An instrument is stuck

A teacher cannot issue an instrument, or one has gone out and not come back. Hire has seven lists and the trick is knowing which one answers your question.

Step 1 of 6

Start with the right list

Business Management has seven hire lists, and picking the wrong one is why people conclude something is missing. Hire List is everything. Requiring Assignment is hires with no instrument on them yet. Awaiting Coll/Del is instruments waiting to be handed over or collected. Organisations have their own versions of the assignment and collection queues, and there are two more for subsidy and remission requests.

The organisation lists exist because a school borrowing a set of instruments is a different job from a pupil borrowing one.

Use the arrow keys to move between steps.

1. Start with the right list

   Business Management has seven hire lists, and picking the wrong one is why people conclude something is missing. Hire List is everything. Requiring Assignment is hires with no instrument on them yet. Awaiting Coll/Del is instruments waiting to be handed over or collected. Organisations have their own versions of the assignment and collection queues, and there are two more for subsidy and remission requests.

   The organisation lists exist because a school borrowing a set of instruments is a different job from a pupil borrowing one.

2. Nobody has chosen an instrument yet

   Pupil Hires Requiring Assignment is the queue that matters most day to day: these are live hires - somebody is expecting an instrument - with nothing allocated. If a parent says they are paying for a hire and have not been given anything, look here first.

   Active (Linked) means the hire belongs to a tuition. It will finish when the tuition does, and it is not something to end on its own.

3. When a teacher cannot issue one

   The commonest hire report we get: the register offers a teacher Request Hire as well as the option to issue an instrument, and while a lesson has an outstanding request nobody can issue directly - it says a hire has been requested instead. The requests are in Hire List, which opens filtered to Waiting.

   A request for a school-billed pupil with no pupil record of their own has no name on it, which is why it can seem to be nowhere. It is here.

4. Deal with the request, and the block goes

   Either approve it, if a chargeable hire is what you wanted, or delete it if it was pressed by mistake. Once it is gone the teacher can issue an instrument from the register as normal. Nothing else needs doing, and the existing hires are untouched.

   If your teachers keep pressing it by accident and you do not normally hire instruments, ask us - there is work in hand to hide Request Hire from the register.

5. Check where the requests come from

   Two places create them, and neither is a fault. The register's Request Hire button, pressed by a teacher. And Hire Available on a prospectus item, which asks parents whether they would like to hire an instrument while they apply. If you are getting requests you did not expect, it is usually the second - and it is worth checking how many of your items have it ticked.

   One customer had it on 94 of their Music Lessons in School items and 13 Music Centre items without realising.

6. Finished is not the same as returned

   Terminating a hire ends the charge. The instrument only comes back if you tick to say it has - and never earlier than the day it went out. If it has not actually been returned, do not tick: the hire finishes and the instrument stays showing as out, which is exactly what you want while you are still chasing it.

   That is why a finished hire can still appear on a resource as out. It is not a fault, it is the chasing list.

Why this one is worth knowing

Hire generates two kinds of question. The first is "where is it?" — answered by knowing which of the seven lists to open, and most often by Requiring Assignment.

The second is a teacher who cannot issue an instrument, which is nearly always a waiting request sitting against that lesson. It is easy to fix once you know to look in Hire List, and almost impossible to guess at otherwise — especially when the request carries no pupil name.

The same ground, as reference

• Hires — the lists in full
• Resources — the instruments themselves, and where they are
• Finishing and withdrawing — terminating a hire, and returning the instrument