A subsidy is designed to be inflexible to ensure proper use of grant money and reporting. A subsidy is rigid in its setup and the discount amount or pot deduct amount should not be changed between each use.
However, some grants or discounts will require that you offer a discount that is fluid and can change from client to client, or it has a sliding scale on how much the client receives a discount for.
To address this, it’s best to create multiple subsidies linked to the same funding partnership. Each subsidy setup would offer a different discount amount to clients, for example, Fix Them Voucher ($10 Copay), Fix Them Voucher ($25 Copay), etc. Mix and match the subsidy discount on the services. You can then use the appropriate subsidy for each line item to arrive at the ideal payment total for the client.
Creating a Sliding Scale Discount
Follow these steps to set up a sliding scale discount.
1. If you do not already have the Funding partnership, start with that.
Go to Settings > Funding Partnerships > Create New Partnership. This could be either a Pre-Paid Funding Partnership or Invoiced based on where the money is coming from to cover the discount applied to services. Read the section on creating a funding partnership if you need help on this step.
2. Once the partnership is created, go to Subsidies > Create New Subsidy.
Remember the funding partner will stay the same – this is where the money comes from. The subsidy/discount will have variables so you will create more than one subsidy setup.
Create Each Subsidy:
The title of the new subsidy will be the discount name and a key phrase or amount that this particular discount setup will cover. Ultimately you will end up with several subsidies that look something like this:
“Fix Them Voucher (No copay)”
“Fix ThemVoucher ($10 copay)”
“Fix Them Voucher ($25 copay)”
OR
“Fix Them Voucher (100% Discount)”
“Fix Them Voucher (50% Discount)”
“Fix Them Voucher (30% Discount)”
You will create a series of different subsidies all linked back to the same funding partnership.
Create seperate subsidy discounts to match the sliding scale.You may choose to untick the restriction field and assign this subsidy to only appear for public client appointments.
Adding subsidy restrictions3. Save this subsidy, and a new tab will appear for “Items the subsidy covers.”
On this tab, review the list and click “Add” next to the items the discount will cover.
The column for Client Discount will match the title of the subsidy. You will likely need to calculate the discount amount for each subsidy you set up. The client discount is the amount to subtract from the item’s regular price. Example: Cat Spay is $85. Your subsidy discount is 20% off. The client discount amount will be $17.
Under each new subsidy calculate the discount amounts.The second column for Pot Deduct or Invoiced amount will be how much you are getting back from the grant.
Click Save on that line to activate this discount for that service item.
Applying the Discount
Edit the services, and next to the service item is a green Discount button. Click this and choose to apply the appropriate discount.
You can apply different discounts to the list of services in order to reach the correct final price. For instance, you can apply a $5 copay to the rabies service and a $10 copay to the surgery service, so that the owner owes a total of $15. The discounts apply to individual items.
Applying a discount“What if we ask the client to pay whatever they can?”
To create the final price that the client can afford, you need to apply different subsidy discounts to each service. For instance, you can use a 100% discount on surgery but only a 30% discount on rabies.
If this method doesn’t work, try to get the price just below the amount the client said they could pay. For example, if the total cost is $5 after applying discounts, but the client said they could pay $10, collect the full amount, and put the extra $5 back into the funding partnership pot.
