Question
Three of my classrooms need to be based on age. The others need to be based on birthday with a September 1 cutoff date like the public schools. Why won’t WaitlistPlus let me do this? How should I set up my lists for this situation?
Answer
The reason why we don’t allow this is because you have people who could be on more than one list, or fall between the lists. For example:
Assumptions
- Your lists
- Toddler – Age 0–24 months
- PreK – Birthday January 1, 2018 – January 1, 2020
- Today is June 1, 2020
The problem with this setup is that if today is June 1, 2020 and a person has a birthdate of December 1, 2019 (6 months old), they would fall under both lists. Since we automatically assign and move people for age/birthdate lists, we wouldn’t know which one to put them on.
If you consider the future and move today up to June 1, 2022, and have a person with a birthdate of March 1, 2020, they will not fall on any list. They will be 27 months old, and have a birthdate that falls outside the PreK range.
Possible solution
- Change the List Placement of your birthdate lists to Manual. For reference, you can add the date range into the list name.
- Create an extra age-based list with an age range that roughly fits the birthdays you had in your birthdate lists. This will be used as a “holding area” to put kids who need to be assigned to one of your Manual lists.
When staff add a person, they can choose the appropriate Manual list based on the birthdate. For customer signup, share the Link for auto placement lists (Age or Birthdate) from Settings > Customer Signup Form. That link fixes automatic placement and does not let the customer choose a Manual class instead. A customer whose age fits the holding range joins the holding list. Staff can then review that list and move the existing person to the appropriate Manual class. See Customer Signup Form for the three link types and Manage a person’s place on a list for moving a membership.
For example, use an age-based holding list for older children and separate Manual lists for each classroom with a September 1 birthdate cutoff.