Freezing sessions for holidays and closures

For situations such as a holiday, renovation or instructor leave, instead of cancelling your classes one by one you use the Freeze Sessions wizard. You reach it from the Action menu on the Class Management → Classes screen or the Freeze Session button on the Overview. A bulk freeze needs the permission to manage class sessions.

Lessons are generated on holidays too and are not cancelled automatically: in the web panel's session lists (the Sessions grid, a class's All Sessions list and the Advanced Planning Tool) they show a "Holiday" badge, and online sign-up for them is closed on your customer site and in the customer mobile app. If no lessons will run on the holiday, you need to freeze those days' sessions.

The wizard first opens the Session Freezing screen: press Start on the Freeze Session card for a new freeze, or View on the Freeze History card for past operations. You move between steps with Next and Back; the Freeze Sessions button on the last step starts the operation. The freeze steps:

1. 1

   Date Range Selection

   Choose the start and end date of the freeze. If you only want to freeze a specific part of the day, turn off the "All Day" switch and enter the Start Time and End Time.

2. 2

   Class Selection

   Choose All Classes (all of the company's active classes), or tick only the affected ones with Select Class.

3. 3

   Freeze Mode

   Refund Credits: package credits from the frozen attendance are restored to the customers' packages. Carry Over to Future Sessions: no credits are refunded; for each customer's frozen lessons, new records are created on the sessions after their last lesson in that class, and the package end date is extended by the freeze duration (open-ended packages are not extended).

   In carry-over mode only pending records with a reserved credit are moved to a new class; pending records whose credit was already deducted get that credit refunded. Late-cancelled, no-show and excused records, and records with no credit reserved, are not moved and only the session is cancelled; the preview counts them as "Not Transferred". Attendance with a closed subscription, no package or a subscription source cannot be carried over and falls back to a credit refund.

4. 4

   Preview

   The system shows the Sessions Affected, Attendance Affected, Refundable Credits and Customers Affected figures; you can review the Breakdown by Class. In carry-over mode it also lists the transferable attendance, the attendance falling back to a refund, the records not transferred and the packages to extend (with their current and new end dates). If some bookings had already cancelled these lessons, it says how many will get their cost back.

5. 5

   Reason

   Write the cancellation reason (a public holiday, for example; up to 500 characters). If you leave it empty it appears in reports as "Bulk cancellation".

6. 6

   Summary & Confirmation

   Check your choices and press Freeze Sessions; the sessions in scope are cancelled (this can be undone from the Freeze History).

• Only classes that have not started yet are frozen; past or already started classes are left untouched even if the range covers them.

• Late-cancelled, no-show and excused records keep their status; they are not rewritten as "cancelled".

• Customers who had late-cancelled a frozen class get back what they lost: the cancellation right they used and the session credit forfeited because no right was left. The preview shows how many such records there are.

• If you have a “When a Class Session Is Cancelled” automation, the participants of the frozen sessions get one message per customer, about their earliest frozen session. A customer with 8 sessions frozen over a holiday doesn't receive 8 separate SMS.

Undoing a freeze

The Freeze History lists past operations with their date range, mode, status and who performed them. If you reopen earlier than you planned, choose Revert (Restore) from the Actions menu on the row; if you like, tick "Take back the refunded credits" and press Yes, Revert. The sessions become active again. Credits the customer has used in the meantime cannot be taken back, and the result message says so.

Freezing a single customer

The bulk freeze above cancels the sessions themselves. If only one customer goes on holiday, you can freeze that customer's lessons without touching the sessions: on the customer detail, open the Classes tab and press Freeze in the Class Enrollments section. In the Customer Freeze window choose the Start and End dates and the mode, and add a Note if you like:

• Cancel + Refund + Extend: the lessons in the range are cancelled, the reserved credits are refunded to the package, and the package expiry is extended by the length of the range.

• Transfer to Later Lessons: the lessons are moved to the first suitable sessions of the same class after the range (not full, not past the package expiry and without an existing record for the student); the credits move with them and the package is not extended. A lesson with no target is shown as "No target" and stays unchanged.

Preview shows how many lessons will be affected, by how many days the package will be extended in refund mode, and in transfer mode how many lessons can be moved and which ones have no target. Press Apply to carry it out. A customer freeze needs the permission to manage class enrolments.