> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://educontroldoc.pixelspectivetech.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Discounts and fee categories

> Staff children, scholarships and sibling concessions — set once as a category, applied automatically at billing.

A fee category is a named discount you attach to a pupil: *Staff child 50%*, *Scholarship 100%*, *Sibling concession 10%*. Set the category once, assign pupils to it, and every billing run applies it without anyone remembering to.

## How the discount is expressed

Discounts are held in **basis points** — hundredths of a percent.

| You want | Basis points |
| -------- | ------------ |
| 5%       | 500          |
| 10%      | 1000         |
| 50%      | 5000         |
| 77.5%    | 7750         |
| 100%     | 10000        |

Basis points exist so a discount like 7.5% is exact rather than a repeating decimal, which keeps a discounted bill and its payments in agreement to the pesewa.

## What a discount actually touches

<Warning>
  A category only reduces fee items marked **discountable**. Anything with that flag switched off is billed in full, to every pupil, whatever category they are in — including a pupil on a 100% scholarship.
</Warning>

That is the intended behaviour: it is how you stop a scholarship from silently absorbing an examination fee you have to remit to GES. But it does mean a "100%" category rarely produces a zero bill, and parents will ask why. The answer is on the invoice, which names every line.

See [Fee items](/docs/fees/fee-items) for setting the flag.

## Assigning a pupil to a category

A fee category is attached to a pupil's **enrolment for a term**, not to the pupil record itself. One category per pupil per term.

This matters at promotion: a concession does not follow a pupil into the next term on its own. When you promote a class you carry the category forward deliberately, which is your yearly opportunity to review it — see [Closing the term](/docs/closing/closing-the-term).

You can list every pupil currently on a given category, which is the check to run before billing: it is much easier to spot a pupil who should not be on the staff rate here than to find the discount later on an issued invoice.

<Tip>
  Review category assignments at the start of every term, before you bill. A concession agreed for one term has a way of quietly continuing into the next.
</Tip>

## Changing a discount

Editing a category changes what **future** billing runs calculate. Invoices already issued keep the discount they were issued with, because an issued invoice does not change.

To apply a newly agreed concession to a bill that has already gone out, issue a [credit note](/docs/payments/corrections) instead.

## Who can edit it

The `edit_finances` permission. Larger concessions can be put behind `approve_waivers` so that a discount is agreed by someone other than the person entering it.