Close out the program year
For commitment officers: year-end reconciliation — applying shortfall penalties (with waivers), rolling balances into the new year, and what families see after.
Closing the year is two deliberate steps — settle shortfalls, then roll balances forward — and the wizard walks them in order, with a preview before anything is written. Open Admin › Service Program › Year-End Reconciliation and pick the program year.
Before you run anything
The cleanup is the real work; the wizard is just arithmetic:
- Settle disputes and enter the year’s stray credits — corrections are cleaner before rollover than after.
- Give families a “last call” announcement so nobody is surprised.
- Make sure the next program year exists — rollover needs somewhere to carry balances to, and the wizard will tell you if it’s missing.
Step 1 — Apply penalties
If your school converts shortfalls to a year-end charge, the first step previews every family with one: their target, balance, shortfall, and the resulting charge, with any existing waivers already netted out. You can waive a family right in the table with a written justification — hardship cases belong here, not in a side spreadsheet. Then Apply: each charged family gets a ledger entry, each waived family a waiver on file. Schools without penalties will find this step previews nothing — apply the empty step or move on.
Step 2 — Roll over balances
The rollover preview shows, per category, what each family carries into the new year under your school’s policy — fresh start, surplus-only, everything, or capped. Check the outliers, then Apply. The wizard:
- writes a carry-forward entry into the new year for every family with a non-zero carry, dated the new year’s first day;
- archives the closing year — its entries stop counting anywhere, and the year becomes read-only history behind the year selector.
Both steps are safe to re-run: a preview refreshed after fixes shows what still needs applying, and families already processed are marked, not doubled. The wizard also records when each step last ran and who ran it.
What families see
Their dashboard flips to the new year with the new target, a “Carry-forward” entry if anything came forward, and any year-end charge shown against the dollars category. The old year stays readable in their year selector. Parents’ view of all this: What happens at year-end.