2019 was one of the best years yet for Jackrabbit Technologies!
Reaching company goals, overall growth, hiring new staff, meeting new clients and visiting with current clients – just to name a few of this year’s events. But, even more exciting than that is the hard work from our product and engineering teams.
This year alone, Jackrabbit Class deployed 23 new product features. I think it is safe to say this has been the best year yet!
12 client favorite enhancements from Jackrabbit Class
While each and every enhancement has been exciting for us to release to our clients, there are 12 favorites that have been game-changers for a great number of our clients. Let’s start from the beginning of 2019 and work our way through!
1. Fee Summary report
The Fee Summary report is a great way to see where fees stand all in one place.
For example, if you want to see who still owes their costume fee before handing out costumes for the big show, you can use the Fee Summary report. The report will show the fee amount posted, amount paid, and amount unpaid for each fee posted.
Being able to drill down those that still money for costumes, whether it is the entire costume fee or partial, will help you easily address those situations prior to sending costumes home!
2. Skills worksheet and progress reports
Class skills worksheets and skill progression reports filled some gaps in the Skills module, making it work for literally everyone.
When updating skills via a tablet or smartphone isn’t possible, using the Class skills worksheet is the next best thing. So, whether teachers are in the water or on the gym floor, skills can be seen and progress documented easily. Once the updates are entered in Jackrabbit, parents can see their child’s progress as well.
Which leads to the skills progress report. Keeping parents in-the-know on how close their child is to floating is exciting for a little swimmer and their family! Sending out progress reports is a great way to keep parents connected with you and your program, while celebrating your students progress at the same time!
3. Student Attendance report
The Student Attendance report made spotting attendance trends easy!
Being able to quickly see how many times a student has been absent and how often they are late or leave early helps you stay on top of attendance issues and address them with parents as needed.
Also, being able to quickly see who has perfect attendance is helpful if you award those students who always show up for class week after week!
4. Automatic discounting and prorating of tuition
Automating discounting and prorating of tuition fees was a big win for 2019.
While some of this work started in 2018, the final pieces of where you could set up automated discounting and prorating rules was completed this year. With additional refinements, you are able to choose which classes you want to exclude from discounting, select multiple classes at once for one student, easily segment your tuition posting, and much more!
This feature gives office staff more time back in their day to focus on customer service instead of correcting fees posted or manually posting each fee for each new enrollment. And, parents have a better understanding of what they owe from the time of enrollment.
5. Mass update transactions
Having the ability to update multiple transactions at once had clients doing the happy dance, literally.
Through the hustle and bustle of the first of the month, it is not uncommon (or difficult) to post with the incorrect transaction date. Being able to edit the entire tuition batch instead of deleting it and reposting was a dream come true for a lot of clients. Besides, having to post again is just another opportunity to forget another detail and there you are feeling like the movie Groundhog Day.
Mass updating transactions isn’t just great for changing information but also clearing information. Don’t need the automated note that Jackrabbit adds to notate the month the tuition fee is for? Clear it out quickly and easily!
6. Process Registrations report
The Process Registrations report was one of my personal favorites.
From the dashboard, you can easily see how many new registrations and parent portal enrollments need to be processed in one place. With the ability to customize your dashboard, you can decide which enrollments show up and the date range you want to view at a glance.
This report was the first of its kind at Jackrabbit – a working report where you can mark registrations as ‘in progress’ or ‘complete’. With the ability to add internal notes, offices with multiple staff members working through registrations will never have to second guess the status of a registration or why it is on hold.
7. Revenue reconciliation for multiple locations
Multiple Location Revenue Reporting was a huge need for our clients that have more than one location.
With a new option to track revenue by class location, these new set of reports are super valuable when you have more than one location and students taking classes at multiple locations. Especially when you have revenue from each location being funneled to a separate bank account.
A clearer picture of how much income was generated by each location helps owners know when bank accounts needed to be adjusted based on payments received at each location. Guesswork is completely eliminated!
8. Internal notes
A better way to keep internal notes on families, students, classes, and staff records was the highest requested idea from the Idea Portal and when it came out, it was a hit!
Keeping a running log of notes pertaining to conversations with families, and staff annual performance reviews are just a couple of examples of what this feature can be used for. Being able to document, tag by topic, and search across all notes entered is guaranteed to help you recall any important scenario months from the day it was added.
With the automatic stamp of the date, time, and user who added the note, there is never a doubt of who to go to when you have a question about a particular note.
9. Tuition Not Posted report
The Tuition Not Posted report is a great checks and balances tool once you have posted tuition for the week, month, etc.
Part of the billing process is just feeling confident that everyone has been billed. If they aren’t billed, they are less likely to pay. Last time I checked, swim lessons weren’t free!
Adding this report to your standard billing procedures is just an easy way to make sure every student actively taking class was billed for it. As with many things, you get out of it what you put in. Consistent fee posting is essential to this report giving you accurate results.
10. Student Detail report
The Student Detail report release was a sneak peek at more of the new look that is to come here at Jackrabbit Class.
This new report is full of information that you often need but isn’t necessarily found in one place in Jackrabbit. Being able to organize and further narrow down your data using our new smart grid makes the report even more powerful.
Being able to email directly from the smart grid adds even more value to this report. From emailing January birthdays to emailing all students under the age of 6 for your princess summer camp. This report might just be what you need!
11. Sent Emails report
The Sent Emails report was another huge request we heard quite often.
Having a way to search for emails sent out from your application by date, user, or keyword from the subject line was like a dream come true. Whether you need to monitor what is going out from others users or you can’t remember who you emailed yesterday in regards to an upcoming event – you can see it all in one place!
To take it a step further, this report is also a great way to find failed recipients to help ensure you are getting emails out to your families when they need them.
12. Lesson Plans in the Staff Portal
Lesson plans add to classes in Jackrabbit are now visible in the Staff Portal, giving them a whole new meaning!
There has always been the ability to add lesson plans to classes. With Staff Portal being a popular feature, it just didn’t make sense to use lesson plans in Jackrabbit. But now, teachers can see lesson plans in the staff portal while they are taking attendance and updating skills.
Using lesson plans is a great way to add consistency and organization to your program.
Jackrabbit Class enhancements in 2020
It is hard to believe that all of that and much more happened this year. But, I assure you, the best is yet to come.
Our product team has been hard at work planning out the 2020 roadmap of more great enhancements. It might seem impossible to top this year, but I have seen the line up coming for 2020. I cannot wait to share it with you!
If you have been thinking about giving Jackrabbit a try, we are ready for you! Get started with Jackrabbit Class today with your 30-day free trial!
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