Allocation and credit

How a payment finds the fee lines it settles, and what happens to money that has nowhere to go yet.

Allocation is what turns a lump of money into settled debt. A parent hands over GH₵ 300; allocation decides which fee lines that GH₵ 300 pays off.

Oldest debt first

By default a payment settles the oldest open lines first, where “oldest” means the earliest due date — not the date the invoice was created.

Using the due date is what makes a mid-term supplementary bill fall behind the term’s main invoice rather than jumping ahead of it.

Directing a payment instead

Where a parent is paying for something specific, direct the payment at that fee type and the money settles those lines first.

Direct the payment whenever the parent tells you what it is for. A family paying for meals expects their next meal bill to go down; if the money quietly clears a tuition arrear instead, they come back to the desk convinced you lost it.

Money with nowhere to go: credit

If a payment is larger than the debt available to settle — or arrives before the invoice does — the remainder is held as the pupil’s credit. Nothing is lost.

Credit remembers what it was for. Money directed at feeding stays tagged to feeding while it sits unallocated.

How credit is used up

When a new invoice is issued for the pupil, EduControl draws down their credit automatically, in this order:

1. Credit tagged for this fee type, oldest payment first

   Money the payer intended for exactly this charge is used first — that is what they meant it for.

2. Untagged credit, oldest payment first

   General credit follows, once tagged credit is exhausted.

This is why a family who prepays a term of meals sees that prepayment land on the meal bill rather than on tuition.

Reading a pupil’s position

A pupil’s financial position is their issued invoices, less what has been paid, less any credit notes, plus any credit they are holding. The pupil’s record shows all of it — and so does the pupil portal.

A pupil with credit is not the same as a pupil with no debt. Credit tagged to feeding does not settle a tuition arrear until an invoice draws it down. Read the invoice balances, not just the credit figure.

Who can do this

Allocation happens automatically when you record a payment, which needs record_payments.