You probably noticed – and were probably a little confused by the new status values in our STUDENTS list.

We changed these values in preparation for our new billing system.

What used to be INACTIVE is now ARCHIVED/LOCKED.  As before, this is status that you set manually – either by selecting one or more students through the checkbox in the first column and then selecting the Action “Archive/Lock” from the top; or by editing a specific student (click on their student ID, then on the pencil icon). If a student profile is ARCHIVED/LOCKED that student can no longer log into their student portal and you can no longer grade a test for that student. That is exactly the same as was the case with INACTIVE. It really is just a name change.

What used to be ACTIVE is now either ACTIVE or IDLE. ACTIVE means a test was graded for that student within the last month. IDLE means a test was not graded for that student in the last month.

With the new billing system you are charged one ‘credit’ for an ACTIVE student. You can grade an unlimited number of tests for an ACTIVE student without incurring additional charges. If you are a customer who hasn’t upgraded to the new credit system (and we will honor our previous agreement, you are welcome to stay at your current plan for the next 2 years for sure) then you will still be billed for ACTIVE or IDLE (or in other words all students who are not ARCHIVED/LOCKED).

One of the main reasons for the new billing system is that we have a lot of customers who find it difficult to manage their students’ status (i.e. they forget to deactivate student accounts) or they want to keep the student accounts open so their students can still access their student portal and view their scores. Under the old system this mean you paid for each month that you didn’t deactivate a student account. With the new ‘credit’ system, you no longer have to manage students’ status. A student’s status goes to IDLE (=not billed) automatically one month after they went ACTIVE (due to a test being graded for them).

We would like all of our current customers to upgrade to the new ‘credit’ based billing system. Although you pay more for each credit we believe you will find that you end up saving, and not just in the long run, but immediately. A separate blog article will explain this in more detail.