Profitability tool

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Useful Helpguide pages:

https://accessplanit.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/HG/pages/83066948

https://accessplanit.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/HG/pages/2918941249

https://accessplanit.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/HG/pages/2918941057

The Profitability tool is available for each of your Classroom and Webinar Courses to track your estimated Course income and expenditure, so that you can decide if your Course should go ahead!

Where to find the Profitability tool

You can access the high-level Profitability numbers easily on your Class & Web Course DataGrids by adding in the following columns:

  • Income

  • Expenditure

  • Profitability Forecast

The “Income” is your accessplanit platform's estimate on the income you will receive for this course, based on the bookings logged on the course so far.

The “Expenditure” is your accessplanit platform's estimate on your expenses to run this course, based on the resources and resource requirements logged on the course so far.

The “Profitability Forecast” is your accessplanit platform's estimate on the profit (or loss) for running this course, based on the income and expenditure figures.

Class Courses DataGrid with Profitability Columns included

If you would like to view the breakdown of these Profitability numbers for one of your Courses, select the Profitability option from the context menu on your Class or Web Course DataGrid. Please see ‘Explanation of Terms’ below for guidance on the information available in this Profitability breakdown.

 

Class Course Context Menu Options

You can also view the overall forecast Profitability when you are viewing / editing the the Financial details of a Course.

 

This is calculated using your Course income, Course Fees, and Course expenditure items to produce a total figure of Profitability for your course!


Explanation of Terms

The Profitability table against a course will appear as below, with each item that contributes to your profitability numbers listed.

Item Type 

Each item has a type, this will be one of the following:

  1. Candidate: a Delegate on the Course

  2. Placeholder: the number of unassigned Placeholder place

  3. Resource: trainers, venues, equipment and any other Resources assigned to your Course

  4. Fee: a fee with a type of ‘Fee’ assigned to the Course or Resource Requirement

  5. Expense: a fee with a type of ‘Expense’ assigned to the Course or Resource Requirement

  6. Session: if your course is Sessional, any expenses from sessions will be covered by these items

  7. Viability: the total viability/profitability of this course, taking into account the other items

Item Description

This will provide details about this item, such as the name of a Venue or the name of the Delegate on your course.

Profitability Type

This field shows whether the viability record is counted as Income or Expenditure.

Calculated Value & Tax

Here, you can see the amount that this viability record will cost/bring in for the course, taken from the cost of the Resource or the course. Discounts and Price Schemes will be taken into account when calculating this amount.

Invoiced Value & Tax
This is the amount that has been invoiced for this item. For expenditure, this will always be automatically filled in, even though there isn't an Invoice for this.

Paid Value & Tax
This is the amount that has been paid in relation to this item. For expenditure, this will always be automatically filled in, even though there isn't an Invoice for this.

Forecast Value & Tax
This is generated from accessplanit as the most accurate value for how much this viability item is worth. By default, the Forecast values will first look to the “Paid” value and show this as the forecasted amount, if the item hasn't yet been paid for then it will look to the “Invoiced” value. Finally, if the viability item hasn't yet been invoiced, the Forecast value field will then show the “Calculated” Value. Please see the Configuration Options later in this guide for more information on this.


Transfer & Rebook Fees

The Transfer and Rebook tools for your Delegates & Placeholders mean that you can quickly move them to an alternative course, or add them back onto a course that they have previously cancelled.

Within both of these tools you can apply a transfer or rebook fee to cover your administrative costs, and you are able to include this income within your course profitability numbers.

This is an opt-in feature, so if you would like this enabling in your accessplanit platform, please get in touch with a member of the accessplanit team.

How will the profitability numbers look?

When your accessplanit platform is set up to include Transfer & Rebook Fees in your course income, you will see that the 'Invoiced' value in your profitability numbers now includes both the cost of the course and the cost of the fee!

For transferred delegates, the fee is logged against the delegate's new course (that they have transferred to) rather than their old course (that they transferred from).

If I transfer a delegate twice, what happens to their transfer fees?

The transfer fee will apply to the course that the delegate is transferred to when the fee is applied; so if a delegate is transferred with a fee, and then transferred again, their final course income will only include the fee from their most recent transfer.

Does it work with negative transfer & rebook fees?

Yes! We call negative transfer and rebook fees 'transfer discounts' and 'rebook discounts', and these work in the same way.


