Adding and Editing Budget Items

Additional income and wages for a class can be recorded via the budget section, so the profitability of a class can be accurately calculated for your actual and projected enrolments. Clicking on the + sign next to the 'Budgets' heading will bring you three options:

• Expense
• Income
• Tutor Pay

For each item you wish to add to the budget, you can choose if the cost is calculated based on an hourly amount, a per student contact hour amount (per student per hour), per enrolment, per session or fixed. As these reference items change e.g. when another student enrols or when you add more time to the class duration, the budget items will automatically adjust.

Expense items can be capped at maximums and minimums for the class, have tax applied as needed, have oncosts associated with them (e.g. super, on top of wages) and be deemed as sunk costs.

A sunk cost is the cost you will incur even if the class is cancelled, for example you may consider advertising as a sunk cost. Using sunk costs is important in a detailed budget as it will assist you in determining if it is financially viable to run a class even if the sunk costs have not been met.

Figure 541. Adding a new budget item

As you continue to add items to the class budget, such as the tutor wage, room hire fees, student fee income, applicable government funding income, resourcing costs and others, the actual and projected summaries will update automatically.

If you need to delete a budget line item, simply highlight the entry and click on the trash can icon for that line. If you wish to edit a line entry, double-click on the entry to bring up the edit window.

Using 'Projected numbers' as a calculation

An important part of the budget calculations are the projected enrolment numbers you have estimated. This number is an estimate of how many students you believe will enrol in the class and is used to calculate the figures under the 'Projected' column in the budget section.

The budget will then calculate the enrolment number required to go ahead (meet your refundable costs) and the enrolments required to profit (meet your refundable and sunk costs). This information is displayed in the budget section of a given class.

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If you do not enter any expense items for a given class budget, the information on the number of enrolments required to make a profit that is found in the budget section will be hidden.

Tracking Discounts via the Budget

As well as reflecting all fee income within a given class, the budget section allows you to track discounts. With each discount type listed as a line item within the budget. You can add a new discount directly to the class budget by clicking the (+) button next to the discounts header, inside the budget section. Type the name of the discount and then click the 'Add' button.

When defining the parameters of a given discount, you can also enter an estimated percentage of students within a given class who are likely to take up this discount. This figure is set within the general section of the discount and is identified as the default forecast take up.

The default forecast take up of a given discount will be applied to all classes that have that discount, but if you wish to adjust the take up percent figure on one class, you can do this by double-clicking on the discount line item within the budget section of that class.

Figure 542. When setting the values of a given discount,you can enter a default forecast take up amount

Once a discount has been assigned to the class, and you have entered a figure for the projected number of enrolments that are likely to be received, the budget will calculate the discount amount based upon the percentage of projected enrolments that are likely to take up that discount.

The dollar value of discounts given during the enrolment process will be visible in the budget section against their corresponding discount strategy.

If you give a manual discount during enrolment, the balance will be deducted from the total income field and be visible in the discounts section of the budget section, as all manual discounts at Checkout must be linked to a discount record. This allows onCourse to keep track of all discounts applied.