Enrol a child into a program
Enrolling a child is the one action in PTRS where a state licensing figure can actually stop you, and it only stops you on one of the three ways to add a child to a program. This page covers all three and says which is which.
Taking a child off a program's roll is built correctly on the server, and no button, menu or control anywhere in PTRS reaches it. There is no delete control either. Once a child is on the roll, nothing in the product can take her off it.
The seat stays occupied against the program's capacity, and because the site's licensed-capacity check counts every active enrolment, it stays occupied against the site's licence too. Check the child carefully before you press Enroll.
Path 1: Enroll one child, from the program overview
This is the only path that checks the site's licensed capacity. Use it unless you have a specific reason not to.
- Open the program and stay on the Overview tab.
- In the Active Enrollments card, press Enroll.
- Type at least two characters of the child's name. The picker searches on first and last name.
- Press Enroll on the row you want, or Waitlist, which is the same button relabelled when the program is full.
What the picker does and does not do
It leaves out children already on this program's roll, including withdrawn and waitlisted ones, because it checks against the program's full enrolment list. That is what keeps you clear of the re-enrolment failure described below.
It reports "No eligible members found" when every match is already enrolled. Nothing about eligibility is actually checked here: the program's own eligibility rules are not consulted, and a child's date of birth is shown in the picker and never compared with the program's age range.
The picker's results are remembered for two minutes before PTRS looks again, and only a blank search is refreshed the moment a child's record changes. A child registered in the last two minutes may not show up yet; try a slightly different spelling to see past that.
What can come back
| Message | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| A message naming the site and saying it is at its licensed capacity | The site has reached its OCCL licensed capacity, counting every child with an active enrolment in any program there | Nothing in Programs will fix this. Withdraw someone at the site, which cannot be done from the product, or check the licensed capacity on the site's own record in Centers |
| "Program is at capacity and waitlist is not enabled" | The program is full and its waitlist setting is off | Open Edit on the program header and turn Waitlist Enabled on, then try again |
| "Member is already enrolled in this program" | There is an active enrolment already | Nothing to do |
| "No active schedule found for program" | The program has no active schedule | Should not happen. Every program gets one when it is created |
| A plain server error | Most likely a child who was previously withdrawn from this program. The duplicate check only looks at active enrolments, and PTRS refuses two enrolments for the same child and schedule at a deeper level, so the save fails as a plain error rather than a clear message | The picker will not offer such a child, so you should not reach this from the interface |
Path 2: Bulk Enroll, from the Enrollment tab
Use it for a whole group of children joining at once.
- Open the program's Enrollment tab.
- Press Bulk Enroll.
- Search and click each child to add them as a chip. Remove a chip with its ×.
- Press Enroll N Members.
Bulk Enroll respects the program's own capacity and its waitlist setting. It does not check the site's licensed capacity at all, so it can take a site past its OCCL licensed capacity with no warning of any kind.
Three situations cause a child to be left out silently: they are already enrolled or waitlisted, their record could not be matched, or the program is full with the waitlist off. The result only shows the enrolments that were actually made, the dialog closes, and nothing tells you which children were skipped or why.
Count the roll afterwards: if you selected twelve children and the Active tile only went up by nine, three were skipped.
Bulk Enroll does two things the single path does not: it saves each child's waitlist position, and it writes an optional note onto every enrolment it creates. Neither is visible on any screen in this module.
Path 3: Promote from the waitlist
When a seat frees up, the Promote control on the Enrollment tab moves children from the front of the waitlist to active.
- Open the Enrollment tab. The control only appears when the waitlist is not empty.
- Set the number to promote in the small box beside the button.
- Press Promote.
The promoted children become active, their waitlist positions are cleared, and everyone still waiting is renumbered starting from 1.
Neither the site's licensed capacity nor the program's own capacity is checked. The number box only limits what you can type in the browser; PTRS itself places no limit on the count, so a request can promote more children than there are seats, or than the licence permits.
Reading the waitlist
Two places show waitlist order, and they do not agree with each other until the first promotion.
The Waitlist card on the Overview tab shows a position beside each child. That number is worked out fresh every time the page loads, by ordering the whole roll by enrolment date and numbering the waitlisted children as it goes. It is always in date order.
Promotion uses each child's saved waitlist position instead, treating a child with no saved position as last in line. Only Bulk Enroll saves that position. The single-child path works out a position, tells you about it in the message on screen, and never actually saves it.
So a child waitlisted with the Enroll button sorts behind every child waitlisted with Bulk Enroll, whatever the dates say, while the card shows them in date order. After the first promotion the whole queue is renumbered and the two views agree.
If waitlist order matters to you, promote one child to renumber the queue before relying on the card.
Reading the Enrollment tab
| Tile | What it counts |
|---|---|
| Active | Enrolments on this program marked active |
| Waitlisted | Enrolments marked waitlisted |
| Capacity | Active enrolments as a fraction of the program's capacity |
| Pending Consent | One entry per active or waitlisted child, per active consent form with no record on file. See the note below |
The Enrolled Members list beneath the tiles shows every enrolment ever made against the program, including withdrawn ones, under that same heading. There is no filter and no way to remove a row.
The Pending Consent tile
It is a real count, and it will never fall, because the Record button that would clear a row always fails. It also ignores expiry: a consent recorded with an expiry date that has already passed still counts as collected and never returns to the queue.
What enrolment does not do
Nothing is sent to anyone. No email, no message, no notice to a guardian, not because this module chose not to, but because PTRS has never sent a notification of any kind, anywhere in the product.
No consent status changes either. A child's enrolment is created with its consent marked Pending, and no code in PTRS ever changes it, so the child's own Programs tab reads Pending for this program permanently.
No age, eligibility, consent, schedule-conflict or program-stage check runs at all. The full list is in What happens when a child is enrolled.
Where to go next
- What happens when a child is enrolled, the six checks in order, and the two paths that skip the important one
- Work the cohort and consent screens
- Work a child's record, the Programs tab on the other side of this
- Programs troubleshooting
Checked against PTRS on 7 September 2026.