Sessional Profitability

Sessional Courses are Courses that are made up of multiple parts; they may be Courses that have multiple classroom days or webinars for delegates to attend, or they may be blended with a combination of classroom, webinar, eLearning, and document elements.

Sessional Course Income

When calculating the income on your Sessional Courses, the “Sessional Cost Type” setting plays a big role!

Sum of Sessions

If your Sessional Course has the Sessional Cost Type set to “Sum of Sessions”, then the Calculated income for each of your Delegates and Placeholders will based on the cost of each of the sessions that they have booked onto, this income will be recorded on the Sessions themselves rather than the Sessional (parent) Course.

This means that your Delegates and Placeholders will appear to have no income when you view them from the Sessional Course’s Profitability.

The income for these Delegates and Placeholders will instead be available on each of the Sessions that they are booked onto.

Course Cost

If your Sessional Course has the Sessional Cost Type set to “Course Cost”, then the Calculated income for each of your Delegates and Placeholders will based on the cost of the Sessional course and this income will be reported in the Profitability numbers on the Sessional Course.

When you view the Profitability numbers on the Sessions themselves, the income for any Delegates and Placeholders that are booked onto the Sessional Course will be 0.00, as their income is reported on the Sessional Course. However if you have Delegates and Placeholders that have been booked onto the Course that is a Session but not as a part of the Session plan (i.e. they have booked directly onto an exam instead of booking the full course and exam), then these will have income recorded against them as they are not booked onto the Sessional Course.

Course Cost Plus Optional Sessions

If your Sessional Course has the Sessional Cost Type set to “Course Cost Plus Optional Sessions”, then the Calculated income for each of your Delegates and Placeholders will based on the cost of the Sessional course and the cost of any of the Sessions that are marked as “Optional”.

The income will be reported in both the Profitability numbers on the Sessional Course, and the Profitability numbers on the optional Sessions.

  • The Calculated Income for your Delegates and Placeholders on the Sessional Course will be based on the Cost of the Sessional (parent) Course

  • The Calculated Income for your Delegates and Placeholders on any mandatory Sessions will be 0.00

  • The Calculated Income for your Delegates and Placeholders on any optional Sessions will will be based on the Cost of the optional Session

Course Cost Plus Sessions

If your Sessional Course has the Sessional Cost Type set to “Course Cost Plus Sessions”, then the Calculated income for each of your Delegates and Placeholders will include the cost of the Sessional course and the cost of any of the Sessions.

The income will be reported in both the Profitability numbers on the Sessional Course, and the Profitability numbers on the Sessions.

  • The Calculated Income for your Delegates and Placeholders on the Sessional Course will be based on the Cost of the Sessional (parent) Course

  • The Calculated Income for your Delegates and Placeholders on any Sessions will will be based on the Cost of the Session

Sessional Course Expenditure

When calculating the expenditure on your Sessional Courses, by default, the parent (Sessional) Course does not factor in any Resource costs. Instead the Resources allocated to each of your Sessions are factored in.

This ensures that if a Course is Sessional and you have your trainers, venue and any equipment assigned to both the parent course and it’s sessions, your profitability numbers do not count them twice!

If this setting does not work for you, it can be changed, please contact our Support team to have this setting updated!


Cost Types & Profitability

The Cost Type of your Course will affect the way that your ‘Calculated’ Profitability numbers are.. calculated!

Cost Per Delegate

For courses with a Cost Type of ‘Delegate’ the profitability calculations are quite straightforward!

The Cost for the Course will be the default 'income' for each Delegate assigned to the Course, this however will be different for all of your Delegates that meet a Price Scheme for the Course, or have an overridden cost for their place on the course, or if a Discount was applied to their booking when they were added to the Course via the Shopping Basket.

Override Costs

If you add an Override Cost to a Delegate, this new cost will take priority over the default Course Cost and any Price Schemes in the Profitability numbers for this Delegate.

If you update the ‘Value’ for a Placeholder via the Bulk Edit option on the Placeholders DataGrid, this will have the same effect.

Price Schemes

If your Delegate or Placeholder meets the criteria for a Price Scheme on the Course and they do not have an Override Cost (please see above), then their Calculated Profitability value will factor in the Price Scheme cost.

Please note that Price Schemes will not apply to the Calculated profitability for a Delegate that was booked through the Shopping Basket before the Price Scheme was assigned to the Course.

Discounts

If your Delegate or Placeholder was added to the Course via the Shopping basket, and a Discount was applied to the booking, then the Calculated Costs will include this Discount!

