Process Periods and Vacancies

Process periods and vacancies must be recorded at the receiver schools before running the In Year offer processes or manually allocating children who have made In Year applications.

Process periods define the start and end time of the mini application rounds that can be used to process In Year admissions. They are defined via the Process | Transfer Groups | In Year tab.

After setting up process periods, the numbers of vacancies at receiver schools can be recorded for the process periods as they arise throughout the year. Vacancies are recorded via Bases | All Bases | PAN & Vacancies.

At least one process period must be added to cover the whole academic year, in order for vacancies to be kept up to date. This is necessary because vacancies are logged against process periods.

Capita recommend that vacancies are recorded before the application closing date for the selected process period.

Date and Time Rules for Process Periods

Date Rules for Process Periods

• A start date cannot be between any other start date and its application closing date.
• The application closing date cannot be before the start date or after the offer date.
• The offer date cannot be before either the start date or the application closing date for that process period.
• The offer date cannot be between any other start date and offer date from another process period.

When you save, you are warned if the dates you have entered break any of these rules.

Default Times for Process Period Items

• Start date/time: default time is 00:01
• Application closing date/time: default time is 17:00
• Offer date/time: default time is 00:01

Use Multiple Process Periods

Configuring multiple process periods enables you to use the Make Offers and Resolve Offers processes for In Year transfer applications.

Capita recommends that you define multiple process periods even if your Local Authority plans to allocate all In Year places manually, as this enables you to manage vacancies and allocations more effectively.

The coordination of In Year applications between neighbouring Local Authorities is most effective if their process periods are coordinated.

Multiple periods must be set up so that when an application closing date passes, the next one starts immediately. This enables applications to be made at any time.

Resolve Offers can be run multiple times for each process period. Make Offers and Final Allocation are only run once for each process period.

Use a Single Process Period

Local Authorities that plan to allocate all places manually only need to define one process period in order to keep vacancy numbers up to date. However, a single process period means that only one set of vacancy information can be logged for a process period. LAs using a single process period must to overwrite the vacancy information each time it changes.

In order to allocate places manually, the Exceptional check box must be selected for each preference.

A single process period could have, for example, a start date and time of 01/09/2013 00:01, application closing date of 31/08/2014 23:58 and offer date of 31/08/2014 23:59.