How to Enrol a Student

An enrolment connects a student to a specific class, which determines their course, trainer, location, and schedule. This guide walks through creating enrolments manually.

Creating enrolments manually from the dashboard is the primary way to enrol students, and it needs no website or embed. Letting students enrol themselves online (via a published website or the embed) is an optional addition covered in Student self-enrolment below.

Access required

Choose the task you are doing. Each row is a separate action.

Adding a new learner, recording a payment and declaring a test enrolment are separate actions. Use only the row for the task you need. Self-enrolment uses the public enrolment flow.

Prerequisites

Before creating an enrolment, you need:

1. At least one student: Add a student first
2. At least one course: Create a course with units
3. At least one class: Schedule a class for the course

Creating an enrolment

Enrolment types explained

Standard enrolment

The default type. The student:

• Attends all training sessions
• Completes all assessments
• Receives full course delivery

RPL (Recognition of Prior Learning)

For students who already have the skills:

• Provide evidence of existing competency
• Assessor reviews evidence
• May require gap training
• Competency granted based on evidence

Credit Transfer

For students with existing qualifications:

• Present certified transcript or statement of attainment
• Matching units are credited
• No reassessment required for credited units

To credit a unit, record a Credit transfer assessment with a Satisfactory result on the enrolment's Competency outcomes. See Recording Assessment Results.

Test enrolments

Use a test enrolment to practise enrolling, payments and delivery without affecting platform fees or AVETMISS reporting. Members with Enrolments: Manage see a Test enrolment checkbox when creating an enrolment from New Enrolment, when enrolling several students into a class with Enrol Multiple, and when creating a booking with New booking. It is not offered when preparing a booking request.

A test enrolment:

• Is excluded from RTObase platform fees
• Is excluded from AVETMISS NAT exports and readiness checks, together with its unit courses
• Cannot take a live online payment. Its payment links work with test checkout only
• Cannot receive a certificate or statement of attainment
• Still appears in staff lists and other reports, with a Test enrolment badge in the enrolment header

The choice is recorded in the audit history and cannot be changed after the enrolment is created. Existing enrolments are not reclassified. Members with Enrolments: Manage can still create test enrolments while new enrolments are paused for RTObase billing.

Enrolling in a qualification with unit courses

When the course is a qualification course that delivers its units through unit courses, enrol the learner in it as usual. RTObase enrols them in each unit course at the same time, on every enrolment path: website checkout, free enrolment, staff, bulk and employer orders. Take the fee on the qualification enrolment. See Qualifications and unit courses.

Every unit course must be active. If one is not, website checkout stops before payment and asks the learner to contact you.

Payment handling

If you've configured online payments:

Platform payments (Startup/Business plans)

• Students pay via Stripe at enrolment
• On the Startup plan, RTObase collects a platform fee (2% + 30c per enrolment, capped at $4 plus GST; no fee on free or fully-discounted enrolments). Business has no per-enrolment fees
• Funds transfer to your connected Stripe account

BYO gateway (Custom plan)

• Use your own Stripe account or eWAY
• No platform fees
• Direct settlement to your account

Manual payments

If not using online payments:

• Record payments manually
• Track via the Payments tab on the enrolment

See Setting Up Payments for configuration.

After creating an enrolment

Once enrolled, you can:

1. Track progress: View unit completion status
2. Record assessments: Add assessment results
3. Process payments: If not already paid
4. Communicate: Send emails or SMS to the student
5. Issue SOA: Generate Statement of Attainment when complete
6. Resend confirmation: Send or resend the enrolment confirmation from the Emails tab

Bulk enrolments

To enrol multiple students at once:

1. Go to the Class detail page
2. Click the Students tab
3. Click Enrol Multiple
4. Select multiple students
5. Configure shared enrolment options. Members with Enrolments: Manage can tick Test enrolment for a practice cohort. With the Funded VET module on, the Funding section applies one funding contract, funding source and Commitment ID to every enrolment in the group, with the same Save checks as a single enrolment
6. Click the enrol button, such as Enrol 5 students, to save all enrolments

Student self-enrolment

Self-enrolment is optional: everything above works without it. When you want students to enrol themselves online, they can do so through:

1. Public website: If you've published a website with the page builder
2. Embedded widget: On your existing website
3. Direct link: Share the class enrolment URL (works even without a website or embed)

Self-enrolments automatically:

• Create the student record (if new)
• Create the enrolment
• Process payment (if configured)
• Send confirmation emails

The enrol form shows a Your booking summary beside the first step, on your hosted website and in the embed. It shows the class dates, the requested session time or online access, with a link to change it, the price and what happens next. Course details sit under a collapsed What's included section. Select Booking for a team? on the form to enrol a team.

The steps match the course. Every learner goes through Your email, Confirm it's you and Your details. A paid course then has Payment. A free course has no payment step. A booking course whose provider takes no online payment ends with a Booking request, and the training provider confirms the time and price before the learner pays. A booking without a fixed price shows no price.

A sign-in link from an enrol email always signs in the person it was sent to, even when someone else is signed in on the same device.

Common issues

"New enrolments are paused"

RTObase pauses new enrolments when an RTObase invoice is unpaid seven days after its due date, or when a Startup organisation has no valid invoice email once bank transfer is live. The message says which. See When new enrolments pause.

"No classes available"

This means:

• No classes exist for the course, or
• Every class is Draft, completed, cancelled or archived. Nobody can enrol into a Draft class.

Solution: Choose New class in the class list, or set an existing class to Private or Public.

"Student already enrolled"

A student can only have one active enrolment per class. If they need to re-enrol:

1. Withdraw or complete the existing enrolment
2. Create a new enrolment

Payment failed

If online payment fails:

• The enrolment is created with "Payment Pending" status
• The student receives an email to retry payment
• You can manually mark as paid if using offline payment

Keep going