If the Delegate was added to the Course manually, then the Discount will only be applied to the Profitability Numbers when the Delegate or Placeholder is Invoiced.

 

Cost Per Session

The cost type of “Per Session” works very differently to “Per Delegate” to calculate your Profitability Numbers.

“Per Session” means that you are charging a set amount for the entire Course, rather than charging per Delegate, Hour or Day. For example, if a 2-day Course has a Cost of £1200 and a Cost Type of “Per Session”, then the total cost of the Course to your customers will be £1200. Please note this is not a cost per attendee/delegate, this would be a cost of £1200 per unique customer booking this course.

Typically Courses that charge “Per Session” are in-house, private Courses run for a specific customer, and they therefore have a single booking logged against them (often a Placeholder booking). In these cases the Profitability is very straightforward, and the Profitability reflects the amount of the Course against the Session, so a £1200 Course would have one Profitability Item for that Placeholder with a value of £1200.

In the rare case that the same customer (Account) has two bookings on the one Course, then the cost of the Course will be divided across the two bookings in the Profitability’s Calculated Numbers. For example, a £1200 Course with a 12 place Placeholder and a 8 place Placeholder would have two Profitability Items for that income, with the 12 place having a value of £720 and the 8 place having a value of £480. The combination of these two Profitability Items will give you an income of £1200.

Please note that care should be taken when these Placeholders are Invoiced, as the Invoice Generator will treat each Placeholder individually and attempt to charge £1200 (in this example) for each Placeholder:

Rather than adding an additional Placeholder for the same customer, we recommend increasing the quantity of places held on the first Placeholder to avoid this issue.

 

If multiple Accounts have bookings on a Course that has a cost type of “Per Session”, then the full cost of the Course will be allocated to each of the bookings in the Calculated Profitability Numbers.

For example, a £1200 per session Course with two separate Accounts making a Placeholder booking would lead to a Profitability Item per Account with each worth £1200.

Cost Per Day

The cost type of “Per Day” works similarly to “Per Session” to calculate your Profitability Numbers.

“Per Day” means that you are charging a set amount for each day of your Course, rather than charging per Delegate, Hour, or a set rate for the entire Course (which would be “Per Session”). For example, if a 2-day Course has a Cost of £1200 and a Cost Type of “Per Day”, then the total cost of the Course to your customers will be £2400. Please note this is not a cost per attendee/delegate, this would be a cost of £2400 per unique customer booking this course.

Typically Courses that charge “Per Day” are in-house, private Courses run for a specific customer, and they therefore have a single booking logged against them (often a Placeholder booking). In these cases the Profitability is very straightforward, and the Profitability reflects the amount of the Course times by the number of days that the course is running, so a £1200 2-day Course would have one Profitability Item for that Placeholder with a value of £2400.

If (instead of a Placeholder) Delegates have been added to the Course, then each of the Delegates will have a portion of the £2400 allocated to them as Calculated Income.

In the rare case that the same customer (Account) has two bookings on the one Course, then the cost of the Course times by the number of days it runs will be divided across the two bookings in the Profitability’s Calculated Numbers. For example, a 2-day £1200 Course with a 3 place Placeholder and a 2 place Placeholder would have two Profitability Items for that income, with the 3 place having a value of £1440 and the 8 place having a value of £960. The combination of these two Profitability Items will give you an income of £2400.

Please note

Care should be taken when these Placeholders are Invoiced, as the Invoice Generator will treat each Placeholder individually and attempt to charge £2400 (in this example) for each Placeholder.

Rather than adding an additional Placeholder for the same customer, we recommend increasing the quantity of places held on the first Placeholder to avoid this issue.

If multiple Accounts have bookings on a Course that has a cost type of “Per Day”, then the full cost of the Course times by the number of days it runs will be allocated to each of the bookings in the Calculated Profitability Numbers.

For example, a £1200 per day 2-day Course with two separate Accounts making a Placeholder booking would lead to a Profitability Item per Account with each worth £2400.

Cost Per Hour

The cost type of “Per Day” works similarly to “Per Session” and “Per Day” to calculate your Profitability Numbers.

“Per Hour” means that you are charging a set amount for each hour of your Course, rather than charging per Delegate, Day, or a set rate for the entire Course (which would be “Per Session”). For example, if a 3-hour Course has a Cost of £100 and a Cost Type of “Per Hour”, then the total cost of the Course to your customers will be £300. Please note this is not a cost per attendee/delegate, this would be a cost of £300 per unique customer booking this course.

