Business Rule:  Conveyance Allowance Payment Schedule Calculation

[BR007]

Description

Conveyance Allowance payments are currently made four times per year just after the end of a school term.   The payments are each one fourth of the annual amount, based on the daily amount recorded in the schedule.

Establishing a payment schedule involves creating 'full' payments for each full term between the effective date and termination date of the schedule.   In cases where the schedule effective date or termination date falls somewhere within a term, appropriate adjustments for that period need to be made based on 'actual' school days.   In cases where there is no termination date a schedule is created for the current year plus five years.

NOTE:   If a family moves during the middle of a term, it is possible for there to be two (or in the rarest of cases more than two) separate scheduled payments for the student(s) for that term.   Each will be based on 'counted' number of school days within that term.

NOTE:   At the end of each school year, STS will automatically extend payment schedules (subject to termination date) in order that there be always five years of scheduled payments in the system in support of budgeting and forecasting.

Rule

For a given CA Contract Schedule (currently active version), a scheduled payment is created for each 'whole' term between the schedule's effective and termination dates.   The scheduled amount is one fourth of the annual amount.   The annual amount is calculated by multiplying the schedule daily amount by the number of school days in a year (e.g., 197 if the student is currently enrolled in a primary school, 190 if enrolled in a secondary school).   The school the student is enrolled in is identified on the application associated with the schedule.

In addition to whole term scheduled payments, if the initial or final payment covers less than a term a payment is created as follows:

1. In cases where the schedule effective date does not match the start date of a school term, then the amount of the payment for that term is based on the daily amount multiplied by the actual school days from the effective date through the end of that term (based on counting individual primary or secondary school days, as appropriate for the student).
2. If an existing scheduled payment for that term is being superseded, it is replaced by one reflecting the school days within its effective and termination dates (in addition to the new [partial term] payment described above).
3. In cases where the schedule termination date falls within a term, then the amount of the payment for that term is based on the daily amount multiplied by the actual school days from the beginning of that term through the termination date.
4. With the possible exception of multiple payments in the 'first' term as described above, all new future scheduled payments replace any that may have previously been scheduled, including any beyond the latest termination date.

Examples

• A new 8-year-old student approved in December 2001 for a conveyance allowance starting in January 2002 --

  No partial terms are involved. Scheduled payments are created for each of the four terms in 2002. However, when the student's eligibility was originally determined, it was conditional because while the student lives outside the distance limit for students under 10 years, she lives inside the limit for 10 or over. Because the student will still be under 10 at the start of the 2003 school year, the termination date of the schedule was set to 31 Dec 2003. An additional four payments are scheduled for that year, but none for 2004 or beyond.

• A student with an existing CA schedule is getting a new version because a sibling has qualified for assistance at the start of the 2002 school year --

  The current schedule version now shows a termination date of 31 Dec 2001, and the new ('active') version has an effective date of 1 Jan 2002. All existing scheduled payments beginning with the first term of 2002 are deleted and replaced by new ones reflecting the new [proportional] daily rate.

• In the December reporting from a school, it was identified that a student ceased being enrolled as of 25 Nov --

  A new version of the schedule was created showing 25 Nov of that year as the termination date. All scheduled payments beyond that term are deleted, and the term 4 scheduled payment is replaced by one showing the specific From and To dates, and it includes payment based on the actual school days within those dates.