along with the balance is notified to the parent and bursar/finance office as part of the booking communications.
The pre-paid balance is set by going to the student user account and then clicking on the ‘Accommodation’ tab and setting the number of nights pre-paid. Click ‘Save and Close’ when finished.
Creating your resources
Navigate to Main Menu > System Configuration> View System Configuration> Accommodation Manager. For Reach to know what beds are available to students, the physical boarding resources need to be mapped and created in Reach. This is created in the form: Boarding House > Wing (optional) > Floor > Room > Bed(s). This then defines the resources available to the school and organizes them accordingly. The beds can then be further configured to have an overnight cost applied to them along with the type of bed.
Bed Restrictions
Navigate to Main Menu > Accommodation > Accommodation Management. Once the beds are all set up you can then set conditions around what student can be allocated into a particular bed. These conditions can be set by the House or Year group they are in, if they are a member of a custom group, or by their gender. When a parent raises a booking request, the system will then search for any beds that the student can be allocated into, based on any restrictions in place and the student memberships (House, Year, etc.). The student will then be automatically allocated the first available bed upon staff approval.
To configure any restrictions on a particular bed, select the bed you want to place a restriction on by ticking the selector
You can select more than one bed at a time when placing restrictions.
Then click on ‘Edit Restrictions’ in the top menu and this will bring up the following screen where you can place the restrictions you want. Click Save when finished.
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