Typically Courses that charge “Per Hour” are in-house, private Courses run for a specific customer, and they therefore have a single booking logged against them (often a Placeholder booking). In these cases the Profitability is very straightforward, and the Profitability reflects the amount of the Course times by the number of hours that the course is running, so a £100 3-hour Course would have one Profitability Item for that Placeholder with a value of £300.

If (instead of a Placeholder) Delegates have been added to the Course, then each of the Delegates, per Account, will have a portion of the cost allocated to them as Calculated Income. For example, a 3-hour £100 Course with 3 delegates from the same Account booked would mean that each of the delegates has £100 Calculated Income.

In the rare case that the same customer (Account) has two bookings on the one Course, then the cost of the Course times by the number of hours it runs will be divided across the two bookings in the Profitability’s Calculated Numbers. For example, a 3-hour £100 Course with a 10 place Placeholder and a 6 place Placeholder would have two Profitability Items for that income, with the 10 place having a value of £187.50 and the 6 place having a value of £112.50. The combination of these two Profitability Items will give you an income of £300.

Please note

Care should be taken when these Placeholders are Invoiced, as the Invoice Generator will treat each Placeholder individually and attempt to charge £300 (in this example) for each Placeholder.

Rather than adding an additional Placeholder for the same customer, we recommend increasing the quantity of places held on the first Placeholder to avoid this issue.

If multiple Accounts have bookings on a Course that has a cost type of “Per Hour”, then the full cost of the Course times by the number of hours it runs will be allocated to each of the bookings in the Calculated Profitability Numbers.

For example, a £100 per hour 3-hour Course with two separate Accounts making a Placeholder booking would lead to a Profitability Item per Account with each worth £300.

Cost Per Delegate Day

For courses with a Cost Type of “Delegate Day” the profitability calculations are very similar to courses that have a Cost Type of “Delegate”.

The Cost for the Course times by number of days the Course runs for will be the default 'income' for each Delegate assigned to the Course, this however will be different for all of your Delegates that meet a Price Scheme for the Course, or have an overridden cost for their place on the course, or if a Discount was applied to their booking when they were added to the Course via the Shopping Basket.

For example, if a 3-day Course has a Cost of £100 and a Cost Type of “Per Delegate Day”, then the total cost of the Course to for each Delegate will be £300.

Override Costs

If you add an Override Cost to a Delegate, this new cost will take priority over the default Course Cost and any Price Schemes in the Profitability numbers for this Delegate.

If you update the ‘Value’ for a Placeholder via the Bulk Edit option on the Placeholders DataGrid, this will have the same effect.

Price Schemes

If your Delegate or Placeholder meets the criteria for a Price Scheme on the Course and they do not have an Override Cost (please see above), then their Calculated Profitability value will factor in the Price Scheme cost.

Please note that Price Schemes will not apply to the Calculated profitability for a Delegate that was booked through the Shopping Basket before the Price Scheme was assigned to the Course.

Discounts

If your Delegate or Placeholder was added to the Course via the Shopping basket, and a Discount was applied to the booking, then the Calculated Costs will include this Discount!

If the Delegate was added to the Course manually, then the Discount will only be applied to the Profitability Numbers when the Delegate or Placeholder is Invoiced.


Configuration Options

There are several configuration options available for the Profitability Tool, please get in touch with a member of the accessplanit team if you would like any of these options changing for your accessplanit platform:

  1. Delegate Statuses to Income & Exclude in Profitability
    You can choose which delegates to be included in your income numbers, based on their status on the Course.
    The default setting in the accessplanit platform is to exclude Transferred and Cancelled delegates from the Income numbers, however if you would like for these to be included (for example if you do not provide refunds for cancellations), then you may wish for these delegates to be included in your income figures too!

  2. Forecast Mode
    You can choose which profitability numbers are used to set your overall ‘forecasted’ numbers.
    The default setting is for your forecast profitability numbers to be based on the amount that has been paid so far, and if this is blank for some delegates/placeholders it will instead look to how much they have been invoiced, if they have not yet been invoiced it will instead look to how much they are expected to be invoiced (calculated).
    If you often take partial-payments/deposits for your courses, then the ‘paid’ value may be significantly lower than the income you are expecting for a Course, in which case it would be more accurate for your forecasted numbers to instead look at how much the customer has been ‘invoiced’ first.


Placeholders & Profitability

Placeholders will only appear within your Profitability table when they have places left unallocated.

