To manage our private language school, we are looking for school management software - to be developed or purchased - that meets the following requirements:
1. Courses:
- Courses can be distinguished by course categories:
- Language category: English, German, …
- Level category: A1, A2, B1, …
- Content category: Standard content, Business content, …
- Ability to define additional custom course categories if possible
- Courses must be distinguishable by course types. Course management is heavily dependent on course types:
- Continuous course: No fixed start or end date. Customers can join at any time (customer start date). Courses are canceled if the minimum number of participants is not reached. Customers can cancel within a notice period.
- Standard course: With fixed start and end dates.
- Private lessons: All courses are typically group courses, except for private lessons: Schedules for private lessons are arranged between staff and students after booking a block of hours and entered into the administrative software for billing purposes (teacher salary, student’s block of hours). Private lessons can also be conducted with two students simultaneously.
- Pseudo-categories: Courses have additional pseudo-categories such as intensive course, evening course, etc. However, these should be understood as attributes. An intensive course could also take place in the evening.
2. Course Scheduling – when do which courses take place:
- Individual appointments
- Appointment series
- Several times a week at different times
- Individual cancellations in session series
- Schedule changes in session series
- Logged session series changes:
If a weekly course changes from 2 hours per week to 3 hours per week, this is supported by the administrative software. This means that teacher timesheets and students’ attended hours are calculated correctly.
3. Course bookings – Which customer books which course:
- Different registration deadlines depending on the course
- Depending on the course/course type, payment is split into a down payment (immediate) and a balance due (at the start of the course).
- Different booking options and rates are possible depending on the course:
- Monthly subscription (minimum term of 3, 6, or 9 months at different prices), typically for ongoing courses.
- Packages with different weekly quotas (2 weeks, 3 weeks, etc.). Usually for standard courses.
- Packages with different hourly quotas (20 hours, 50 hours, etc.). Usually for private lessons. For private lessons (lessons by appointment).
- Standard course/trip at a fixed price.
- Additional costs depending on the course, booking, and options:
- Courses may have additional booking fees.
- Booking fee due only once per year. No additional booking fee for further bookings within the year (not calendar year).
- Courses may have additional travel costs.
- Courses may have additional material costs.
- Additional options available for an extra charge:
- Option: official certificate.
- Option: with/without meals.
- Option: with/without accommodation (Accommodation Category A, B, C, D, or E)
- Option: Transfer (from the airport).
- Option: Additional booking options can be defined by the customer.
- Dependencies:
- Certain courses can only be booked in combination. For example, some exams can only be booked in combination with a 2-week exam preparation course.
- Dependencies can be waived. For example, if an exam has too few participants, bookings without an exam preparation course will also be approved.
4. Course Participation – Which customer is participating in which course:
- Option for customers to take a break without reducing weekly, monthly, or hourly quotas.
- Sickness: In cases of excused absence (doctor’s note), weekly/monthly or hourly quotas are not deducted.
- Option: Part-time participation – A customer attends only one of two weekly sessions (Mondays and Thursdays): Mondays only (possible only for ongoing courses). Hourly quotas account for this. The customer can remain in the ongoing course for a correspondingly longer period.
5. Room and Teacher Management – Which room and which teacher is assigned to which course:
- for series of sessions
- for exceptions in series of sessions (teacher sick or rescheduled sessions)
- for individual sessions
- sessions taking place off-site, e.g., vacation trips, on-site corporate training (e.g., room as free text, or left blank)
- Teacher absences (substitute teachers).
- Option: Course consolidation – Option to hold two or more courses in the same room (on the same date)
- Option: Partial course consolidation – e.g., an intensive course and a standard course held together in the morning. In the afternoon, the intensive course has additional hours without the standard course participants.
- Option: Split a course with too many participants into two rooms and two teachers.
6. Accounting:
- Invoice generation
- Booking fee (depending on the course)
- Booking changes (change fee)
- Cancellation (cancellation fee depending on cancellation date)
- General discounts and course-type-dependent discounts:
- Discounts can be defined that apply to every monthly invoice (e.g., agency bonus 1%)
- Discounts can be defined that apply to the first monthly invoice (e.g., Easter bonus 30%)
- Discounts can be defined in % or €
- Staff can apply discounts to bookings/booking items
- Interface to Lexware accounting software:
- Teacher salaries, class schedule
- Customer invoices / Overview of revenue from course participants
7. Web interface:
- Course management data can be queried via a web interface (e.g., SQL)
- Web interface allows:
- Retrieving courses, course schedules, course types, course categories
- Retrieving course prices (including booking options, booking rates, etc.)
- Retrieving current participant numbers
- Retrieving invoices (e.g., monthly invoices)
- Entering new bookings into the management software (customers book via the website)
- Cancellation and rebooking (customers cancel/rebook via the website)
- Option: The web interface allows for the entry of new courses. This would be used to allow courses from external agencies or companies to be entered (in principle, these are only course inquiries). A corresponding business customer area would be developed on the website for this purpose. These courses are not publicly searchable but are stored, for example, in a special course category.
Data import from a FileMaker application would be desirable. The file format would be Excel.
Approximately 10 software workstations are planned.