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How a fee is calculated
Every fee in Xperios — tuition, group membership or hire, billed to a person or to an organisation, raised overnight or by hand — is worked out by one calculation. Learn it once and it explains every amount on every invoice.
The invoice tells you what it did
Each invoice line records the whole calculation, step by step, in money. Open the line and use Show calculation.
That is the fastest answer to "why is this amount what it is" — faster than reasoning from the rates, because it is what actually happened rather than what should have happened.
The order it works in
- A base fee from the rate
- Every reduction that applies, one at a time
- Delivery and deposit, where they apply
- VAT, last
The three routines
There is a separate routine for tuition, for group membership and for hire, but they do very little: each gathers the same five things and hands them to the one calculation.
| What it gathers | |
|---|---|
| The rate | The charge, the charge basis, free periods, delivery and deposit charges |
| The entitlements | Discount code, subsidy, remission, bursaries, the discount on the activity |
| The terms | The year's terms and their expected session counts |
| The family | Every child in the family who holds an activity, oldest arrangement first |
| The other activities | Everything else this pupil does, for the multi-activity discount |
Three differences between them are worth knowing, because they change what you get:
Only tuition counts real lessons. Tuition hands over the plan's laid diary, so a per-session or per-hour tuition charge is built from the lessons actually in the diary. Group membership and hire hand over an empty diary on purpose, so they can only ever use the expected sessions on the term or the year — a group that lost a week to a closure is still charged the expected number.
A tuition diary can hold fewer sessions than the term expects
The service type's Diarise mode decides how many sessions Diarise lays, and two of the three modes treat the term's session count as a ceiling rather than a promise. Where that happens, a per-session tuition charge follows the diary down: the payer is charged for the lessons laid. A per-term or per-year charge is unaffected. See How many sessions get diarised.
Only hire charges delivery and a deposit. Tuition and group membership set both to zero before they start.
Only hire has a quantity. Three music stands on one hire are priced as three; a pupil is always one of a tuition or a membership.
1. The base fee
The rate's charge basis decides how the base fee is arrived at:
| Charge basis | How the fee is worked out |
|---|---|
| Per session | The sessions in the period — taken from the laid diary where the lessons exist, otherwise from the year's expected sessions |
| Per hour | The time taught in the period |
| Per term | The term's charge, term by term |
| Per year | The year's charge |
| Provision | The charge for the provision |
A free period charges nothing at all
Where the rate offers free periods, a period that qualifies has its charge set to zero before anything else happens. Every reduction below then works on nothing, so the line comes out at zero — which is why a £0 line is often correct rather than a fault.
2. The reductions
Seven kinds of reduction can apply, and they are applied one after another, each to what is left of the fee:
| Discount code | A code the payer used |
| Subsidy | A school or funder covering part of it |
| Sibling discount | For a family with more than one child |
| Multi-activity discount | For a pupil doing more than one thing |
| Remission | Help with the fee, including free school meals |
| Bursary | Bursary 1, then bursary 2 |
| Discount | A fixed amount off, entered on the activity |
The order they are applied in is a setting, and it changes the total
Your service has a calculation order, and there are three. Because each reduction applies to whatever is left after the one before, the same pupil with the same rates and the same entitlements comes to a different total under a different order.
| Order | What is applied first, to last |
|---|---|
| 1 | Code · Subsidy · Sibling · Multi-activity · Remission · Bursary · Discount |
| 2 | Code · Subsidy · Remission · Bursary · Sibling · Multi-activity · Discount |
| 3 | Code · Remission · Bursary · Sibling · Multi-activity · Subsidy · Discount |
Percentage reductions are the ones to watch: a percentage taken before a subsidy is a percentage of a larger number than the same percentage taken after it. This is a decision about how your service wants to treat funding, not a technical detail, and it is worth knowing which one you are on before comparing two pupils.
How each one is worked out
Every reduction follows the same three steps, and the calculation on the invoice line names all three:
- A percentage is taken of the fee as it stands at that point — not of the original charge. This is why the order matters.
- A value is multiplied up to match the charge basis: a per-term value across the terms being charged, a per-session value across the sessions, a per-hour value across the hours. A value on a basis that is none of those is applied once.
- It is capped at what is left, then taken off. A reduction can never take a fee below zero, so entitlements adding up to more than the fee simply bring it to zero — and the calculation shows the figure it was capped to.
What decides each one
| Reduction | What has to be true |
|---|---|
| Discount code | A code is on the activity. A value code is capped at the fee |
| Subsidy | A subsidy is on the activity — or, for tuition and hire, one the school is giving |
| Sibling | Another child in the family holds an activity. The pupil being charged does not need a second one |
| Multi-activity | Either the service type sets one, or the rate offers one for a pupil already in centre tuition, direct school tuition, indirect tuition or a group |
| Remission | A remission is on the activity, or the payer qualifies for free school meals |
| Bursary | Bursary 1, then bursary 2, each scaled by the charge basis like any value |
| Discount | An amount typed on the activity itself |
Two sibling rules that catch people out
Which child is "first" is decided by whose arrangement started earliest, not by age or by who is on screen. If your service excludes the first sibling from the discount, that is the child who pays full price.
And a family where each of two children takes one thing does qualify — the test is that another child in the family holds an activity, not that this child holds two. That was not always true, and a service that remembers it working differently is remembering correctly.
The multi-activity discount can switch itself off
Where the service type sets a maximum number of activities, a pupil who reaches or passes it loses the discount altogether rather than keeping it on the first few. A pupil marked as an adult can also be given a different percentage, which replaces the ordinary one.
A negative discount is a surcharge
The Discount on an activity reduces the fee when it is positive — and increases it when it is negative. A negative discount is not capped, because it is not taking anything away.
If a fee is higher than the rate should give, look at the discount on the activity before anything else.
3. Delivery and deposit
Charged on the first period only, so an instrument delivered once is not charged for delivery again every term.
4. VAT
Applied last, to the fee that is left plus delivery. A deposit is not VATable.
So an invoice line comes out as:
| Goods | What is left after the reductions, plus delivery |
| VAT | That figure at the VAT rate |
| Total | The two added together |
Reading a calculation
Show calculation on an invoice line gives you the whole run in order: the calculation order it used, the starting charge, each reduction with the amount it took off, the running total after each one, and the VAT at the end.
Three things it answers that nothing else does:
- A total that looks wrong — read down and find the step that took more or less than you expected, rather than guessing at the rates.
- An entitlement that appears to have done nothing — it will be there, with the amount it was capped to, or absent because it did not apply.
- A £0 line — either a free period, or reductions that came to the whole fee. The calculation says which.
See also
- Individual invoicing — when a fee is raised for a parent
- Invoicing — the two runs, and what decides which