Tracking enrollment numbers

We make an Enrollment report in Excel. The first page is a summary of each grade, boarding & day, new and returning that feeds from the detailed second page, which lists student name, grade, boarding or day, date received contracts and deposit, and notes if they received scholarships and/or FA.

We do this using an advanced list. Once you get it set up correctly, it's just about flawless; getting it set up, though, can be a bit of a chore if you're not sure what you're looking for.

Once a day, I do a data dump from the advanced list into a Google spreadsheet that tracks a ton of data. The spreadsheet is filled out with a bunch of countif and vlookup formulas, and can differentiate returning students (who have the Student role) from new ones (who have the Incoming Student role).

We don't use it to track tuition or financial aid, although I think those are able to be displayed through an advanced list.

Shoot me a message if you'd like to take a look at our setup. I'll be happy to walk you through how we do it and see if we can get you set up in the same general manner.

I believe this is a classic case where the system is not sufficiently flexible to allow us to do what we need. The SKY lists are hit-or [usually[-miss because BB engineering decides what is important, which often doesn't match what we see as important.

Hence, we have to use advanced lists. The trouble with advanced lists is they are somewhat primitive. [you kinda have to know relational databases] and they are not always up-to-date.

Here is a link to an idea I proposed to ask BB to please keep advanced lists up-to-date and vital because, as in this case, they are essential.

I have added an Admin View Only field for every student that reads 22-23 Attending. We have continuous enrollment contracts, which the system does not support well, so this is the only way we are able to accurately track who is and is not returning.

Admin View Only fields can be easily added to lists - I LOVE this feature so much!

So, at the beginning of our re-enrollment window, I created the 22-23 Attending field with the dropdown options for:

• Yes
• No
• Maybe
• Repeat
• Hold - their is something the family needs to take care of before they can be counted as a yes
• Block - toxic family, do not ever allow back at the school

This is how we manage that field:

• I create a bulk load to complete this field for all existing students with the response of “Yes”.
• For any new students added, we mark this field as yes
• As parents contact us to let us know their child is not attending, we update the field to “No.”

The drawback to this system is that it is completely manual. We have to remember to mark each student's status as we hear about it. Since we get input from so many different places - emails, phone calls, parent stops a teacher in the hall, out the window at carpool - we have set up a shared excel sheet where office staff can report who they heard from, what date, who took the message etc. The main school admin then updates the system from the excel sheet on a regular basis to make sure the 22-23 attending field is up to date.

This is working great for us. I hope you find a solution that works just as well for you.=)

@Anita Pinkerton - we also have continuous enrollment contracts, but how were you able to manage that in Tuition Management? We had a major issue last year where new students applying who were either previously enrolled or had a sibling already enrolled (and thus had a TM family ID already established) were unable to submit their enrollment deposit and complete the contract. These families had to go to TM separate from the enrollment contract and pay the deposit, and staff had to manually return the contract.

It was such a headache that we actually went backwards a little bit this year, requiring families to update their billing information (and thus creating a new TM enrollment year) to avoid the issue. We didn't require a full contract, despite using the contract framework (we presented it as “we need you to update your billing account information for the new school year”), but if you have any pointers on how you made it work, I'd be all ears!

That is interesting. I am not sure I have an answer for you. We don't really experience that issue. We have more issues with families accidentally creating duplicate accounts in Smart Tuition, but those can be merged fairly easily on the backend. Without putting the parent through additional machinations to correct things.

Our whole continuous enrollment process is:

1. We add a deposit for the next year in January in Smart Tuition(we do not collect a current year tuition payment in January so that families aren't over burdened with billing).
2. If a family is returning, they don't need to complete any additional forms, they just let the system pay the deposit in January and their spot is secured.
3. If the family is not returning, they let us know and we remove the deposit amount from their account and mark the custom Admin View Only field or 22-23 Attending as “No”
4. In June, families already in Smart Tuition/Blackbaud Tuition Management are rolled over to the next year. Payment options persist as well as payment plans.
5. New students complete a contract that creates their tuition account and establishes their payment plan and captures their payment method info.

Occasionally we have a parent with a unique situation that requires us to complete the contract on their behalf, but that is not usually tied to continuous enrollment.

Anita Pinkerton:

That is interesting. I am not sure I have an answer for you. We don't really experience that issue. We have more issues with families accidentally creating duplicate accounts in Smart Tuition, but those can be merged fairly easily on the backend. Without putting the parent through additional machinations to correct things.

Interesting…that's exactly the process we used in 21-22 and it was a total nightmare when trying to get parents to complete the contract for a student with a currently enrolled sibling. Smart Tuition just wouldn't do it, no matter what we tried.

