As an institution of higher education, one of the most important piece of the student accounting puzzle is to correctly charge students for the courses they are taking. Over time, policies regarding the calculation of tuition and fees has become increasingly complex for many institutions. In-state and out-of-state tuition, per course, per credit and per semester fees, capped rates for full time students, grandfathered rates, differing drop fees depending on the period during which the course is dropped, late registration fees and many other complexities often make answering the question “what will this cost” a daunting task.
SARa divides the many aspects of fee management into separate concerns, separating pricing concerns, association of courses to different types of tuition, and student attributes (program of study, level of study, full-time and part-time status, etc.) into distinct areas, and then combining these aspects using a powerful yet comprehensible rules framework to produce charges and discounts on the student account. Each of these aspects is also versioned by term, meaning you can alter your rules for your upcoming semester or term, without changing the logic in your current semester.
SARa maintains the course charging history, so if a intelligently rebill the account, affecting only those transactions that are necessary in order to correct the account.
In addition to the raw power of the out-of-the box rules engine functionality, the language is also extensible should you have a complex case that is not presently handled by the fee management system.