Note: This help article has recently changed. We recommend reading the Billing Overview article before continuing.
Under the Long Course Learner billing model, you elect a licence tier that is equivalent to your estimated number of Long Course Learners you expect over your billing period of one year. If you breach this limit, every additional Long Course Learner will incur additional fees.
Understanding what defines a Long Course Learner, and how the total count is calculated, is important for gauging what Licence tier you should be on, as well as avoiding unnecessary fees.
Tip: Before reading further, we recommend ensuring that you understand the key definitions found on our Billing Overview page.
Long Course Learner Definitions
A Long Course Learner is any Contact that is enrolled in a Workshop, Qualification or E-Learning activity with a Start Date and/or End Date that falls within (or spans across) your current annual service period with aXcelerate.
This includes enrolments that were created in the previous service period, but have not yet been completed or cancelled and are therefore still active within the current service period.
aXcelerate calculates the number of Learners via the following process:
- Retrieve a list of every single Workshop, Qualification and E-Learning enrolment that exist in your account
- Calculate the Start and End Dates of each course
- Filter the list to those that fall within (or span across) the current service period
- Package courses together for individual learners to leave a distinct number of learners, each with one or more courses. This number is considered your Long Course Learner count.
Note: The definition of the Start Date and End Date varies depending on whether the course is a Workshop, Qualification or E-Learning. You can find the definitions on our Billing Overview page.
Some specific examples of when a Contact is counted as a Long Course Learner are listed below:
- A Contact who has been booked on a Workshop, where any day is inside your service agreement period. A cancelled booking is not included.
- A contact who has a Class enrolment date inside your service agreement period with at least one unit enrolment, where the outcome identifier is not 'W' (Withdrawn), 'NYS' or 'N.R'.
- A contact who is enrolled in a Class with at least one unit enrolment, where any day between the unit start date and the unit end date/proposed end date falls inside the service agreement period.
Examples of situations where a Contact is not counted as a Long Course Learner are:
- A Contact that has been enrolled as a tentative enrolment.
- A Contact that has not been enrolled in any kind of learning activity (Workshop, Qualification, or E-Learning).
- A Contact whose training took place entirely outside of the service agreement period, i.e., both their enrolment date and their completion/cancellation date are before the service agreement period.
Warning: Setting a student's Contact Record as inactive will not exclude them from your Long Course Learner numbers if the student has participated in training within the service agreement period.
Tip: You can track which specific Contacts are being recognised as Long Course Learners by utilising the Long Course Learners Report available via the Report Builder. This will also let you filter the data that appears in your report, and customise the display of the results.
Long Course Learner Count
While the definitions of what a Long Course Learner is are fairly binary, when calculating the actual numbers of Long Course Learners it is important to remember that there are two key figures:
- Current Long Course Learners: This is the number of Long Course Learners at this moment. This number can go up and down, depending on whether you enrol or cancel students. This number only refreshes overnight.
- Maximum Long Course Learners: This is the highest number of Long Course Learners recorded (during the current service agreement period) when aXcelerate caches Long Course Learner numbers overnight. This number can not decrease.
Fees for your aXcelerate Licence are based on the Maximum Long Course Learners (which can be viewed using your aXcelerate dashboard).
Current Long Course Learners is used to help you understand your current operational numbers.
Creating several brand new enrolments one day will not see your Long Course Learner count drop if you withdraw all those same students the following day, as the number of Maximum Long Course Learners has already been logged overnight. To use a rolling example with simple numbers:
- Day One
- 100 Contacts are enrolled in learning activities and are left in that state overnight. The Maximum Long Course Learners is 100, and the Current is 100.
- Day Two
- 30 learners are cancelled. The Maximum is now 100, and the Current is 70.
- 20 learners are enrolled. The Maximum is now 100, and the Current is 90.
- 15 more learners are enrolled, and everything is left overnight to cache. The Maximum is now 105, and the Current is 105.
- Day Three
- 5 learners are enrolled, pushing the Current up to 110. These are then immediately cancelled on the same day, bringing the Current back down to 105. When the overnight cache occurs, the Maximum remains at 105.
In practice, this means that any cancellations or deletions of training activities should be performed as soon as possible, in order to prevent your count of Maximum Long Course Learners from being needlessly increased.
Note: To use a metaphorical example, this behaviour is equivalent to a rising tide. The water will move up and down with the tides, however it will leave a high water mark at its peak. Your aXcelerate Licence fees are calculated based upon the highest level the water mark rose to.
Long Course Learners and Data Migration
If you are going through Data Migration, it is possible that student records imported via this process will contribute towards your Long Course Learner counts. The main thing to keep in mind is that, as per the definitions above, a Contact is considered a Long Course Learner if they were in a training activity at any point during your service agreement period. To use an example:
- A service agreement begins in January
- In the previous student management system (not aXcelerate), the student is resulted and recorded as completed in February.
- Data migration occurs in March, importing the completed student into aXcelerate.
Even though the contact in the above example is brought across to aXcelerate in an already completed state, because they were still in progress at the beginning of the service agreement, they will be recorded as a Long Course Learner.
User-Based Licences
Warning: User-Based licence tiers are no longer available. However, any clients already on a User-Based licence, will remain on that licence until they move to a Learner-Based licence.
Licence tiers that are User-based rather than Learner based have no limit on how many Long Course Learners can be enrolled into the aXcelerate account. Instead, they will limit how many different logins may be created in the account. After reaching this limit, you will either need to deactivate old Users, or increase your Licence tier in order to create new logins.
This User limit only applies to Administrator and Trainer User Roles. The following User Roles do not count toward this limit:
- Student
- Agent
- Client
Note: Partner user roles are considered Administrators, so will count towards this limit.
Warning: Even though User-Based Licences do not bill in regards to Long Course Learner numbers, Third-Party usage fees still apply.
Long Course Learners FAQs
Does Withdrawing/Cancelling a student reduce the Long Course Learner count?
Cancelling a student reduces the current Long Course Learner count. However, it will not reduce the maximum Long Course Learner count unless cancelled on the same day the enrolment was created. Instead, it will create a ‘space’ to enrol a new learner without further increasing your maximum count.
When cancelling an enrolment, do I need to cancel their Workshop and E-Learning enrolments as well?
Yes. You need to cancel all enrolments for a student to no longer count. This includes setting E-Learning Access End dates to the correct cancellation date (i.e., not in the future).
Do I need to 'complete' enrolments so that they stop counting towards my Long Course Billable Learner count?
No. As long as the course has an end date (described in the Billing Overview page), in-progress enrolments will stop being counted once the current period lapses.