We have a split-the-difference solution this year where parents still have to complete a “re-enrollment contract” but it is really just establishing a new ST entering year for the existing student. It worked well enough; out of ~4700 students re-enrolling we had maybe 150 that didn't pay and we ended up having to withdraw. I thought the batting average would be way worse than it was.

As someone else said, I get my numbers by running a contract list. We also have an enrollment spreadsheet where we keep everything. The problem with the spreadsheet is that it's all done manually so it allows for human error. During enrollment time I run contract lists and compare to the spreadsheet often.

I also have a field that I created where I mark if someone plans to reenroll.

@Elizabeth Gillum Hi there! We only have about 6 families out of 200 that are behind on payments, (so much better than it was before implementing BB.) They can go in and change their payment method, but we still see if they made the payment and can follow up.

For the Admin View Only field that we use for marking who is returning, we ONLY use it until we have an answer from all currently enrolled students on their intent for the following year. We have a notes field so that we can mark who entered the info and the date. After June, we double check that all students are accounted for,( i.e. we run a list with that field and make sure it has a value in it) then proceed with the system roll-over process.

The process then records who is returning and who is withdrawn with times and dates set to when the system is rolled over.

After roll-over, we actually delete the data for the Admin View Only fields, and remove them until we the next spring.

@Mary Cummings absolutely! Send me an email at brian.leblanc at thalesacademy.org and I'll be happy to set up a call to get you up and running.

@Elizabeth Gillum Hello again We have had a few parents change the ACH option, but we really can't stop them from that. It hasn't been a huge issue though. I think maybe 2 families have made that change since we started…

For the Admin View Only field, it's only really crucial for tracking the disposition of current families for the following year while we are figuring out enrollment. Once families fully withdraw or enroll, we use the regular system fields for all of that, so we don't need a time and date stamp of enrollment or withdrawal from the Admin View Only field.

For example: If the family is withdrawing before the end of the current year, we use the system process to withdraw a student and it records the date etc. that we can run reports on. Then their record won't even be live in the current student count so the Admin View Only field for Attending would not be relevant.

If the family is staying through the end of the current year, but not returning, we marke their Attending filed to “no”, then the system captures their withdrawal when we roll over the school years (i.e. enroll the incoming students/re-enroll existing students/mark exiting students as not returning)

Does that make sense? Our Admin View Only “Attending” field has a short, transient lifespan as the system naturally picks up the official “enroll” and “withdraw” dates when we perform those functions.

@Robin Kaufmann I can tell who is newly enrolled, using my student checklist. The milestones I set up are: Inquiry, Applicant, Application Complete, Decision, New Enrolled. I can make a candidate list and filter on New Enrolled. Once we receive the contract and deposit, I enroll them and they appear in the incoming role (or student after we turn the year over). We do create and maintain an Enrollment Report excel list of all students who have re-enrolled when they sign their contracts-which includes incoming and re-enroll). Plus there is a lot of discussion between the Academic Office and our Admission Office of who is re-classing, who is not returning and keep that info on the excel sheet. Maybe this helps? I don't know. Just thought I would throw in my 2 cents.

@Chrystalle Kiefer absolutely, happy to help!

@Rebecca Reinhardt I hope this helps - in the Official Note that let's families know they have a contract waiting, we indicate they are to use their existing Tuition Management account. The last time we tested this, the system asked the family if they had a Tuition Management account as they were signing the contract. If the family checks off “yes” the system should connect the new student to the family in the system. We have had at least 25 sibling enrollments for next year and I see them all in the 24-25 Tuition Management interface under Families. We did not have to manually enter anything.

Please note, we do not have existing students sign a new contract each year. We roll them all over in Tuition Management in June.

It's never clean, but we don't have to enter a lot of new data.

@Barbara Glass and @Rebecca Reinhardt – you're running into the same problem that we ran into in 2021. The solution that we settled on, which has worked great for the past three re-enrollment cycles, is to present an extremely slimmed down re-enrollment contract to parents to set up their Tuition Management account for the new school year. Essentially, what we're asking parents to do is reconfirm their billing information, submit the enrollment deposit (which we collect as a fee for cash flow purposes), and verify that they intend to remain enrolled for next year. It takes all of five minutes, if that, and it mostly accomplishes the goal of promising continuous enrollment with minimal effort on the parent's part while not requiring a bunch of back-end gymnastics to make Tuition Management work.

If you roll over existing students to a new year in Tuition Management before you start sending new enrollment contracts, you will run into problems enrolling new students into existing accounts. Unfortunately, once you've gone down that road, there isn't an easy way to undo it. You'll probably have to just make do the best you can for this year, then assuming Blackbaud hasn't figured out a better way by the time next year's re-enrollment window rolls around, re-evaluate the workflow to figure out a more streamlined way to handle it.