I would like to expand on the post by Cindy Brits on the issues we have with statements on handed over parents in Collector Accounts.  The parent should be able to see the balance with a collector, or handed over together with other outstanding fees.

However, we also have problems with categorizing debt and debt reporting.  d6 Has no functionality to assist with in depth debt reporting because there are no variable fields for different categories of debt.  Our school prefers to do its own debt collection. Reports are then sent to the SGB.  We spend days doing our reports because there are no reports in d6 that do analysis of debt.  The following email was sent Daan Pretorius in 2019 and no feedback has been received:

"Debt Collection Reporting is very important to us, because analysis of our procedures is the key to defining strategy when pursuing errant payers. The current Debtors’ Reporting in d6 does not allow us to select reports per category of debt.  The debt collection process in schools is a long one and therefore our various debtor accounts are at different stages of the process. 

We have used the Collector Accounts in d6, but this method has not assisted us.  Parents do not understand the separation of Collector debt from Current debt and errors are made when allocating payments made by debtors.   We were also advised by the d6 Help Desk to create a separate Age Analysis for each collector. That method was not beneficial. 

Our requests are as follows: 

·         We require extra fields in d6 for reporting purposes only. We would like to set up Debt Categories such as Letters of Demand, Default Judgement etc.  We can them customise our reports to suit our needs.  We require Excel reports and do need PDF views.

·         We would like to incorporate debtor notes made in d6 onto these reports. It would then be possible to see outstanding balances, notes and payments made in the various Debt Categories.

·         At present, we manually create reports in the different categories which leads to copy errors.  We do not use Debt Collection Agencies.  Arbor Primary employs two Debt Administrators who also attend to the legal aspects of the task.  Therefore, they can analyse their success rates, but the software lets them down.

·         It would also assist us if the selection options in the Age Analysis Reports and the Debtor Analysis Reports could contain the same criteria such as “Accountable Person”.  The only common selection option is Family Code.  We have split our Debtors’ Book alphabetically.

·         This matter has been discussed with the school’s I.T. service provider, Aaron Thompson.

Mr Thompson’s letter to Mrs Russell is attached.  He feels that the extra fields required for reporting can be added to the system.

  In conclusion, we would like you to consider our request for changes as important.  The School Governing Body, the School Management Team and Mr Thompson will gladly meet with you to discuss the options. 

Kindly advise if you will be able to meet with the school to discuss this matter.

 We look forward to your favourable response."

 As schools have suffered financially even more due to COVID 19, we require useful analysis to survive.