Make the most of the Free License

Thursday, Jan 11, 2018
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If you are short on budget you have an option - use the CourseSales.com Free license. As to be expected it does come with some short falls that may or may not be show stoppers for you. While it is limited it can provide sufficient features to sell your courses using Wordpress and send customers tailored emails. If that is not enough you can request that we do some modifications to existing content for you eg update your emails, or give you access to other functions not available in the free version.

Selling courses using the Free license

Here is a list of things you can do:

  • List your courses and display them on Wordpress

  • Take online payments using the ONE payment method, eg cheque or cash or PayPal or another online payment method.

  • Send an email to those who register or enquire

  • Edit the emails sent to those who register or enquire

  • Create and edit course descriptions

  • Add different courses - and associated course dates

  • Add ONE tax rule (the default)

  • Add Logins for trainers etc.

  • Use public pages

So CourseSales.com Free license could get you up and running taking online ecommerce bookings, once these work for you then you could easily upgrade to a paid version and take control of your bookings, automating where needed. Alternatively request that CourseSales.com configuration experts do some customisations for you - we could do things like add extra emails, process steps, process rules etc. While you can’t edit these it could also tide you over until you have the confidence to purchase the next license ;-)

If you are selling e-learning courses then this free version will fulfill most of your needs, if however you are delivering face to face training while it will do the basics some ways to bend it to your will are mentioned below…

To make the most of the free license I recommend you simplify your booking procedure, try not to be too complex. make use of how CourseSales.com puts content from other places, Here are some specific examples:

  • Create another workflow step to communicate to your customers: You are given just four steps - Transfer in, Enquiry, Registration and Transfer out. Enquiry and Registration are both displayed by default on the course list (wordpress and public pages), those registering effedtively by-pass the Enquiry step. So why not just have one button and call it enrol, hide the Registration step and use this as a spare to, for example remind student just before the course to about the location etc. or to follow up once you have confirmed payment? Use our advice regarding changing the display of courses by altering the CSS and adding Javascript to a) hide the Registration Step button b) change Enquiry to something else such as ‘Enrol’

  • Make use of other places where existing information can be useful. You can re-purpose existing fields, and reuse these in email or use them for your own purposes. For example the option ‘course categories’ includes a description field that is unused elsewhere - why not use this to describe, for this course the prework required for this course, then include it in emails, this enables you to dynamically include this information in an email to students, including the correct information for each course. Other places where you can re-purpose fields are: Venue fields like website or latitude and longitude; Course Description Section 1; Other option Description fields.

  • Separate out your courses by creating different course categories, eg ‘First Aid’ can be split into ‘First Aid with CPR’ and ‘First Aid without CPR’ and can then be further divided (because you don’t have Formats) into ‘First Aid with CPR with elearning’ and ‘First Aid with CPR face to face’ - this enables you to have many courses, making it easier for customers to search for what they want and you can cater for the complexity of your business.

  • Existing forms ie ‘registration’ and ‘enquiry’ public form fields can be renamed by altering the CSS and adding Javascript - you can even hide fields from public view to then record your own values in those fields if you wish, or create a multistep step registration process.

  • Use the values you store in the License company to create a signature - and you only have to update it once!

  • You can create multiple logins - so share access with staff members and colleagues so they can see the students who are registered in the system.

  • You still get access to the trainer portal in the free version, so feel free to provide this to your trainers!

  • While not many fields are mandatory (only first name, surname and email) on a registration form it is possible to use javascript to make fields mandatory. In particular ask your friendly JavaScript coder to use jquery and consult adding JavaScript.

What you can NOT do (but might have liked to)

  • Edit the forms

  • Edit the workflow process steps and rules

  • Get confirmation of payment being received, other than via your payment provider, eg paypal

  • Create PDFs ie certificates or receipts

  • Have different Tax types, ie GST Free and GST

  • Upload files (to attach to emails)

  • Create contacts (usually to keep track of which courses one individual has attended)

  • Do AVETMISS reporting

  • Verify Unique Student Identifiers

  • Any exports of Documents or Course Dates

  • Have more than one payment method

Caveats while using the free license

  • While there is a Course Providers Form for options it is not possible to add nor edit course providers

  • While there is an ‘add PDF’ button on emails it is not possible to create PDFs unless these are created by CourseSales.com and purchased separately.

  • While there is an ‘add Venue Descriptions’ to venues it is not possible to create Venue Descriptions unless these are created by CourseSales.com and purchased separately.

  • Some links on the Reports page eg exports do not work unless purchased separately.

  • When adding a course date the option ‘Do not add Additional Course Prices to each Course Date’ will not (when unchecked) generate any additional pricing and it is not possible to create additional course prices.

  • There is a button ‘Document Topics’ when editing a course date - unless purchased separately it is not possible to add or edit Document Topics.

  • When registering a new enrolment in the admin portal you will have the option to select a contact however no contacts can be added in the free license.

  • While a Course Master offers to select a Tax Rule Type you can’t actually create Tax Rule Types - just Tax Rules, so leave this blank (the default will be used)

  • While a Course Master offer to select a Catalog Group you can’t actually create Catalog Groups - you can safely ignore this option.

See Also