For example if you have a 10 place Placeholder with no Delegates yet assigned to it, in the Profitability page you will see the Placeholder as a Profitability Item, with the full value of that Placeholder assigned to it.

Once you begin to assign Delegates to your Placeholder, each Delegate will appear as it’s own Profitability item, with a portion of the income from the Placeholder allocated to it.

If you have not yet assigned every Placeholder place to a Delegate, then the Placeholder will still be listed as a Profitability Item with the remaining income allocated to it.

Please note that the Profitability numbers only run to two decimal places, so you may encounter rounding issues of a few pence where the number of places on a Placeholder does not divide into the cost of the Course.

For example, if the Course is set to £1000 per session, and there is a Placeholder for the Course with 7 places, each of those 7 places is worth £14.2857142. The profitability tool will round Delegates on the Placeholder to £14.29 each.

If you need to adjust the number of places reserved on your Placeholder, there is an ‘Update Quantity’ option on your Placeholders DataGrid. If you have not yet generated an Invoice for your Placeholder, this option will allow you to increase or decrease the quantity of places reserved on the Course by this Placeholder, if you have Invoiced this Placeholder you can only use this option to reduce the number of places held.

Your Profitability numbers will be updated to reflect any changes to the number of places being held on your Course for the Placeholder. For example, if the Course is charged “Per Delegate” and two places are added onto the Placeholder, the Calculated Income for this Placeholder in the Profitability table will increase by the cost of the Course times two.

If you have a Placeholder with Delegates already allocated, and one of those Delegates cancels, they should be removed from the Placeholder by clicking on the 'x' besides their name in the “Assign to Placeholder” window.

 


Limitations of the Profitability Tool

The Profitability Tool is a fantastic tool to understand how much income you can expect to make on your Courses and how much you can expect to spend on your Resources. There are certain limitations within the tool however which mean that the tool should not be used for financial reporting.

For finance reports, we recommend using your Invoice data.

Here are the limitations of the Profitability tool for you to be aware of:

  • As the Profitability numbers only run to two decimal places, you may encounter rounding issues of a few pence where the number of places on a Placeholder does not divide into the cost of the Course.

    For example, if the Course is set to £1000 per session, and there is a Placeholder for the Course with 7 places, each of those 7 places is worth £14.2857142. The profitability tool will round Delegates on the Placeholder to £14.29 each.

  • If you run any tax exempt Courses, this tax status is not factored into the “Calculated” numbers of the Profitability, once your bookings on these Coursed are Invoiced, the tax exempt status will then apply to your Profitability numbers.

  • Where a Delegate is added to the Course manually (i.e. not through the shopping basket) automatic discounts do not apply until the Invoice item is invoiced

  • Price Schemes with a higher value than the cost of the course do not apply to Calculated Profitability, these Price Scheme costs will apply (when the Delegate or Placeholder is invoiced) to the Invoiced Profitability numbers.

  • Where a Delegate has been added to a Course with one or more Delegates from the same Account, and they are refunded and then they pay again, the income from the second payment is allocated to all Delegates from that Account on the Course which leaves the distribution of income incorrect


Refreshing the Profitability Numbers

Following most financial updates to the Course, such as an additional Delegate being booked onto it, the Profitability Numbers will refresh! When the Profitability table loads again, it will contain the updated profitability numbers.

The profitability numbers will refresh automatically for a Course when any of the following actions are completed:

  • Adding or removing a Delegate on the Course

  • Adding a Placeholder to the Course

  • Updating the override cost on a Delegate

  • Updating the value of a Placeholder

  • Allocating Delegates to a Placeholder

  • Updating the quantity of places for a Placeholder

  • Generating an Invoice for a Delegate or Placeholder on the Course

  • Updating the ‘cost’, ‘cost type’, or ‘sessional cost type’ on the Course

  • Adding a Trainer or Venue to a Course

The profitability numbers will not refresh automatically for a Course when any of the following actions are completed:

  • Adding, removing or updating a Price Scheme on the Course

  • Updating the ‘sessional cost type’ on a Sessional Course will not cause the profitability numbers to refresh on the Sessions


FAQs

  1. I have changed the price of a Price Scheme for a Course but I am not seeing this reflected in my Calculated profitability numbers, is something broken?
    The numbers do not update instantly for this scenario, however you will see them updated when the profitability next refreshes, whether this is when a new delegate is booked on, or a placeholder is invoiced for example.