An application is one completed admission form, sitting in a queue with a tracking code against it. Applications is that queue. Every row is a family who has heard nothing back yet, which is why the screen is organised around closing the loop quickly rather than reading in depth.

The secretary owns this screen during intake. The daily routine is simple: filter to what is pending, open the oldest rows first, and give every application a decision — approve it, reject it with a reason, or ask for a specific correction. A family that has been waiting a week with no answer will eventually look elsewhere, so the queue length matters commercially as well as politely.

What makes the screen more than a list is the tracking code printed beside each applicant. Give it over the phone and the family can quote it; it is also what appears on the correction request they receive, so a returned application carries the right identity without anyone having to match on a name that two siblings share.

The tracking code is the identity that never goes wrong

Every application is issued a code when it arrives, and that code — not the name — is what the family quotes on the phone and what appears on every correction request. Names in a school are shared, misspelt and changed; codes are not. Search on it whenever a family calls rather than trying to remember which of three children named Emmanuel applied.

Five states, and each one tells you who owes the next move

Pending means nobody has looked at it yet. Under review means somebody opened it and is reading. Resubmission requested means the ball is in the family’s court. Approved means the learner file exists. Rejected means it will not. Before working a row, check which side of the exchange it is on — spending ten minutes reviewing a file that is waiting on the family achieves nothing.

Under review is a courtesy flag, not a lock

Moving an application to Under review is how two members of staff avoid both working the same file. It is deliberately not a claim on it: whoever opened it first still decides. In a school where intake is handled by one secretary this barely matters; in one where the head of school also reads applications, it is the difference between a clean decision and two contradictory answers to the same family.

Submitted is sorted ascending by default, and should be

The list opens with the newest work at the top, which is convenient and wrong for intake. Switch to ascending on the Submitted column and the queue reorders itself into “how long has this family been waiting”, which is the only ordering that tells you what to do next.

Requests are attached to a group of questions

The applicant page shows the answers grouped as they were on the form — the pupil section, the guardian section, the level requested, the documents. Request changes sits on each group, so a problem with one section is a problem with one section, not a reason to reject the whole application. Two groups on the default form are labelled Resubmission requested once you have asked, so nothing gets lost on a page with fifty fields.

Correction or information — the distinction matters

Ask for a correction means an answer is wrong and should change: a date of birth typed as 2020 instead of 2010, a class that no longer exists. Ask for additional information means something is missing rather than wrong, which is the right frame for a family who never had the birth certificate and needs to know what to do about it. Choosing the right one sets the applicant’s expectations about whether they must fix something or find something.

Ask a question only this applicant sees

Add a question for this applicant lets you ask something the published form did not — a parent’s occupation if you need it for a record, a fee arrangement if this is a staff child. These extra questions are asked of that one applicant, on top of the original form, and their answers appear with the rest. They do not change the form everybody else sees, which is the point: you solve one case without redesigning the questionnaire.

Closing a group is one click

When the family sends the missing answers back, the group shows the response and offers Mark group as complete. Until you press it the group sits in an answered-but-unreviewed state, which is honest — you have the answer, you have not checked it. Press it when the answer is good enough, and the group stops appearing in your list of outstanding work.

What to do instead of chasing

If a family does not return an answer after a reasonable interval, you have three honest endings: reject the application with the reason recorded, leave it pending, or mark the group complete with what you have and deal with the missing detail at enrolment. What you should not do is approve an application while an obviously wrong answer sits unanswered in a group, because that wrong value carries straight into the learner file.

Choosing Approved is a route, not a stamp

Set the Decision to Approved and press Save decision, and Ekati does not simply flip a status. It opens the enrolment form with the applicant’s answers already transferred into the matching fields — name, email, phone, date of birth, guardian details and the requested level resolved against your real classes. The learner file is created when you check that form and save it, not before.

Read it before you save it

This is the last point at which a mistyped date of birth can be fixed without anybody noticing it on a report card three terms later. Compare the applicant’s answers against the form as it has been filled: the requested level, the guardian’s name and phone, the academic year. Anything that did not map cleanly arrives empty, and an empty field on an enrolment form is a phone call on the first morning of term.

Once the learner exists

The application page then offers View learner, which opens the learner’s own record, and the activity timeline carries the whole history — submissions, correction requests, responses, the decision. Nothing is rewritten along the way, which is what you want the first time a parent disputes the level their child was admitted into.

What approval does not settle

Approval is not enrolment. The learner is only enrolled once the class fee structure attached to that class has been settled, so a family can hold an approved application for a week and be genuinely enrolled only after the first instalment. Take the money at the same visit if you can: it turns three separate conversations — admission, registration, payment — into one.